For those who lack either the time or the inclination to flick around the UK emerging church blogosphere, you may have missed out the recent discussions going on around the place about the visit to the UK of Antipodeans Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, and their recent book The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church.
Jonny Baker (of London group Grace and general alt.worship guru, for the uninitiated) was responsible for organising the visit. Apparently Grace, like Sanctus1, have recently been thinking about mission, and he wanted to get some discussions going.
Well it certainly seems to have achieved that! Steve Collins, a fellow Grace-er, seems to have had some serious problems with some of what they were saying about ordeal/deadline/risk/survival, and has sparked off a very lively and thought-provoking discussion on his blog.
Maggi Dawn agrees, and also gives a fairly detailed critical review of the book, which also seems to have got some debate going in the comments section.
Finally, Gareth of (also London-based) Moot is more ambivalent, suggesting that while the ideas on mission may have some validity, their model of church as 'communitas' is quite flawed.
It's certainly made for a fascinating read! Spent most of that time veering between laughter and tears... From what I've gathered of the book, the seminars and the blogs/ comments so far, some questions for Sanctus1 to consider for ourselves might be:
- Why have we got so many men at Sanctus1 when other groups seem to be saying that this is not the case for them?
- Are there really no lessons that we can learn from each other across the globe, to save us reinventing the wheel, or is everything always only relevant in a local context?
- Are alt.worship and emerging church really two different beasts? And what might we labels ourselves as?
- Do people think that alt.worship and/or emerging church are either “feminine” (creative, emotional) or “masculine” (boys with toys)?
- Does intentional mission mean that we have to go on a “rampage”? Or can intentional mission be low level, organic, flexible?
- How anti-mission might look for S1 - mission with the 'mission' taken out, availability without pressure, the church shop? And do we do this already?
By 
LauraHD, at 12:55 PM BST