Congregational Leadership Seminar

The event outlined below is co-sponsored by the Christian Church in the Upper Midwest...brochures and registrations forms will be available soon. This might be something that you want to take a look at as a benefit to your mission and ministry in the congregation.

-Don Hiscox


CONGREGATIONAL LEADERSHIP SEMINAR: LEADING CONGREGATIONS IN A CHANGING WORLD

May 4-7, 2009: Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Quad Cities, Iowa

The Rev. Dr. George Hunsberger, Professor of Congregational Mission at Western Theological Seminary (Reformed) in Holland, Michigan, will present two seminars for church leaders at three sites across southeastern Iowa during the first week of May, 2009. The world around us is changing rapidly and dramatically, which has brought changes to the church. Leaders in the church often struggle to respond. Dr. Hunsberger, the coordinator of The Gospel and Our Culture Network, will help congregational leaders—both paid staff and lay volunteers—to understand the situation that we are in and how to respond, by drawing on practices that are both new and as old as the Church itself.

The seminars will be repeated three times, in three locations across southeastern Iowa. The evening session is for both paid staff (pastors and program staff) and lay volunteers, especially those who serve on church councils, boards, or vestries. The morning session, built on the previous evening’s presentation, will take pastors and program staff deeper by looking to Scripture as a guide in these rapidly changing times.



Evening Session:The Problematic Vendor Shape of the Church



Face it. The church as we know it and live it in America functions like a vendor of religious goods and services. That’s a far cry from what we encounter in Scripture about who we are and what we’re for. If we really are “God’s people sent on a mission,” how do we shed the vendor understanding and take on the shape of being a “sent people”?



This seminar—for ordained and commissioned leaders, program staff, and church councils/boards—will get us in touch with how important and crucial this shift is for us. Participants will explore practical avenues for living our way into something that is both new and ancient!


Morning Session: Biblical Engagement in Sent Communities



Is it adequate to think that we “study” the Bible? Nothing against studying, but the image of “study” as it works in our culture leaves readers very much in charge: we control conclusions about what the Bible means, what it may or may not tell us to do, and generally how much influence we’ll allow it to have.



What would happen if the church learned an entirely reversed way to be engaged by the Bible? How does it read us, convert us, and carry us into dynamic demonstrations of the gospel? What would happen? Where might it send us? And how might we learn that new way?



This seminar—for ordained/commissioned leaders and program staff—will build on the previous evening’s session. It will not only open new imagination about how God intends the Bible to be a living Word, but participants will practice a form of engagement by which we can experience the Bible’s power to shape and send us into the world as agents of God’s love.

Schedule



Des Moines — Grand View College, Krumm Centrum

Monday, May 4, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Tuesday, May 5, 9:00–11:30 a.m.

Cedar Rapids — First Lutheran Church

Tuesday, May 5, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Wednesday, May 6, 9:00–11:30 a.m.

Quad Cities — St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport

Wednesday, May 6, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Thursday, May 7, 9:00–11:30 a.m.



The Presenter



The Rev. Dr. George Hunsberger brings a rich variety of personal experience to the teaching of missiology (the study of the mission of the Church). Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), he has been a campus staff member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship; a pastor; a missionary team leader for Africa Foundation in Nairobi, Kenya; and a teacher at Princeton Theological Seminary and at his alma mater, Belhaven College. He began teaching at Western Theological Seminary in 1989, where he continues his special interests in exploring how the gospel speaks within and across cultures, and in fostering congregations in North America that are missionaries of the gospel within their context.

Dr. Hunsberger is coordinator of the Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America, whose administrative home is Western Seminary. He is the author of Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Cultural Plurality, co-author of Missional Church: A Theological Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, and co-editor of Christian Ethics in Ecumenical Context: Theology, Culture, and Politics in Dialogue and The Church Between Gospel and Culture. He has also contributed many articles and reviews to missiological, Reformed, and Presbyterian journals.



Sponsors

The Center for Renewal at Grand View College

The Ankeny Forum

The Cedar River Forum

The ILLOWA Coalition

The Christian Church in the Upper Midwest

many many other agencies



Cost: $100 per congregation. Congregations may bring as many leaders as they would like to both the evening and the morning session. Congregations that bring six or fewer participants can pay $15 per person.