Thursday, March 08, 2007

missional church and New Zealand

Update: I am exhausted but excited. Excellent day with the Anglicans and serious interest in 3 Dioceses in possibilities around the missional church leadership coaching course being offered in their patch.

The upshot of the Baptist group is a definite commitment to hold a gathering,(Tentative date is July 29-31, 2007), called something like sharpening the edge as an attempt to say “what is God’s mission in New Zealand today” and “what are the lessons we can learn from grassroots missional experiments?” We hope that asking these questions might make us all learners and sharpen both the edges and the existing church in it’s change processes.

The gathering will be Baptist in energy but open to all. It is going to deliberately include non-baptist mission stories.

The hope is an event that become an ongoing conversation. So the event will be based around practioners telling stories and a listening panel of wise heads reflecting feedback on the practioner stories. This listening panel will then stay on for some hours after the event, and further to reflect together on what they heard and the sharp questions raised. All will (dreaming big here) be recorded and podcasted. Thus we will end up with grounded community mission narratives and good missiological reflection. This will generate mission questions, from the lived experience of NZ, which should generate further and ongoing intentional conversations.

More details to follow but if you are interested in a genuine learning conversation about mission in New Zealand today, then pencil in 29-31 July. More details will follow on the blog, or flip me your contact details.

Original blog entry:
I have a most interesting 2 days ahead. Firstly a day in Wellington leading a retreat with the Anglican Ministry Educators Network, who want to know more about emerging church/fresh expressions. Then onto Auckland for half a Thursday to gather with a Baptist group who are wondering about some sort of national New Zealand Baptist missional church gathering. I will be fascinated to work, and walk, between two denominational systems and compare interest, skills and capacities.

Posted by steve at 07:30 PM

1 Comment

  1. I have been reading your blog and would be keen if you could email me more details.

    Comment by Allan Murray — March 11, 2007 @ 7:33 pm

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