Its been a while since I have spoken anywhere, but its time for my annual ‘sermon’ at the Cottesloe Vineyard.

I have been there once every year for the last 4 years…

The senior pastor there – Stuart Wesley – is probably my longest standing friend – a really good mate who I went thru school with, did youth ministry with, and for the last 15 years have walked the ‘paid ministry’ journey with.

Hopefully he will be the overseer of our Forge coaching program from next year on.great buck howard the dvdrip

This download itty bitty titty committee online looks a lot like this…

mr brooks free download

I have written before that I believe the critical ingredient of effective missional communities is the leadership.

This is something we have been working on over the last couple of months and now we are at the point of acting on what we believe the scriptures to be saying.

Listed below is our distilled summary of what we see the NT saying about leadership (in no particular order):

• Leaders in scripture seem to have a sense of calling to the task of leading
• Biblical leaders must be servants
• Character/integrity is an essential quality of biblical leaders
• There is a gift of leadership and also the function of leadership
• Leaders are usually teachers / communicators of vision/direction
• Biblical leadership is about empowering and equipping others
• Leadership is plural
• Regards APEPT we would see that there is a need for a balance of orientation within a leadership team
• Leaders need to have a clear mission focus

As we talked tonight we agreed that the type of leadership we need right now is leadership that:
* keeps the group focused on the key calling of being missionaries in this community
* oversights the direction of the group and ensures we do what we say we are going to do
* protects the theological DNA of the group and ensures we are faithful to scripture in all we do

The next step is for us to appoint a leadership team. This week we will be praying about that issue and then coming together on Tuesday to see what we feel God saying.

At this stage we don’t have a specific process in place (making it up as we go!) but we are looking to hear God and see where it heads.

I will really value having a small team of people to chew the fat with and pray with regularly.

Today I met with three different denominational leaders in one day – and even enjoyed it!

At one meeting I was putting my case for future funding for Forge (nice alliteration hey?!) and was given a fairly intense questioning by the guys I was meeting with. They were doing their job so don’t read this as me being upset at them. They are both friends and we had a really good and mutually affirming conversation.

The key questions were along the lines of ‘why should we invest in what you guys are doing? What’s to say this approach to mission and church has currency and will bear fruit?’ These are the most common questions I hit everywhere and I feel quite at ease with them now.

Perhaps 2 years ago I might have been feeling under fire and ducked for cover, but in the last 24 months I have become increasingly convinced of the desperate need for the church to re-examine its practices and ask ‘how are we doing missionally?’

Because hard cold reality is, the punters still aren’t flocking to our services no matter how we funk them up.

I like the concept of Forge as the R&D dept of the church – the people who experiment, try new things and report back what has been learnt in the process. What it means is, we make things up as we go and we don’t have ‘models’ to work from. It means we have to be well earthed theologically as we are constantly checking our assumptions. It means people who want definite answers and clarity will struggle in our settings because we are challenging the ‘clarity’ we have come from.

For true blue missionaries this is not an issue, but if you just want a church to go and ‘enjoy’ then I reckon the Forge concepts will not be up your alley.

I’m not sure if they’ll back us… but I am absolutely convinced they ought to!!