• Insecurity and Transition
  
• Learning and Unlearning
  
• The Church without Walls
  
• Living in Exile
  
• Do Pigs Have Wings?
  
• Honey, I Shrunk the Church
  
• Detoxing the Church
  
• Evangelism off the Map
  
• Missional Spirituality

   The idea of a missional church gathering first occurred to us in the fall of 2003, but the time wasn't right. We were on a strong learning curve, and the ascent was getting steeper. Now two years later, we think the time is right. We are still learning, and still have no maps.. but we have noticed a few signposts along the way, and we feel we are passing from a time of deconstruction to a time of building.

"Let us begin again, for as yet we have done nothing." St. Francis at the end of his life.

   We often felt alone on the journey. We went from clarity to darkness. The old answers didn't work; the old lenses produced no images. We often felt misunderstood, and sometimes we felt rejected. We asked questions no one around us was asking. It seemed like the Lord ripped us from the moorings that held our lives together.

We began to experience what is must be like to live in a foreign land. At times we wondered whether we would ever again feel at home. Sometimes we felt like the church had stolen our faith, and we didn't know how to find it again.

   Yet as we became comfortable with insecurity, we found a new grace to journey forward. We followed a scarlet thread of truth and we saw the Master's footprints going ahead of us. In the process, we discovered that the language we had used to express our identity as the people of God began changing. The old definitions seemed too neat, and often were compromised by modern culture. As we found a new way of seeing, we also found new language. We discovered the power of imagination to lead us forward.

"We have nothing to attain or even learn. We do, however, need to unlearn some things. "To allow that unlearning, we have to accept what is often difficult, particularly for people in what appears to be a successful culture. We have to accept that we share a mass cultural trance, a hypnotic trance. We're all sleepwalkers. We human beings do not naturally see. We have to be taught how to see." Richard Rohr

   Wherever you are on this journey of discover, still wandering, still in pain, or seeing the glow of the Master's footprints.. this gathering is an opportunity to meet with those of like mind, to share our learnings, and to support one another along the way. It is as much about being together as about learning together.

   Historically in evangelical sub-culture, conferences trumpet well known speakers and attract those who want to hear about the latest thing God is doing. Conferences are built on personality and charisma and expentancy. But somewhere we lost interest in those things. We no longer want to hear the latest news or the coolest spin from the hottest speaker: we want reality. Our interest is solely in seeking the Lord, learning to faithfully express His heart in and for the rising culture, and loving one another along the way. We want to see His Kingdom come, all around us, here where we live.

   So, while there will be some input and direction up front, this is not a conference, but a forum. It's about learning and conversation and dialogue and relationship. It is less about attaining a particular outcome, and more about the process of discovery.

   Most of us spent years listening to "the experts." We have found there are no experts on Kingdom paths. We are all learners, and experts can sometimes subvert our learning. As George Hunsberger has written in "Stormfront," "The daily lived performance by vibrant communities of Christ is the most fundamental testament of the gospel's force and power." The gospel is less about what consumers seek to acquire by receiving it, and more about what God is doing that implicates our lives into it. It is about participation in the reign of God. It is a people on a journey to know Him and make Him known.

   We are also interested in subversion. The subversive community's mission is not to bring the kingdom of God from without; it is to release the kingdom of God from within. Subversives do not "reach outside people and encourage them to come in." Subversives live and do their work ‘undercover’ where the world lives and breathes. Their goal is not escapism (trying to build a Christian utopia), but to show people how they can lay hold of life as God intended, in his Kingdom. Eugene Petersen writes,

"Three things are implicit in subversion. One, the status quo is wrong and must be overthrown if the world is going to be livable. It is so deeply wrong that repair work is futile. The world is, in the word insurance agents use to designate our wrecked cars, totaled.

"Two, there is another world aborning that is livable. Its reality is no chimera (illusion). It is in existence, though not visible. Its character is known. The subversive does not operate out of a utopian dream but out of a conviction of the nature of the real world.

"Three, the usual means by which one kingdom is thrown out and another put in its place - military force or democratic elections - are not available. If we have neither a preponderance of power nor a majority of votes, we begin searching for other ways to effect change. We discover the methods of subversion. We find and welcome allies."