I’m off tomorrow morning to the Forge National Summit. Its the first one we have had, so it’ll be interesting to see how it feels to be around 400-500 people all sharing the same sense of mission and purpose.

I have two sessions to present, one entitle ‘A Daring adventure or Nothing – The Heart of An Apostolic Leader’, looking at some of Paul’s stuff and what stirs the passions of apostolic types. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it! The other is simply entitled ‘Swimming Upstream’ and looks at the call to develop disciples who live genuinely counter-cultural lives in the middle of a fairly self centred world. I’ll also be part of a panel that is exploring the question of sustainability in missional ministry.

You may hear from me while I am there… but then again 🙂

Each Wednesday I meet up with a small group of guys who are also in the process of thinking thru what it means to do mission and be church in this 21st C. Its one of those informal groups that has managed to sustain itself on some good relationships for over 2 years now.

This Wed the question we will tossing around is this one:

With the National Forge Summit about to happen” is the ’emerging missional church’ likely to be a movement that will ‘replace’ the existing church or is it a movement within the established church that will exist for a while, bring some reform and then disappear when its time is up? Is it the 21st C equiv of a vineyard like movement that calls the church back to some core truths or is it the way of the future for the church as a whole? My good mate Stu Wesley sees that the EMC may be a ‘calling back’ to core stuff, while another good friend, Alan Hirsch has said the established church has 10 years left before we start to make the shift to ’emc’ types of churches as the dominant form.

Sound like an interesting conversation?…

Its not a closed group, so if anyone wants to join in you can rock up to Kailis Bros Cafe in Oxford St Leederville at 7.30am this Wednesday morning. I’m looking forward to hearing the thoughts.

For those who can’t make the Forge National Summit here’s a ‘heads up’ on a great weekend of inspiration coming up.  It just so happens we have 3 cutting edge, creative thinking missioners in

Perth

at one time so we are looking to use them for a ‘storyfest’ around new ways of being church and doing mission. 

1.  Friday 22nd July      Warehouse Café           7.30-10.00 John Jensen

John comes to us from sunny Southern California, where he and his wife Raquel and daughters Adriahna and Cheyenne have been involved in ministry for the last 19 years.  In that time they have been youth pastors, associate pastors, and church planters.

They also worked with Church Resource Ministries focusing on church planting in the post-modern post-Christian parts of society.  John worked with Michael Bischoff creating the first new church incubator for emerging churches.  John and Raquel have started or helped to start nine churches over the last ten years, and are currently planting a church in the working class suburb of Melbourne, Footscray.

John is one of the staff members of FORGE

Victoria

team, and is a regular presenter at the intensives.  He draws from his experiences in church planting, as well as his interesting history as a bullfighter, a repo man, punk rock gang member, an artist, and a no rules cage fighter.  His main focus is on bringing the gospel to people outside of the regular influence of the church.  His excitement for community life and evangelism is contagious.  This is a rare opportunity to connect with a gifted and creative church planter! 

2.  Saturday 23rd July  South

Perth

Church of Christ   1.00-4.00 Ash Barker

Ash is the director of UNOH an incarnational mission to the poor, operating in

Melbourne

and

Bangkok

.  Ash has written two books, Submerge and Finding Life in which he describes his experiences as a missional leader in these challenging settings.  He is an amazing apostolic leader with a real working knowledge of what it means to live and share Christ among the poor as he lives with his own family in a slum in

Bangkok

.  Don’t miss this one!

(There will also be a gathering at 10.00am at the Como Hotel to debrief on Dangerous Stories)

3.  Sunday 24th July     Venue TBA       10.00-12.30 Darryn Altclass

Darryn is the Tasmanian director of Forge and leader of

Third Place

Communities in

Hobart

.  These guys seek to spend a lot of their time in what they call ‘third places’.  First places being homes, second places being work and third being preferred ‘leisure/hang out’ type places.  This means a lot of time is spent in the local pubs as well as developing community development projects in the high schools and various other activities with local artists and thinkers.  When people ask ‘is anyone actually doing this stuff effectively’ around

Australia

, (the ’emerging missional church’ stuff) Darryn is one of the stories we can point to and say a very loud ‘yes’!  He is a radical, sharp thinking and adventurous first world missionary who will challenge your own understandings of what it means to be the church and do mission in the western world.

You can come to one event or all three as they do stand alone. 

The $$$$$ Question: Normally we would charge money for each of these events, but this time we’d actually like to take an offering at each one which we will then pass on to the guys who are all missionaries relying on other people’s support for their income. 

We are going this route quite shamelessly in the hope that generous people may actually give more than we would charge!  We also appreciate that for some of you on lower income the up front charge can be prohibitive, but an offering will allow you to still contribute generously as you are able.

I’d encourage you to come along and share a few hours with these guys who are pioneering and following God into different places.

RSVP!: It would really help us if you could RSVP as soon as possible so that we can get an idea of the numbers than will be present at each occasion.  Just drop Kent Morgan an email on suno@wa.su.org.au