bob and mary hopkins have developed and run a course in lincoln together with ground level for a few years for leaders interested in church planting. the course lasts a year. bob and mary have now developed this course together with fresh expressions to be run in a number of locations round the country. it’s now being called mission shaped ministry. cms are getting involved in helping run the course in a few places as well as contributing to some of the content. bob sent me an e-mail with an update on where the course is now being run
New Opportunity for training in Missional Leadership and Fresh Expressions of Church
Do you live in Norfolk, Lincolnshire, South Yorkshire, Essex, Devon, Merseyside or Staffordshire?
A new regional 1 year course is starting near you. It is developed nationally by the Fresh Expressions team in partnership with CMS, Ground Level and ACPI. Over the year the course runs on 8 monthly weeknights, two Saturdays and a residential weekend. For more details ………………….
Norfolk starts first on 20th Jan, then Lincoln on 10th Feb, Essex and Devon in April and the others in September.
download a brochure from the bottom of the courses page on the fresh expressions web site.
fresh expressions are also running a series of days called hard questions. i can’t find anything about it on freshexpressions web site which is a bit weird – maybe i am missing something?! anyway moot have posted all the details. the series will then be published as a book.
This sounds like a great course.
Is anyone aware of any similar church planting courses being held in Ireland this year?
Thanks!
Hey there… what about Scotland?
T
these courses can happen anywhere (the year long one). the key to them is having someone who has a vision/is passionate about it locally and can promote it. that person then needs to pull togfether a team who will shape the course for the context – it has a degree of flexibility in it. and the important thing is not the diocesan connections etc (i.e. formal structures) but the relational connections in with the wider church community and especially practitioners doing the stuff or wanting to do the stuff. i’ll ask what is happening in both ireland and scotland to see if anything is in the pipeline. i assume you know about the soliton sessions coming up btw? – scroll down.
one of the issues may be what fresh expressions remit is and isn’t – i’m guessing here. it’s a church of england thing. so it would be better to facilitate encourage something in scotland/ireland that is contextual/home grown rather than imposed by the english! i’ll make some more enquiries anyway.