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Monday, March 1, 2010

Globe Gathering April 9-11, 2010: A Spiritual Pilgrimage of Organic Church People to Globe AZ



[For a few posts I want to delve into what we are doing in Globe AZ in April and why.]

For several years now we have hosted an organic church movements conference in the So CA area. They’ve been good, but something has always bothered me about them. They tend to draw people we are not aiming for and do not draw the people we were intending.

The conference was meant to be a gathering of our folks, those who are practitioners on the field doing organic church. Our Greenhouse and frontline disciplemaking are meant to be the front door to the movement, not the annual conference. The conference was meant to be a time of connecting people from all over that are at work in the fields to learn from one another and encourage each other in the difficult work we have all been thrust into.

Last year, we held a meeting to relentlessly scrutinize our conference and other stuff we do. This is our habit, nothing is sacred and everything can be improved upon. We asked ourselves if we are missing what God wants in our conference. Perhaps we need to do a big front door conference to introduce people to the missional movement. The other possibility is that our medium isn’t connecting with our message. We decided to launch a big missional church conference in late January or early February and just surrender to the direction our conferences have been going. However our planning hit a snag and the conference was canceled, just as the Verge Conference was announced in Austin, which turned out to be all we hoped for and more. We also realized that we do not have the muscles to pull off such an event and that some of our friends and associates still working in "mega-church-world" have a better chance of doing that.

So with Verge and the H2H Labor Day conference well in place, what are we to do with our annual conference. We realized that God wanted us to go back to our original intention, and to bring the medium closer to our message. That is why we are doing a more outdoor Woodstock-esque conference. Matching our own culture the Globe Gathering will be family based, relational, grassroots and for our own organic church people that are in the fields.

We will learn around campfires, on hikes and staying together in tent-city. Rather than a big conference in a classy hotel with big named speakers, name badges and workshops, it will be burning man with clothes on and a more obvious spiritual center, message and focus. This will be less agenda driven and more experiential and relational. More like a Rainbow Gathering of like-minded people who share a passion and a calling, it will be a call to people to come from all over the world on a spiritual pilgrimage. It will be Woodstock without the excess. It will be organic, movements, and a journey. You will leave with more and better friends rather than a notebook full of pages you will never look at again.

Well, this is what we are hoping for. We are doing something that costs less and can pay off in far greater ways. We are taking a risk. We don’t know if this will work or not, but we have never been risk-averse, so why not try?

http://www.cmaresources.org/globe

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish we could be there! I look forward to hearing about "the gathering" after you've gathered.

Linda Muse

Sophie said...

"We don’t know if this will work or not, but we have never been risk-averse, so why not try?"

YEAH!!! Neil, I love that you teach us to take risks. I really want to go to Globe for this!

Neil Cole said...

Linda I wish you and Guy were able to join us too! I really enjoyed getting to know you both better in Antioch last year.

Neil Cole said...

Thanks Sophie! I really hope you come too and bring a ton of Bruins with you!

Unknown said...

Hi Cole

It looks great. Curtis Sargent alerted me to this happening. I live in Phoenix and am involved in neighborhood transformation with churches in Phoenix and Tucson. I don't anyone but plan on attending
stanurbancheguy

J.R. said...

Hey Neil,
you have an email I can hit you up at?

jr@hollywoodpastor.com


thanks J.R. Mahon

Frank Doiron said...

This is a little off topic but over the last couple of days I have been listening to the series of talks from Michael Frost and yourself. Michael Frost is one of my favorite speakers but your talk on leadership was as inspiring as it can get. Especially the part about humility and lifting up others. I have spent so much time trying to convince others that we need to be missional without thinking about the consequences of how I come off in doing so. But this talk on humility has gone straight to my heart. Wow talk about the need to be transformed. Myself that is. Anyway thanks for the words

Anonymous said...

Hey Neil! Shot in the dark: In one of your books, you wrote about an episode of ER where a former KKK member talks about God's power to change a life? I've spent hours searching for that episode online. Any idea what season it was from? Or the name of the episode? Thanks mucho in advance!
John R

Jose Ramon Santana Vazquez said...

...traigo
sangre
de
la
tarde
herida
en
la
mano
y
una
vela
de
mi
corazón
para
invitarte
y
darte
este
alma
que
viene
para
compartir
contigo
tu
bello
blog
con
un
ramillete
de
oro
y
claveles
dentro...


desde mis
HORAS ROTAS
Y AULA DE PAZ


TE SIGO TU BLOG




CON saludos de la luna al
reflejarse en el mar de la
poesía...


AFECTUOSAMENTE


ESPERO SEAN DE VUESTRO AGRADO EL POST POETIZADO DE LOVE STORY, CABALLO, LA CONQUISTA DE AMERICA CRISOL.

José
ramón...

dayvid said...

Question: In reading your blog I wonder how do you vision multi-sites working? Do they have a core team and everybody gets trained from central services or would the site pastor be responsible for build his own team? Lots of talk about growth and multi-sites, but not much clarity on replication of mother-site DNA. Your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

Hey,
Just curious as to whether or not any of the organizers have actually ever BEEN to a Rainbow gathering?

Kevin Davis said...

Sounds awesome.