Seeds of Hope

Forge Queensland is offering two weekends on sustainable models of spirituality and discipleship, over two weekends, 9 - 5 pm on the Friday and Saturday. Previous ‘intensives’ were held over four days, Friday - Saturday, Monday - Tuesday.

This Spirituality Discipleship and Sustainability unit focuses on the specific spirituality issues faced by people involved in pioneering mission to emerging global cultures.

In relation to spirituality, it relates to finding God outside the church and in strange places. Christian spirituality has been so tied to a Christendom mode of church, and as a result of that we have become dualistic in our understanding of God, church and world. Life is divided into sacred and secular, and God is found in one but not the other. This unit seeks to address this issue directly and help the student to re-conceive his/her relationship to God and the world in a more holistic and biblical way.

The nature and essential character of discipleship will also be explored in relation to contemporary cultural situations and alternative religions. The unit will focus particularly on consumerism as a major religious alternative to Christianity today.

Finally, because missional work is difficult, the unit explores the whole concept of sustainability – staying in there for the long haul. Appropriate disciplines and structures for sustainable mission are developed.

OBJECTIVES
This unit presents new models of spirituality, consistent and sustainable for mission in a post-modern context.

OUTCOMES
By the successful completion of this unit, the student should be able to:
• Demonstrate a thorough knowledge of models of sustainable mission in ‘edgy’ missional contexts.
• Demonstrate a well-developed understanding of ways in which prevailing forms of Christian spirituality can move to being more actional and concrete rather than passive and conceptual.
• Display a well-developed ability to describe and analyse the prevailing consumerist model of church and faith in the West and propose new models of discipleship and spirituality.
• Present a critical response, demonstrating well-developed skills in evaluating how churches worldwide are reinterpreting worship in a missional mode, and how this draws on the history of worship.
• Value and critically regard sources of spirituality outside the church and the opportunities that provide for deepening faith.
• Value radical discipleship over consumerism amongst the people of God.

CONTENT
1) Spirituality outside of the church.
2) Sustainability and mission.
3) Leadership and character issues.
4) Mission and the Spirit.
5) Community.
6) Discipleship & growth.
7) Hebraic foundations for a missional spirituality
Justice and a spirituality of activism.
9) Discipling “twenty somethings”.

June 15-16
Goodlife Community Centre Sunshine Coast
Friday
Session 1 & 2 Dave Andrews – community as the discipling process
Session 3 & 4 Ken Baker on Hebraic foundations for a missional spirituality
Saturday
Julia Verdouw on sustainability with finances

July 13-14
Bracken Ridge Baptist Church
Stephen Said, Duncan Macleod, David Chatelier will work through issues surrounding spirituality, consumerism and generational leadership.

The cost is $40 per day or 2 days for $60. Students and unemployed - a donation.

Download the registration form here.

Church Planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context

Parish churches alone are no longer able to meet the needs of the highly mobile society of today. We need a range of expressions of church to engage with the variety of networks in our communities.

Mission-Shaped Church is a Church of England report, published in 2004. At the heart of the report is the need for a ‘mixed economy’ of parish churches and network churches in active partnership across a wide geographical area.

Most people do not naturally build their friendship circles on the basis of geography, choosing instead to rely on informal networks. In many cases people live in isolation, becoming consumers without community. ‘Fresh expressions’ of church are needed to connect such networks with Christian faith.

‘Fresh expressions’ generally occur outside the normal Sunday morning worship service. Most connect small groups and relational mission and relate to a particular network of people. Examples given include alternative worship communities, café church, cell church, churches arising out of community initiatives, school-based and school-linked congregations, traditional church plants, new monastic communities and youth congregations.

The Mission-Shaped Church report strongly recommends that fresh expressions become legally recognised by the wider church rather than be treated as an interesting experiment or project. Bishops (read Presbyteries?) are urged to broker the sending of fresh mission teams to cultures or areas where mission presence is thin or non-existent. The report pushes for the identification, selection and training of pioneer church planters, both lay and ordained.

Mission Shaped Church is available from Koorong or can be downloaded as a free PDF file from www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mission_shaped_church.pdf or bought at the Planning to Plant conference in Brisbane, February 15.

Also available: Mission-shaped Church: A Theological Response by John M. Hull, and Building the Mission-Shaped Church in Australia, by Alan Nichols.

next1000 is a partnership of individuals, churches and organizations actively committed to planting one thousand new Australian churches. The initial gathering of the network was called together in August this year by Steve Addison, of CRM Australia, Tim O’Neill (Ignite), Steve Hall and Wayne Krause. 30 people gathered in Sheffield, Tasmania to map out a vision for an Australian church planting movement.

next1000 now has a web site, www.next1000.org, with networking information and resources for church planting. Steve sets out the vision for next 1000 in his free downloadable e-book, available from the web site.

The framework for the next1000 vision spills out of the CRM Matrix Church Planting Movement process that birthed ‘Seeds of Hope’. The eight key factors identified for strategic development are:

1. Leading: casting vision for church planting movements
2. Recruiting: finding the leaders we need now
3. Selecting: choosing the right people
4. Coaching: empowering church planters
5. Equipping: training church planters and their teams
6. Farming: growing the leaders of the future
7. Parenting: enabling healthy churches to reproduce
8. Sustaining: funding a church planting movement

The next event in the next1000 movement is a national summit being held at Stanwell Tops, south of Sydney, February 28 - March 2, 2007.
Pre-summit Coach Training February 27 - 28, 2007. Liam Glover from NCD Australia will equip coaches in the application of Natural Church Development to church planting. Steve Addison will lead a workshop on coaching church planters.

Register online here. Early bird registrations close on January 15. Normal registrations close on February 15.