Greenbelt.UK.US Emerging Church Trip continued

Friday 29th August saw us heading to Oxford and the fun of University College and the notion of not one campus but a series of interrelated Colleges making up the town of Oxford and it's esteemed history. We enjoyed the hosting and hospitality of Anna Oldmeadow who it emerged was one of a long line of Rhodes Scholars and was able to show me the entry in the history book showing the three scholars from my own High School Maitland Boys' High!!

It was a well known story at school that one of our senior teachers had visited the historic college at a time it was closed to visitors but had talked his way in as it was very rare that one school let alone state high school had been home to three Rhodes Scholars... indeed Waddy, Portus and Hughes were three of our sporting houses and the names for the award for 'Best Allround Boy in Year 12.'

This was the tailend of public schools taking sport seriously and whole of school being suspended for the afternoon so we could be the crowd when we played in the University Shield rugby league... so such folklore was well worn and taken seriously. Of course Bill Clinton and Bob Hawke have their stories too.

Here we:

Met Steve Croft, the Director of the 'Fresh Expressions' movement

Bob Franklin the seconded Kiwi working as 'international liason

Saw films like 'Man on Wire' falling asleep in the arthouse Odeon

Visited the 'Eagle and Child' pub where the Inklings met [including CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien]

Walked the half decent Markets

Shopped

and rested

I learnt:

They have lots of money via the Lambeth Group allowing the Bishop to 'do something'

The projects, network, training etc are backed up by resources, will and money

The 'mission shaped church' is a simple concept and it'll be important to seperate this out from 'fresh expressions', emerging church etc...

The 'pioneer ministry' idea, training, DVD to promote, etc are significant aspects of 'fresh expressions'

Storytelling, NCLS and the Board of Mission have a mixed record of traction in my setting.... we need to get people together to come up with one unifying message that will promote space, permission and change in our context/s.

We would do well to form a cross Board, cross discipline WORKING GROUP including consultants, theologians, beaurocrats and practitioners to be a. a clearing house for ideas b. to work on what would/wouldn't lead us fwd c. to initiate story gathering d. to lay the ground work for Proposals for change and e. for times of visioning

In our setting Presbyteries are a real key to future change by vision, mission, resourcing, permission and space.

For what we saw and learnt on our trip to gain traction and make a difference we need 'effective' CHAMPIONS around to: run interference; be positive advocates; and keep up the agenda.

Other areas of impact would be:

The 'resource ministry' model

The Ministry of Pastor

Strategic placements concept talked about in ACOMP

The ELM, Continuing Ed, Youth Unit, Board of Mission and UTC combo for training

We would need a better name than 'pioneer'

All this and yet to have actually visited 'St Laurence, Reading'...