way out west

CMS Pioneer Mission Leadership Training

CMS launch the prospectus and web site for their Pioneer Mission Leadership Training

The CMS Pioneer Mission Leadership Training Course is a new, creative way of equipping and mobilising Christians for ground-breaking, transformational, sustainable mission.

The course:

1. gives pioneers, who often find themselves “on the edge”, a supportive, learning community – a place to belong
2. equips pioneers to initiate and carry on mission projects that have a wider impact on the church and society
3. meets an identified need within the wider church for a diverse approach to training mission pioneers

In short, this unique course equips pioneers – lay, ordained and anywhere in between – for effective mission in a new way.  It is not only a validated course of study; it’s a new course of action.

Greenbelt first lineup announcements

http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/blog/2011/02/greenbelt-2011-first-lineup-announcements/

New Monasticism Questions

Ben Edson asks some questions of New-Monasticism in advance of the book launch tomorrow...

1: One comment that Martyn Percy made was that an 'an abbot' is a title rich in heritage and monasticism as a concept is one that has deep, deep roots.  Does our contemporary re-imagination of the monastic tradition violate the heritage from which it comes?  Is it too pop...

2: Is there something slightly sanctimonious about the new monasticism conversation?  Is it the bitter pill that Christians think that culture needs to swallow to make it better? Is there a genuine desire to swallow the pill and is this desire matched action?

3: Is it offering a countercultural model of community?  And if so is the best model to engage with society?

4: Does it bring people to faith?  Does it engage with the non-churched?

 

I left the following (partial) response... 

Interesting Q's Ben, though I do wonder if they are still infused with a somewhat modernist (and Evangelical ;-) ) language of evaluation - "best", "better" etc. but not much about authenticity, integrity, etc.? I'm not sure it's about being the "best" or even being a "model" but about finding ways of community and spirituality that resource and sustain a 24/7 way of living faith - so rather than seeking the "best model to engage" we simply do what we find sustains that missional and spiritual engagement and as a bonus we may find that for many who have lost the tools for being community it offers a window on a fuller way of living. I guess one could say that rather than being a "model" it could be an Icon of the God who is by nature community... also I wonder if rather than being a replacement (or solution for the ills of) the Church it could be, as Monasticism has always been the left hand to the ecclesiastical right hand of the faith? Did in the modern world we lose our connection with the monastic and seek to replace it with the Para-Church (YFC, SU, etc. even CMS!) and as that part of Christendom is in decline are we simply re-exploring what was for centuries has been part of what we know as Christianity?

I asked your 1st question to Abbots Sam (Hillfield) and Stuart (Mucknel) recently and the answer they gave was that unlike the Church which seeks to do "new things" to sustain the inherited, they believed that a) we had to release new expressions of monasticism to find new ways in a new era, b) that they wanted to learn from the new ways what the challenges, joys etc. are of the world we live in now and c) they wanted to give to us their wisdom, particularly what they have learned about community and spirituality over the centuries. They saw a line of continuum but also that like Parents there has to be a letting go in order that the child can grow toward maturity.