you may wonder where i have been recently - in that my blog has been pretty lame! the honest truth is that i have not been as busy as i have in the last 9 months for quite a number of years (and i am generally a busy person). no one has been frank enough to leave a comment to tell me to pull my finger out and improve the blog so i thank you for your patience! people have sent me books and i haven't managed to review them and so on. i fear it will carry on this way for a while yet... but it's also been an exciting time. one year ago almost exactly i was sat with a group of people dreaming about what we would do to train leaders - we produced a ton of flip chart sheets and an action plan (the actions were pretty much all for me to do!). i thought deep down it was incredibly optimistic. but a year on and a training course is up and running and we have done what we wrote and i have just finished teaching the first module of the course which may seem a small deal but i felt pretty excited inside...
a friend, sam, described to me the process of developing a training course as being like pushing a boulder uphill, but that once the students arrive it all changes. there is energy and suddenly the thing is rolling and you are running to keep up. that has been exactly my experience with the pioneer mission leaders training! it’s been so exciting to get started back in september after all the planning.
we (cms) have 10 people taking part in the pilot year of the course and we and they are really enjoying it. they are amazing people involved in mission in different contexts - church plants, comedy clubs, with spiritual seekers, with homeless and broken people, with young adults. we have 50/50 men and women and they range in age from 20s to 60s - pioneering is something that is about gift and calling and not age or gender.
anyway all this is by way of saying i have written a fourth newsletter (the other three are linked to from this one if you missed them). at some point in the new year we'll shift to a web site and some kind of brochure/publicity but for now the newsletters are it. if you know anyone who might be interested do forward the newsletter on - we are currently relying on word of mouth.
if you are interested in finding out about the training as a student we have an open day on march 1 - we are looking to recruit people for next year. if you are interested as a sponsor, bishop, training officer, selector or anything that is in a training/supporting role we have an open day for you on march 2.
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