sustain:if:able kiwi

mission shaped ministry training Aussie style

There is a development in the whole area of ecumenical co-operation in mission that might be of interest to some of my (Aussie) blog readers.

The development is some discussion regarding offering ecumenical Fresh Expressions type training starting here in Australia. The discussion currently involves folk from the Diocese of Adelaide, Uniting College, Diocese of Canberra, Church army, Uniting synod of NSW, Vic/Tas and South Australia.

To this end an initial discussion is planned here in Adelaide on November 9, from 1-5 pm, at Uniting College. The aim is simply to gather folk interested in exploring ways to stimulate training and interest in fresh expressions. The initial idea is to look at offering a Australian variant of a one year, lay focused course called Mission shaped ministry, coming from the UK.

Mission shaped ministry is a one year part-time course equipping in planting and sustaining fresh expressions of church, currently running ecumenically in over 30 centres across the UK. It has been hugely important in developing a mission mindset in the UK context. The course is for leaders and members, clergy and lay people, learning side by side, who want to focus on either preparing to start a fresh expression of church or because they want their existing church to be more mission-shaped. There is more on the website here.

The temptation will be to cut and paste from another context and so the more Aussie, local and diverse denominational voices that can be part of a local planning, the more likely we are to workshop something that might genuinely serve the breadth of the church in this country.

I am also aware that Forge historically has been doing a variant of this for a while here in Australia. However, there is a lot of energy coming out of Fresh Expressions in the UK and this has caught the interest of some mainline folk here in Australia, who want to explore ways to train. This might provide a window of opportunity, yet another fresh breath of the Spirit.

Ecumenically, from my perspective, the more the merrier, so I have decided to blog this. I am also really keen that from the beginning, this not be a solely Anglo-Australian table. So I am asking that you, my blog readers, might pass this information on to appropriate folk in your denomination ….