“What does it mean when you pursue your calling, minister with all the strength Jesus supplies, preach the gospel, love people, and it just doesn’t work out?”
Church as the Body of Christ
Incubator News
Christian fellowship is often wonderful.
But it can be especially sweet when it crosses significant cultural boundaries, bringing together people of quite different ethnicity, context and history for the purpose of seeing God do great things in major global cities.
In early March, John Thomas, City to City's Director of Global Training, spent a week and half in Sydney with church leaders from 4 Australian capital cities as well as 4 leaders from Taiwan and China.
The purpose? To train them in how to train church planters and leaders using the Incubator, the research based, 16 module, 2 year, ministry formation 'mother-load' developed by John, utilising materials primarily from Tim Keller.
The Incubator is a rich feast. It is theologically very robust and stretching, constantly pushing participants to ensure that not only do they espouse faithful gospel theology, but that their ministry design and practice is thoroughly shaped by that gospel theology. And to do that, the Incubator works with a fully integrated adult education paradigm.
Which is where the challenge lies! To equip preachers, practiced at delivering monologues, to instead give space to adult learners, takes someone as skilled as John. We were schooled in being 'learner centred', and using 'learning activities' and 'dynamic reflection' as ways of making sure that the church planters we train are not just knowledgeable, but even more important, skilful practitioners.
This 'Train the Trainer' event was a significant step forward in seeing one piece of a gospel ecosystem flourish in cities throughout the Asia Pacific region.
Andrew Katay
CEO, City to City Australia
Photo:
Back row L-R: Murray Campbell, Roger Bray, Gordon Huang, Josh Dinale, Mark Tapping
Front row L-R: Scott Yeh, Andrew Katay, John Thomas, Steven Han, Vina Huang.
"The best adult education experience I have ever had": City to City's International Intensive
One of the key training programs for church planting offered by City to City is a 4 week, residential, International Intensive.
Held twice each year - one in Asia, in June / July, and one in New York in September - the input combines core church planting best practice material, along with experiencing church plants in the local context, and conversations with the planters and learning from their experience.
Both versions bring together young church planters from around the world, to learn in what one Australian participant described as "quite simply, the best adult education experience I have ever had"!
Places at the International Intensives are heavily subsidised by City to City, to make them affordable to church planters.
If you would be interested in finding out more about an intensive, please contact Andrew Katay on andrew@citytocityaustralia.org.au.