Roll up! Roll Up!

3000 - 4000 attendees shuttling too and fro from workshop to workshop to plenary system to loo break and then back through the common areas to pick up lunch bags, cans of soda, coffee, water, and a space to sit and chat makes for a permanent peak hour! 

Around all the corridors and common areas are sponsors and resource-ministry stalls staffed by friendly and helpful people, often with generous free hand-outs or interesting resources to sell.

To walk around watching the conversations at the stalls tells you a lot about the different dreams and stories the attendees and resource sellers hold. Here's a snapshot:

For these guys, below, marketing media are key. How important is 'hard media' to planting? Interesting how many were using the 'Win a free iPad' worm on their hooks!

 For this mob, compliance, legal, fundraising and insurance issues and consultancy were important. There DVD packs looked well produced. Is doing church inevitably about public events conducted by an incorporation of some sort?

On the other hand, Great Commission Ministries (GCM) mobilizes missionaries to work in their local churches for the purpose of evangelism, discipleship and church planting. They train, employ and serve missionaries as they raise a team of supporters for their ministry.

For these guys its the software you'll need for your new church:

This group was cool - a mobile church - all the bits you need, sound systems, seating, lighting and even a portable coffee shop to accommodate the planter who hasn't yet got a fixed base!

This group can assess your planter's potential:

 These people help you to build a strong team. Teaming, rather than lone rangering is the key to planting sustainably:

World Vision was there, maybe reminding planters that the church is a means not an end:

And this lot can help us make disciples, mot just attendees:

There were seminaries with ubiquitous seedling images:

And South American focussed mission's trips:

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay run Missio - how to build and release missional communities, bigger than a small group, smaller than a congregation to serve a need or people group or neighourhood. I did find their seminar very helpful indeed, check it out:

 This organization can put together a kit of everything that a planter might need, including a guest services counter!

Everything you need to start a "Cinema Church:"

 Or to reach the 'unreached':

Or the poor:

Maybe you need data or better demographics?

Or perhaps you're just tired out by it all?

Can't remember what these little carrots were selling, but they drew a crowd!

We know these cool dudes! They are bringing together a whole new crew of missional practitioners, good stuff!

3DM led by Mike Breen is a brilliant resource in birthing mssional communities: '...Long before “missional” became a church buzzword lighting up the blogosphere (and on the lips of such evangelicals as Andy Stanley, Francis Chan, Alan Hirsch, etc), a church in England started doing things differently. They operated in a European culture that wasn’t friendly to Christians and they knew that if they were going to reach new people for Jesus, it wasn’t going to be in a church service. So they reinvented what church looked like. And as it turns out…it looks a lot like what we see in the early church...' 

 

Stadia bring planters, training, networking and sponsorship together into one network:

Church content management systems? Websites?

The Catalyst Conference is the largest gathering of young leaders in the country...

 The North east of the USA specifically?

 New Thing "...is to be a catalyst for a movement of reproducing churches relentlessly dedicated to helping people find their way back to God..."

Remember Willow Creek?

Maybe ts books you need? There's some good Aussie titles right there!

You need to empower those you serve:

Biblical solutions - studies seminars and other resources for life issues people face:

According to Ed Stetzer and Thom S. Rainer, the authors of Transformational Church, "Too often we've highlighted the negative realities of the declining American church but missed the opportunity to magnify the God of hope and transformation."
Based on the most comprehensive study of its kind, including a survey of more than 7,000 churches and hundreds of on-site interviews with pastors, Transformational Church takes us to the thriving congregations where truly changing lives is the norm.

CRM envisions movements of fresh, authentic churches, pioneered by godly leaders, fired by a passion for their world, compelled to multiply their lives and ministry…so that the name of God is renowned among the nations.  CRM AUS Director, Steve Addison's new book on Movements was creating interest.

 More on websites for your new church:

And the Verge network partner in the Conference was there too. "We want to continue to advocate and champion movements of Missional Communities."

 What do you notice about this diverse group of sincere and passionate ministries?  

One thing I noticed both in the stalls and through the conversations was two diverging paradigms of what the mission and model was about. 

The one, a more traditional, attractional, worship-service based, program-event driven (maybe a building-centred) strategy - we are multiplying 'churches' of saved people led by 'leaders' ... 

The other a messier releasing of people to live and participate together in their communities as more organic, lay-driven, justice-bringing and grace-speaking movements that tumble into becoming what might be labelled churches, that multiply before they get too big and concrete (in either sense)

It also struck me that the pendulum is swinging fast towards the latter model!

I also observed that the established judicatories (denominations) tend to do the traditional way - slowly, carefully, within well controlled systems, but the latter is driven by younger, post denominational, networked leaders.

I wonder, will we need to dis-establish our systems to enfranchise God's emerging movement?