Ward Consultation Chicago

April 11-12, 2008

Location: Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Illinois

 God at Work in His Church Today: A Continuing Story

God is at work leading his people toward mature faith and responsible service.  At the 2008 Ward Consultation we will engage stories that provide insight, offer hope, and call for new ideas in fostering learning among the people of God.  Together we will strive to understand the nature of God’s work in maturing his church today. Three tasks will follow the discussion: clarification of the story now taking shape about how God is maturing his people, development of proposals for projects related to participants’ areas of interest, and exploration of a design for ongoing research.

 RATIONALE FOR THE CONSULTATION

We acknowledge that the church is growing rapidly in the majority world; but leaders report that there are not enough people prepared to lead these congregations or help them move to a more mature faith. While the term “a mile wide and an inch deep” may not be a fair descriptor, it does point to the historical reality that a rapidly growing church does confront challenges in relation to the maturing of believers and equipping of leaders. We want to know what local initiatives may be emerging to meet these needs, and what can be learned from them.

Most conferences offer space and time for reading of papers and/or speeches. We want instead to talk and think together about how maturity comes about. We will engage stories that describe perspectives on what God seems to be doing in furthering the maturity of his church. 

TO PREPARE FOR THE CONSULTATION

1. Your registration (don’t forget to send it in—see below!) will be a short story or vignette that illustrates what God seems to be doing to foster the maturity of his people in your context.  For example, tell us a story about a church where you caught:

o        A glimpse of hope,

o        A new idea that a church used to overcome a challenge,

o        A view of indigenous practices being used for leadership development, or

o        A view of grassroots initiatives moving a church toward spiritual maturity.

Guidelines for stories (click here)

Each of us will understand that the Consultation is not about any one story; nor especially is it about “taking the floor” in front of an audience.  Our stories will be short and to the point—to quote a Nigerian elder, they will be “strong not long!” Consider the masterful use of biblical stories in Old and New Testaments. Examine how they were phrased and presented to make an impact on their audience.
 

2. Read the following:  

Charles Davis.2006. God’s Ways are not Our Ways. Common Ground Journal. Vol. 4 (1) Fall: 49-53. Access from Back Issues at Common Ground Journal

Karl Dortzbach. 2003. Congregational Healing: Lessons from Africa. Common Ground Journal. Vol. 1 (1) Fall: 3-10. Access from Back Issues at Common Ground Journal

Ruth Padilla DeBorst  2007. Liberate My People. Access at Christianity Today  (August issue) or at Christian Vision Project

Steve Patty. 2007. Report on the emergence of the Russian Ministries, School Without Walls program.

Used with permission of Russian Ministries and Steve Patty. 

Chris Rice. 2007. Posttraumatic Christians. Christian Century. May:10-11. Used with permission at this site (hyperlinked title). See also: Christian Century.

Marcus Throup. 2006. Learning to Be: A Brazilian Case Study in Social

            Injustice.. Vol 3 (2) Spring: 33-45.  Access from Back Issues at Common Ground Journal
Randy White. 2006. The Road to Urban Mission in the New Global City. Common Ground Journal. Vol. 4 (1) Fall: 37-48. Access from Back Issues at Common Ground Journal

THE FACEBOOK

Guidelines for stories (click here)
Submit your story electronically (preferred) to lcannell@candospirit.org or lcannell@gcts.edu along with a photo, your professional position, and preferred contact information.  No more than 300 words, please. We will compile the stories into a “facebook” with the “thumbnail” photo and information for each participant. The “facebook” will be distributed at the Consultation. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: February 15, 2008.  Mailing address if needed: CanDoSpirit Network, 5250 Grand Ave., Suite 14-211, Gurnee, IL 60031

LOCATION AND COST: 

Rodine Building, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2065 Half Day Road, Deerfield, IL 60031. Stop at Security at the Half Day Road entrance for parking instructions and directions to Rodine Building.  Your costs for the Consultation will include meals, transportation, and accommodation. A check for meal costs must be submitted prior to the Consultation.  Hotel information and meal costs and information will be posted Here by February 2008.

FORMAT OF THE CONSULTATION

Friday April 11

Our entry into what God seems to be doing in the maturing of his church will be through stories from the majority world.  

• We will “hear” five or six stories from majority world leaders, and identify themes and important questions.
• Focus groups will be briefed on procedures to share their stories in the light of what they heard from the majority world.
• We will adapt a World Café process to explore questions of interest to the group.  

The World Café is a process increasingly used in business, not for profit companies, churches, and community development organizations. See Juanita Brown with David Isaacs. The World Café: Shaping our Futures Through Conversations that Matter (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005). The World Café is built on seven principles: the setting must support interaction and engagement; the space must be seen as hospitable; questions must be significant enough to stimulate collaborative interaction; everyone’s contribution is needed and expected; cross-pollination of ideas and exploration of diverse perspectives is encouraged while at the same time retaining focus on the core questions; participants are helped to listen together for patterns, insights and deeper questions; that which is discovered in the conversations is harvested, shared and acted upon.

Saturday, April 12

Three tasks will occupy us on Saturday.

TASK #1:  To Clarify the Story that is Emerging

We will attempt to identify points of agreement about how we “read” the story that God seems to writing related to the maturing of his people.  Following the metaphor of the story motif:  What are the themes and questions of the story that is being written?  What have we discerned about plot, direction, characters (e.g., the role of outsiders and insiders), setting, language, main headings, main ideas, and even a “table of contents”?

TASK #2:  To Determine Further Action

Participants will determine, clarify, and select specific areas for future writing and work/action initiatives that are relevant to their ongoing work and interest. Specialists will be enlisted as resource people for regional gatherings, or individual, or collaborative initiatives that may grow out of this Consultation. Participants with similar interests may communicate through Internet-enabled means. At a Ward Consultation in 2009, we will meet again for reporting, debriefing, and sharing/completion of writing tasks. 

As an example, the following anticipated categories of interest could yield specific questions and tasks for follow up.  

a)       Equipping the people of God. Theological competency and leadership are responsibilities of the whole people of God.  What are the situations that must made available to foster learning among the people of God? Craig Dykstra’s three questions can be adapted to this task:  What is God doing in the world? What is characteristic of churches that are responding to what God is doing in the world? What is happening in theological education to equip leaders for the church that is responding to what God is doing in the world?

b)       The facilitation of learning. What metaphors for learning are apparent in cultures? How do people describe the places in their culture where people come together to learn? What happens in those spaces?

TASK #3: To Design a Global Listening Project 

In the Global Listening Project we want to elicit more stories from a greater variety of sources.  Drawing from this larger group will assist the process of discerning commonalities and differences. In other words, we want to enlist the help of a greater variety of people in clarifying important questions and activities and attitudes. Our task is not to go into a setting and establish new models for them, but to find out what is they are doing and why, to seek understanding about what is happening—about what the Spirit of God seems to be stimulating. We want people to describe their experiences and then share the stories and resulting implications and observations.