Next Event
The next Converse event is a conversation with Alan Jamieson and Mark Pierson.
About Converse
Our Assumptions
We adopt the core assumption that Sydney, like the rest of the Western world, has seen the death of Christendom and is now a mission field and that churches need to adopt a missionary stance in their engagement with our culture. We believe that in order to impact this city with the Gospel the church must radically embrace cross-cultural mission principles. We also believe that this will necessarily mean the recalibration of the Western church from a chiefly attractional, hierarchical, institutional agency to a more incarnational, contextualised, relational community.
We assume that because of the subculturalisation of the Western world localised, indigenous, missional communities of faith will have greater impact that the mega-church model and we see the end of a one-size-fits-all approach to being and doing church. We prefer to see many, smaller truly indigenous missional communities than fewer regional churches.
We assume that co-operation and partnership should characterise the relationships between these emerging localised expressions of faith and we reject the forces of competition, control and the accruing of power.
We assume that Christ is the only hope of the world and that in order to develop converse approaches to doing and being church, we need to be motivated by a clear gospel imperative; to proclaim Christ and to serve the world.
Our Purpose
We will foster a conversation of enthusiastic thinkers and practitioners in the task of seeing the Kingdom come in Sydney, Australia.
Our desire is to sniff out and encourage converse approaches to being and doing church and to foster a missionary ecclesiology among the emerging church in Sydney.
We seek to develop a liminal group within the Sydney churches. We don’t believe that the missional thinkers or practitioners should be marginalised within the broader Christian community, but we do see ourselves as a liminal community, fostering a transition for the church from the Christendom model to an incarnational, missional one. Therefore Converse will seek to speak back into the traditional church and to provoke church leaders to think and act more missionally within their communities.
Our Goals
1. CONVERSATION: Converse will hold regular meals for thinkers and practitioners. Around a table laden with food and wine, the community of missionaries-to-the-First-World will engage in lively and provocative conversation about the future direction of the alternative church;
2. WEB-INTERACTION: Converse will establish a website for the promulgation of missional thinking within the church. Our desire is that it not be a static site, but a clearinghouse for ideas and stories. It will not be a destination but a signpost with links to the (hopefully) many emerging experiments in the church in Sydney.
3. GATHERING: Converse will hold a large scale gathering of the missional community and will invite other church leaders to hear what the emerging, grass roots movement is saying and doing. It will not take the form of the traditional conference, but will epitomise the missional values of conversation, innovation and relationship.
4. RESEARCH: Converse will commission and encourage the collection of data, the writing of papers or statements, the development of alternative models and potentially the publishing of booklets in order to develop a conversation with the church-at-large.
5. FUNDING: Converse will seek to establish a Trust Fund that enables us to offer financial grants to church planters, innovators, evangelists, pastors and others who desire to attempt something new and experimental.
WE WELCOME THOSE STRUGGLING TO SEE A NEW VISION OF CHURCH ARISE IN THE WEST AND ESPECIALLY HERE IN SYDNEY TO JOIN US IN THIS VENTURE.
