Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Seminars and conferences

I'm a bit conferenced out at the moment. You see I spent Friday at a seminar, Saturday doing Child Protection training and the last two days at Holy Trinity Brompton at a Leadership event. It is the proverbial bus syndrome.

Friday was probably the best overall event, but that had a lot to do with the topic and the focused nature of the day. HTB' s conference was much broader, but no less valuable. The mornings were worth the time to attend by themselves.

Have I learnt anything? Well yes I have. Quite a lot actually, but it all needs processing and I just hope I get the time to do that. Okay, so I intend to make time to do that, honest I do! A good conference or seminar should inspire and I think I've been inspired.

I was wondering this morning if some of the things that we think should be our focus as church are in fact the by-product of where we ought to be focusing. For example, if we think that mission ought to be our focus, and why wouldn't we think that, might it be that mission is actually the result of focusing on say spiritual development? When I read Acts one thing strikes. Almost everything the early church did resulted in mission. And that included a church meeting!

So I wonder what really are the core things to which we should give our fullest attention? I have a few ideas but they need work.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was (still am) a great fan of Judson Cornwall - although he has now gone to a better place.

But listening to him in the past, I was greatly impressed when he said that if anyone was converted under his ministry, then this "was an accident".

He recognised that his primary ministry (or gifting) was to building faith within the church, and others were gifted by God in evangelism.

Did he have a part in a missional church? Of course he did; without his obediance to God's work, the church would be much poorer in faith. Perhaps this is the issue with all labels like "missional" - it turns what should be multi-dimensional into just a single dimension, "how is the church growing in numbers".....