I always look forward to the time when I get to try and summarize all that God has been doing through Ecclesia during the last 12 months and I have the opportunity to talk about where we sense the Spirit’s direction for the year ahead.  I’m a little behind on sharing this “news” this year as a great deal of personal transition has taken place in my own life and after a month of living in a new reality, we are starting to get our feet under us again.

When looking back at 2011 and looking ahead at 2012, the two words that capture best what I sense God doing are “stability” and “strengthening”.

2011 was a pivotal year for our network as a whole.  When we “officially” began in 2007, there were just a handful of congregations or church planters “officially” involved in the network (5), today we are nearly 30 churches nor new churches in development.  Each step along the road was a process of discernment in figuring out how to cultivate a new kind of connectional church family.  All along the way, I am quite sure that there were a number of people (maybe even those in Ecclesia ) who wondered if we were going to “make” it.  In 2011, I believe we reached a place of growing stability as a network.  It’s quite possible that these words come to mind for me because I watched my first daughter learn to walk in 2011.  If you’ve ever seen a baby try to navigate this incredible moment, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  They grow quite naturally to the point where it’s time to take those first brave steps – and then they take them – but it’s certainly anything but stable.  Eventually, after a few weeks or months of practice, they have reached a new phase where they continue to grow, but there is a certain stability to their growth.  I believe this was 2011 for our network.

In February, we brought together our growing family for the 4^th time.  Each time we have come together, I hear an increasing number of remarks from people about the quality of the time, the presence of the Spirit, the life they have received, and the appreciation for their Ecclesia friends, both old and new.  We know there is nothing we can do (or have tried to do) to manufacture this vibe or experience, but we are grateful to Jesus that is happening among us.

Our church planters training in May was the largest it has ever been and I believe the most helpful of them all.  The inclusion of a Fundraising Training in December was incredibly significant for a number of our newly developing communities.  This is not to mention an increasing number of strong regional gatherings that brought together Ecclesia leaders and those like them on a regular basis.

We have also been blessed that God has cultivated a number of the congregations within Ecclesia to the point that some of their leaders are able to give more time to the wider mission of the church.  J.R. Briggs has joined the “staff” of Ecclesia, serving 1/day each week as our Northeast Regional Coordinator, as he has transitioned to half-time as Pastor of Renew.  Dave Fitch has also joined the staff about 1/day week to serve as a coach and catalyst for Ecclesia in the Mid-West.  We also added Jane Linton as an Administrator for Ecclesia to help offset some of the organizational load that I have been carrying.  All these folks join our current staff of JR Woodward, Todd Hiestand, and myself.

I’m sure you might be thinking to yourself … “I thought Ecclesia was somewhat challenged financially, how can we add all these “staff”?  That is a great question and the reality is that the majority of those who give dedicated weekly time to Ecclesia are not paid by Ecclesia directly.  J.R. Briggs and Todd Hiestand both raise outside support for their work, Dave Fitch has been able to increase his time as a result of a particular congregation giving above and beyond the norm to the network, and Jane Linton’s role is funded by a private donor.  Even JR Woodward and I have been able to give the time we have to Ecclesia as a result of outside fundraising in addition to the support we receive from the network itself.

In 2011, we officially began to establish greater levels of connection and partnership to the broader church.  One of these initiatives that Ecclesia is contributing towards is Fresh Expressions US.  Fresh Expressions was originally started as a joint-venture between the Church of England and the Methodist Church of Great Britain about eight years ago.  Since then it has spread to 5 different nations and is beginning in the US.  Ecclesia is one of the founding partners in this new effort which seeks to develop and cultivate new kinds of Christian community (fresh expressions of church) alongside established congregations and denominations.  Though we are the odd-ball among the developing partners (everyone else is a regional or national denominational body), we believe that this is one way that we can contribute to God’s broader mission for the whole church.  Many people in Ecclesia are doing the kind of work that Fresh Expressions is catalyzing and this is a natural way for those in our network to be of service.  So far, about 5 of our Ecclesia pastors have been involved in some way in training and equipping existing congregations for missional ministry.

Another collaborative project, though less far along than Fresh Expressions, is the development of something that has come to be called The Missio Alliance.  Ecclesia leaders were the catalyst for helping to lift this work off the ground and we see ourselves continuing to play a critical role even as the number of other partners expands.  The focus of the alliance will be to serve the broader church in the west by providing a theologlically developed, but practitioner oriented, resourcing for the shaping of the church’s mission in our Post-Christianizing context.  Those who have been involved in this process include the likes of Dallas Willard, Scot McKnight, Roger Olson, Scott Daniels from Azusa Pacific University, Tory Baucum from Truro Church in Fairfax, VA, Cherith-Fee Nordling from Northern Seminary, Deb Hirsch, and many others.  We are excited to be part of the team and will be throwing our weight (small as it is) behind the official launching of this effort in 2013.

On top of all this, in 2011 we were able to set up a retirement option for staff within Ecclesia Churches, we received our first grant in the amount of $50,000 (special thanks to the v3 church multiplication initiative of the Baptist General Association of Virginia), and our web and media presence (including our Ecclesia Leadership Podcast) has increased thanks to the work of Todd Hiestand and John Chandler.

While all of this work is wonderful and we celebrate it, it is certainly secondary to some of the things that I see happening in the lives of our congregations and leaders.  One of the most encouraging aspects of those in our network is the attention to the “work” of God within our own lives.  I see this happening across Ecclesia in two primary ways.  First, there continues to be a greater hunger and recognition for the interactive life of the Spirit within our own lives.  I know of people stepping out in faith in response to what they believe to be the guidance of the Spirit and of a greater number of instances where the kingdom of God has become manifest even to the point of healings and prophetic words through the humble seeking and openness of some of our leaders.  Perhaps the thing I love most about this within our family, is that everyone knows there is no room for bragging or spiritual pride in these matters, we are all learning, failing, and stumbling along to grow into the kind of Spirit-empowered lives Jesus seems to intend for us when Paul writes that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is now alive within us.  Second, there is an increasing attention to cultivating the life of the heart in addition to the mind or the work of our hands (ministry work).  From scripture memorization to personal retreats to fasting or spiritual direction, I am proud to be part of a group of people who knows that “out of the heart come the wellsprings of life” and seek to connect their heart with the heart of God on an increasing basis.

I am also encouraged by the countless stories of people coming to find their life in Christ, whether that is a new life or a renewed life or a maturing life or anywhere in between.  We all know that these things don’t seem to be happening the same way, but I am blessed to be connected to so many people who tell me these stories.

As we look ahead to 2012, I believe that we need to give our time to a steady season of strengthening the many things that God has already begun to develop throughout Ecclesia.

Strengthening regions within Ecclesia will continue to be absolutely vital to what we do.  In fact, I believe we are nearing the time where we will want to be giving more emphasis regionally or based on affinity (meaning like-congregations though in different contexts) than across the network as a whole.  We are blessed that we have more people all the time being brought into places within their church ministry that they can give additional time to being a regional connector to churches within Ecclesia and those interested.  We are also working on a number of extremely practical ways to increase the connectivity and collaboration of churches in regions including joint events, regional learning communities, rotational preaching, etc.

As I shared last year, the vital importance of church coaching, especially for new planters continues to rise to the center of Ecclesia life.  In 2010 and 2011 we began training a number of coaches (many of whom are using their skills to serve God’s mission even now) and connecting new planters with coaches once they have joined the network.  In 2012, we are bringing greater focus and alignment across the board to coaching within Ecclesia and Brian Hopper will be serving in a voluntary role as our Coaching Coordinator.  Our goal in this is to provide a level of assurance to those being coached within the network that they are receiving the best we have to offer (especially as they are often paying some portion of the costs) and that we have an additional level of care for those that are walking in the critical role of coaching.

We are also adding a Pastor retreat to the mix of gatherings we are putting together in 2012.  The main reason we are doing this is in response to many, many people within the network saying, “it would really be great if we had a pastors retreat that was really a retreat – a time of rest (spiritual & physical) and renewal.  So, running alongside the church planters training this May, our first retreat will take place.

Of course, we will, as always, continually seek to strengthen everything else that we are doing as well.  It’s simply that these areas have bubbled to the top of the list for this next season.

Beyond these particular aspects of our network, I believe there are a few other intangible areas that we need to be strengthening together.  First, I think we should always be mindful of a continual posture of learning and humility.  Aside from the obvious Christ-like reasons to grow towards this, I think it is also vital to the future of God’s mission in North America.  The reality of all our ministry right now is that we are in a transitioning AND experimental time.  What is incredibly important is that we are genuinely honest about what we are learning, what is working, what is not working, what right decisions we made, what wrong decisions we made and the like.  For instance, there are many people in Ecclesia experimenting with different patterns of meeting, or giving more emphasis to missional communities, or gathering on a Sunday evening, or … you name it.  Everybody is experimenting in some way and the best thing for all of us is to share EXACTLY what is happening (not happening) as a result of our work.  I think by now we would all be past the point of thinking that anything that anyone is advocating, even if it is based on a great story, is anything even remotely close to “the ticket”.  This doesn’t mean that we need to be “results” oriented in the way that would most normally sound.  However, it does mean that we are in a season where God is doing a new thing and part of the kingdom dynamic is that we are part of figuring out what that is and what the shape of church and mission is within our context.  As Bob & Mary Hopkins once shared with me (for those of you who were at the National Gathering in 2010 you may remember them remarking on something like this) … “The mission of God in the US has never known these waters before … for this is the first time that we are tasked with evangelizing and discipling a previously evangelized, discipled, and church inoculated culture.  The last time anything like this has happened was when the Celtic movement re-converted Britain after their initial evangelization in the 200’s.”  Clearly, we need to be in a learning mode.

Lastly, and this one is much shorter, I think we all need to be aware, especially if we are in a leadership role of any kind in our congregations, the impact of pastoral transition on a congregation.  Several congregations within Ecclesia have faced challenging times this year as a result of pastoral transition.  It is inevitable that God will call people on to different roles within his kingdom project, but I think as pastors (and particularly if your church is young – and by that I mean EVERY church within Ecclesia – even if they are 20 years old!) we underestimate the toll of quick transitions on our congregations.  Even when done extremely well and with some planned transitioning, it is still one of the greatest (if not the greatest human threat) to our communities.  There is a great deal more that could be said about this, but this is not the time or place.  Except to say, if you are thinking of making a transition, talk to someone (and yes – please even me) first.

Finally, I would like to make some announcements about transitions on the board of directors for 2012.  From the inception of Ecclesia, the board has been mainly in-tact (JR Woodward, Brian Hopper, Bruce Hopler, Jim Pace, Keith Matthews, Tim Levert, and myself) and we made a common agreement among us that we would commit to serving on the board during the “start-up” phase of Ecclesia.  The slight exceptions to this are that J.R. Briggs was added one year after Ecclesia started and Dave Fitch shortly after that.  Last year, both Keith Matthews and Tim Levert transitioned off the board as they took on different responsibilities in their life and ministry.  We did not immediately add anyone, sensing that the time was coming for more substantial changes now that Ecclesia was in a place of greater stability.  At our last board meeting in October, we made the decision to separate the current board into a board of directors (direction/governance) and an equipping team (work/ministry).  We are certainly aware that in many ways this is an artificial distinction as both will be working together, but with our growth we needed to create the space for people to focus.  A number of other transitions took place in late 2011 and early 2012 and after several months of prayer and discernment together, some of our board members are stepping off the board and we have added new members as well.   Jim Pace, David Fitch, Brian Hopper, and Bruce Hopler will complete their service to the board mid-way through 2012.  Jim, Dave, and Brian will all remain on the equipping team as they focus on specific aspects of life in Ecclesia that they are called to and we need.  Bruce has moved on to another congregation outside Ecclesia and though he hopes to return to an Ecclesia church someday, he is in a different season.  I would like to thank all of these folks personally for the hours and weeks of dedication and voluntary service they have given to our network, some of them as early as 2007.

However, we are delighted to add some new faces to our Ecclesia Board of Directors as well who will begin serving in mid-2012.  Cyd Holsclaw, one of the members of the Pastoral team at Life on the Vine has accepted our invitation to join the board.  Bob Hyatt from the Evergreen Community in Portland has also joined our board of directors.  Our expectation is that in time, God will lead us to add one or two more board members for this next season of Ecclesia’s life.

It is with great joy that I share this summary of what God has been doing and what we hope to see him continue to do in 2012.  In closing, let me just say very plainly that it is a great joy to be on the journey of ministry with all of you.  My confidence that Jesus is at work, expanding His kingdom, has grown throughout this past year, as I’ve been able to catch a glimpse of the work he is doing through each of you and your congregations.  Furthermore, I am grateful to be part of a larger community that ultimately remembers what all of the “work” we do is about – lifting up Jesus and making His name known.  So, may His kingdom expand and may he continue to form all of us into the disciples he desires for His mission.

The Changing Nature of Leadership Development in Emerging Networks

In many established associations, there have been programs put in place for leadership development among both congregations and clergy. As with several of these other practices, leadership development was carried out through the centralized office of the denomination, either at the regional or national level.  In contrast, emerging church networks will focus on leadership development as a key aspect of their agenda.

However, leadership development will be carried out through mentoring relationships and leadership-training events put together through the shared work of the network. Acts 29 has the most developed system for this ongoing equipping and leadership training of any network at the moment.

As with all the prior practices, leadership development will be distributed instead of centralized. Network leaders can work with pastors and key laity in the congregation to construct development plans that access the resources of the persons involved in the association community. For instance, in addition to providing training for leadership development, the new network will highlight particular churches that are carrying out this task effectively. Those seeking to learn and develop will be encouraged to engage in conversation with practitioners that are involved in successful ministry in a comparative context. This approach builds community and can develop a culture of generosity, reciprocity, and mutual equipping. The network can serve the churches in its community by developing lists of strengths and areas of expertise from among the leadership of the network. As will hold true in the area of resource development, the best practices for ministry in this new era will be developed from those working on the ground.

Leadership Development within the Ecclesia Network

Within Ecclesia, this continues to be an area for our growth and development.  As the regional activity of our network is bolstered, we expect that more and more of these opportunities will begin to take place.  In addition, we are looking at piloting a few learning communities over the next two years that will allow churches in a region to work together with members of their congregations toward some shared development. Also, an increasing number of congregations within Ecclesia are developing residency or apprenticeship programs.  The Renew Community outside of Philadelphia, the District Church in Washington D.C., and Imago Dei in Richmond, VA all have active residency opportunities.  Lastly, we are working at increasing the visibility of all of our congregations to one another by highlighting regular stories of their work throughout the year.  This will provide a better vantage point for network members to know who they can look toward related to their experience and expertise.  Hopefully, with greater connectivity among all members of Ecclesia, we will see signs of the natural and organic growth we are all experiencing as we are on this journey together.

Within established church associations, the trans-local leadership has historically been viewed as experts in their particular areas of ministry. Whether it was music, Christian education, or family ministry, those who ended up in denominational (i.e. network) work were staff that had excelled in their area of ministry at the local church level and were“promoted” to coach and support other churches and leaders in those areas.

In the network philosophy and organizational pattern, should churches desire ongoing coaching for their overall congregation and for their mission in a particular area, the post-denominational network will facilitate this relationship between the desiring church and a church or leader who is successful in the area in which they are seeking guidance. As with church planters, these relationships will largely be between functioning leaders in other congregations. In this manner, coaching most ideally comes from the vantage point of a fellow practitioner on the ministry journey. In the rapidly changing world that new churches exist within, this co-laboring philosophy is crucial to dealing with the ground level realities of ministry. Converge Worldwide is one of the best examples of this collaborative coaching at work within a church planting network.2 However, few have moved this coaching beyond church planting

In addition to coordinating these relationships, the network could also establish a database of qualified and approved coaches and list the various topics and specialties that those individuals have. They could also sponsor training and equipping events for coaches and potential coaches so that they may improve and hone their skills.

Within Ecclesia, over the last two years we have made continual efforts to strengthen this aspect of our life and work together. For the last two years we have equipped a handful of coaches with the needed skills to provide coaching to other people. Some have even taken these skills and have turned them into a bi-vocational job opportunity. We have continued to match interested individuals on the church planting journey with coaches to guide them in their early days. We are continuing to move in this direction even more fully now, with a requirement that all churches started connected to Ecclesia will having an ongoing coaching relationship when they are in the foundational stages of cultivating a new community. We are also aligning the expectations of those coaching others within Ecclesia so that there is a base norm and fairness across the network.

In the future, our hope is that more organic coaches “circles” and relationships will continue to develop in an ongoing manner for all congregations and leaders part of Ecclesia. While we believe that coaching for new congregation be best done in a “one-one” context, we believe that these peer coaching circles will help our pastors and leaders be refreshed, challenged, and supported along the journey as they are actually “co-laboring” in this way with each other.

A Faithful Vision For Education Reform: Helping Low-Income Schools – Nicole Fulgham (FS # 1 & 2)

A high quality education is the most direct path to helping a child overcome poverty. But the United States’ public school system is not yet delivering on that promise. Children who need the most from their education continue to lag behind their wealthier peers. More than 15 million children are growing in poverty in the United States. Only half of these children will ever graduate from high school. Only 1 in 10 will graduate from college. By the time children in low-income communities are in the fourth grade, they’re already three grade levels behind students in wealthier neighborhoods.

The academic achievement gap is a national epidemic with profound moral dimensions. What role can the church and people of faith play to help ensure all children receive a high quality education? How can we help all children, regardless of their background, achieve their God-given potential? This workshop explores a Biblical framework for public education reform and provides church leaders with concrete strategies to help improve public schools.

Amidst the polarizing, fragmenting, and empire-building forces that seem to be rearing their ugly heads throughout evangelical Protestantism lately, the Ecclesia Network remains for me something of a refuge.  Ecclesia, as both a context and a family, is committed to and united by a modest, yet deliberate and substantive engagement with the various facets and issues of North American Christianity.  It’s this sort of posture that I believe sets Ecclesia apart in terms of its unique contribution to the lives of leaders, churches, and, through various initiatives and resources, the broader evangelical community.

To point to just a few things that excite me about Ecclesia, consider the following…

A yearly national conference (the next one being just about a month out), that seeks to help church planters and pastors wrestle with some of the most pressing issues of mission and ministry from the perspective of those who take seriously the challenges (perhaps better understood as happy opportunities!) of Post-Christendom.

Over the last 4 years, we’ve brought together leading voices, including those of women and minorities, to help us wrestle with the practical issues of incarnational expressions of ecclesial life.  In each instance, this has been done without pomp and circumstance, opting instead for a subdued environment where the focus is on encouraging one another, building relationships, and giving a good deal of attention to God’s presence and work in our midst.  In this way, our national gathering remains vitally connected to the rest of our lives, relationships, and ministry.

A leadership podcast that offers listeners a window into the lives and thinking of local church planters and pastors who are either in or connected to the Ecclesia Network.  Backed by the genius and savvy of Mr. Todd Hiestand and John Chandler, esquire, this podcast is just getting going, but there’s some good ones in there already.  Check out the latest podcast w/ Chris Backert, who, at long last, is offering to the world (in multiple parts no less!) some blog posts.  In part of the podcast, he talks a bit aboutMissio Alliance, an initiative I’m privileged to be a part of and will no doubt be writing more extensively in regard to in the future, but the rest of the podcast is a great introduction into the way Ecclesia has come about and what it “feels” like.

Aside from those things, Ecclesia is also involved in church planter training (here’s a bunch of great audio from the most recent training session), coaching, and publishing.  Ecclesia also initiates and sponsors regional events like this one in the Northeast, thisone in the Northwest, and the Missional Learning Commons here in the Mid-West.

This is all good stuff.  None of it is completely unique; others seek to offer similar resources and opportunities.  What means the most to me, and what is simultaneously the biggest encouragement to me as something like the Missio Alliance gets underway, is the manner, character, and quality of all this work.  Like I tried to communicate above, as I look around and see so much discord and angling for influence across the evangelical landscape, I’ve just never gotten that taste from the people and work of Ecclesia and I’m grateful for this band of brothers and sisters.

One of the primary reasons for any church network to exist is to facilitate the more rapid development of church multiplication.  Almost all of the new forms of church networks have this as their original goal and many of our historical denominations could attribute this kind of work to their original intention in formation.  Indeed, most of those that have developed traction and momentum have kept this as their organizing goal (Acts 29, Redeemer, ARC) and even those that were once stagnant and returned to church multiplication as a collaborative goal, have experienced new life and energy (Baptist General Conference/Converge, The Christian Church)..  Clearly, this focus aligns with the sentness of the church in community with one another. There is no shortage of studies to remind us that the starting of a new community of faith is the greatest evangelistic tool that the church has in its repertoire (even though the forms those new communities should take can morph over time).

In established denominational circles (again, the church “networks” of the past), church planting has been one of several departments housed in the denominational office or hierarchy.  There were professionals assigned to the task of starting a new denominational branch in an area that was lacking one at the time.  In general, the pattern of organizing and developing the church was similar in every circumstance.  Churches within the association understood that it was the central office’s job to start new works.  They may need to act as a sponsor congregation or to send a few people to help initiate the new start, but this was rarely at the initiative of the congregation.

In the network philosophy, church planting will occur as the leaders of various churches in the network collaborate with one another, both in leadership and finances, to initiate new communities of faith. The post-denominational network will equip and facilitate church-planting and church-planting partnerships between churches.  While there could be avenues and possibilities of funding for church-plants coming through the centralized network, the majority of resources for church planting in the post-denominational network will be derived from church partnerships and relationships.  This will lead to greater investment in the project and relationship on behalf of both the church plant and the sponsoring church.  The network could provide leadership to recruiting, assessing, and training potential church planters as well as providing ongoing coaching and skill development during the planting process.  Yet, the majority of this work will be accomplished by pastors and church planters within the network.

In general, this is how the Ecclesia Network has developed in relationship to church planting.  Unlike many denominations, there is no centralized pot of money from which a project can draw support or a salary.  Funds generally come from partner churches within the network, from funds raised by the planters themselves, from a core team, or from some form of bi-vocational work by those planting the new community.  Often, all of these avenues are necessary in putting together a viable financial plan for planting.

Through Ecclesia, a number of the critical components of planting new communities are offered.  Each year we sponsor our church planters training.  We have always offered coaching in Ecclesia, but now coaching for church planters is becoming more organized and required if planting with Ecclesia.  In many places, regional meet ups are available to connect with other ministry leaders and when they are not we are working strengthening relationships and connectedness through phone and Skype.  Practitioners are the ones involved in developing and guiding all of this and we are constantly seeking to bring more recent church planters into the church multiplication work of Ecclesia because they offer a critical perspective along with those who have involved in planting work for or 10 or 20 years.  In addition, because there are no one (or even two or three) models of church planting within Ecclesia, it is even more critical to show a varied approach.

Our next steps in this realm could be summed up in two phrases – more new communities of faith and better new communities of faith.  I use the phrase “communities of faith” because I expect (along with several others) that the shape of new churches in the future may look less and less like “church planting” as we’ve known it in the past.  Or, at least it will take longer for these new communities to look like a “church plant” that we are used to.  Our increasingly post-Christian culture in many places is a primary factor in that development – calling for more and time needed to cultivate a new community in context.

Along the way of developing Ecclesia I’ve had several people ask me in one way or another “Didn’t you spend 5 years doing research on networks before Ecclesia started?”  This is then usually followed by a next obvious question, “When are you going to share what you discovered?”

While, it is true that I spent 5 years researching how God was moving in the development of a new kind of connectional church, it is a bit off the mark that I did this before Ecclesia began.  I had done a great of research and interviewing before we officially began Ecclesia and those early discoveries were extremely helpful in the initial formation of our network.  However, a great deal of the investigation has continued over the last several years and though less intense than it once was, still continues today.  I’ve not tried to share before what I discovered (except for the few people that were willing to read my long doctoral dissertation), but now seems like a good time to do so (mostly so that people will get off my back about my lack of blogging/writing ).

So, over the next year I’ll try to lay out a number of the things I discovered during those five years (and some subsequent observations and conclusions as well).  While Ecclesia has certainly not delved into all these waters, in some way they have formed who we are becoming today.  I’m going to start by doing a series of posts on the Core Practices of new church networks and for the purposes of our own network, this most easily translates into the “work” that we do.

What is essential to understand in these series of posts is that often I will alternate back and forth between talking about a “network” and “denomination”.  While you could press down on the differences between these two things (and there are certainly some) – what they both have at their core is the essential DNA of being a trans-local, covenanted community focused on collaborative gospel work together.  The ways and patterns of organization, the type of hierarchy, the theological dispositions, etc certainly all change, and in different seasons of history, some have made greater sense than others (and the lack of change could be part of their struggles today).In the wider scope of “ecclesiology” they belong in the same family.

I certainly consider Ecclesia more of a network than a denomination, though we would share much of the same DNA has some denominations (particularly those that are congregationally focused and are more accurately an “association” of churches instead of a “denomination).  Another way of saying this is that for some churches in Ecclesia, our network connects to their congregational life just as a denomination would for some other church.  For others, Ecclesia is really a network they are part of in addition to a denomination and they connect to Ecclesia for some slightly different reasons.  Of course, if we currently have 30 churches involved and another 10 in process they are all somewhere slightly different on that spectrum and THAT is one of the marks of what makes us a network and not a denomination.

The following is a sampling of the sessions / teaching during this event:

• Why Plant Churches – Bob Hyatt
• Planting Missionary Churches – Chris Backert
• The Character and Competencies of a Church Planter – J.R. Briggs
• Theological Foundations for Church Planting – David Fitch
• Developing Your Church-Planting Plan – Brian Hopper
• The Power of the Spirit in Church Planting – Aaron Graham and Don Coleman
• Incarnational Ecclesiology – J.R. Briggs and Corey Widmer
• Gathering and Developing Your Core Team – Aaron Graham
• Developing a Philosophy of Discipleship – Bob Hyatt
• Developing a Philosophy of Worship – David Fitch
• Developing Equipping Structures and Leaders – JR Woodward
• Funding the Mission – Chris Backert
• Developing Modes and Approaches – JR Woodward
• Developing Your Church Planting Plan 2 – Brian Hopper
• Keeping Heart Til the End – Winn Collier
• Administration and Legal Issues – Chris Backert