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Together In Mission » Register

Show/Hide Café Vista

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

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Together In Mission » Register

Show/Hide Café Vista

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

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Together In Mission » Register

Show/Hide Café Vista

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

Nearly a year ago, I featured a video interview with Ruth Rice on Puzzling Questions.  She is a Baptist minister from Nottingham who was trialing Puzzling Questions while the finished material was with the publishers.

An advance copy is now on my desk – it will be released on 23 April.  The course is intended for those who are asking spiritual questions but who are not quite ready for Alpha.  In that sense it can be a pre-Alpha event or a stand alone course that allows your friends and contacts to explore without commitment.

The pack consists of a Leaders Guide, a Participants Workbook, a DVD with sections to use each week and a further more detailed book that gives both leaders and participants extra material to chew on.  Paul Griffiths drove the project through and I helped to write some of the material as did Julie Kite, an evangelist with a local Baptist church in East Anglia.

The questions that are addressed in the course came from some research undertaken by Coventry Cathedral as part of their engagement with people asking spiritual questions who do not come to church.  The 6 key questions are:

1.  Who am I?

2. What is God like?

3. What happens after I die?

4. How can I be happy?

5. Why is there suffering in the world?

6. What is the spiritual world and how does it impact my life?

There will be a website to explore after the release date.  Watch this space…

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

Over the last few months I have become more and more aware of the development of myriads of experiments around what it means to do mission and so be church.  Most of those experiments are purely local in conception and have not been inspired by any wider framework nor are they connected in anyway with broader networks.

Of course there are conceptual frameworks that seek to legitimize experimentation within denominational structures – Fresh Expressions in the UK is the best known of these frameworks.  There are also some networks that seek to connect and encourage experimentation at a very local level – The Parish Collective in the USA is one of these.

Just recently I visited a couple of experiments in the Seattle area – two in particular stand out as fascinating attempts to rethink mission and church.  I will write about one of these in a later blog but the one that occupies my thoughts at the moment – partly because I am having lunch there today – has taken the intriguing name Luther’s Table.  Nothing to do with Lex Luther but a great deal to do with Martin Luther.

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

How can ordinary lay people become missionaries in their daily lives? Dwight Zscheile has been involved in a major research project exploring this dimension of missional living. Here he talks about some of that learning especially his conclusions around how leaders can help in that process.

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

I have just finished reading Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim’s new book The Permanent Revolution.  As always with Alan’s books, a great read using powerful, punchy prose.  I would also say that it is a helpful apologetic and explanation of the five fold ministry paradigm and in particular of the apostolic dimension of that paradigm.   For that reason I will be pointing my students  and other church leaders to this as a useful text.

However, it still felt a little bit like yesterday’s discussion.  I think most people concerned for mission in a western context have got the idea that a predominately pastoral paradigm will not cut the mustard.  Even if we use different language around entrepreneurial leadership or other such terms, the idea that leadership challenges have shifted is probably widely accepted.  In addition, denominations, theological colleges and local churches are all needing to locate different organizational paradigms to respond to a challenging future.

To some extent the missional movement, inspired as it was by Newbigin’s original challenge about the conversion of the west, got slightly stuck in an ecclesial response to the missional challenge.  In that sense, Mike Breen’s provocative challenge around the headline “Why the missional movement will fail” is correct if we mean by missional movement an over-concern with leadership and organizational structures.

The hidden subtext of such a concern is that if we someone fix the church then mission will follow.  It probably won’t if only because we will never come to a day when we have fixed the church.  Changing organic systems is not like mending machinery on a production line.

At a deeper level the discussion about leadership leaves out two other critical areas which are probably more important than the leadership debate or at the very least, the leadership debate cannot be understood without reference to these two areas  First there is the issue of discipleship making.  Mike Breen is right to point to this as a key issue (for him the key issue) facing mission in the west.

The second area is how we engage our neighbourhood or community.   Churches with great leadership and wonderful discipleship making capacity simply are irrelevant if they have not thought through how this is all going to connect with a culture that largely regards us in a negative vein (and that is flattering).  To be very frank I think churches have spent more time thinking about leadership and discipleship (in the sense of a mobilized membership) than they have about how to connect at a deep level with those amongst whom we live.  I don’t see too many churches doing well in developing meaningful conversations with their community.

There is still somehow an expectation that if we produce a great programme people will come.  In North America that is still sufficiently true that we can ignore the connection issue but in Europe it really is not true.  We ignore the community connection issue at our peril.  When we have as many books, conferences, seminars and manuals on how we forge a different relationship with our community as we do on leadership issues, we might be getting somewhere.

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

As we reflect on the Great Commission its clear that the making of disciples (not just believers) is our key mandate as followers of Christ. In reality we are better at making converts than disciples. Mark Bailey of Trinity, Cheltenham offers some insightful comments on this issue.

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register

I have been privileged to spend a couple of days with a group of German leaders of various church planting agencies and initiatives within denominational groupings who meet from time to time as a “roundtable”.  It has been fascinating to compare the experiences of this group with the UK, or more specifically the English situation over the last 20 years, especially in relation to DAWN as a concept.

On the ground, just as in England, and I suspect increasingly across Europe, local church planting initiatives are multiplying.  There is probably much more happening at a local level than we realize or even have the facilities to track.  That is encouraging.  There are 2 key differences between the German experience and that of the UK.

First, the German DAWN group has not yet succeeded in building a consensus around the idea of a national goal for church planting which is so integral to the DAWN idea. This particular group has only been in existence for five years and it is not sure whether they will ever agree on such a goal.

“Fortunate for them”, I can hear some people responding from a UK context and I understand that sentiment.  However, there is something to be said for the idea of coalition, mutual encouragement, the sharing of ideas and experiences, the energizing impact of what others are doing when communicated as part of a joint vision.

I was fascinated to learn what the Free Evangelical Church has been doing with regard to church planting.  In 2005, they adopted the goal of planting 100 new churches in 10 years, and they are well under way. It is a very significant effort and when placed alongside other initiatives amongst Pentecostal and other new church groupings, something vital is emerging.

And yet, whereas normally the impact of such an important development in a group like the Free Evangelical Church might be expected to have a wider impact or leverage on others it does not appear to have done so.  Those who are aware of this initiative regard it highly and that underlies the importance of information sharing.  There is usually more happening than most people imagine and communicating the “facts on the ground” is at least as encouraging as setting ambitious goals.

Second, unlike the situation of England where the Anglican church was almost the initiator of church planting as a mission strategy, (admittedly with significant encouragement from YWAM), in Germany the State church is not just practically absent from the church planting scene but possibly hostile to the concept or at best sees it as something that does not concern or interest them.

This absence of the involvement of the State Church from church planting seems to stem from two realities.  The first of these realities is that there are far fewer evangelicals in the State church in Germany as compared with the Anglican church.  Whether we like it or not most (though not all) of the church planting initiatives in the Anglican church have come from the evangelical wing of the church.

The second reality is that the language of church planting does not really work in a strong parish system.  There is a need for a different vocabulary that might allow the participation and imagination of the State church in Germany to be stimulated.  In England that language is formed around the vocabulary of Fresh Expressions of church.

In recent times the concept of Fresh Expressions has begun to percolate the awareness and thinking of the State church and so there is the possibility of a new connection being established between the State church and the other denominations and networks that are already involved in church planting.  The growth of a movement needs both ”facts on the ground” – people actually getting on with the task, and a wider awareness of what is already happening and what is possible for the future.  The spreading of that knowledge is what catalyses a wider involvement and turns creative experiments into fully fledged movement.

Article source: http://togetherinmission.co.uk/register