Start The Week

Start The Week - normal service resumed (we hope)

After a bit of a dizzy season for Rachel and Paul, we hope that Start The Week is now back on track for a weekly update. Please keep sending us your items for circulation.

This week a slimline edition, but lots of interest nonetheless. 

New missional posts in Rochester diocese

Jean Kerr sends details of new posts in the expanding mission team in Rochester. Could you pass these on to interesting parties in your part of the world?

1. DIOCESAN MISSION GROWTH TEAM LEADER within the department of Mission and Unity

We are looking for an experienced, ordained Anglican to help parishes explore issues around church growth.  You’ll enable and encourage Fresh Expressions of church, build up an active group of commissioned Evangelists, develop msm and msi training opportunities and help parishes respond to the new housing developments in their midst.

More to download here: Download Advert team growth

2. Pioneer Minister for the new housing developments in the Medway Valley

A five year appointment 

We are looking for an experienced, ordained Anglican to help targeted parishes explore issues around church growth.  You’ll enable and encourage local churches to grow in faith and faith sharing.  Help them develop strategic mission plans, identify opportunities for growing new congregations and fresh ways of encountering the ‘stranger in their midst’

More to download here:Download Advert pioneerProclaiming the Word and Work of God

For more info email Jean: jean.kerr@rochester.anglican.org

Willow Creek leadership conferences

This from Willow Creek's Malcolm Egner. Can you advertise these conferences where you are?

Greetings

As key people in networks of church leaders and in your concern for
encouraging the church to engage with society, I am contacting you with
regard to two cutting edge events we are hosting in Stafford for church
leaders and their leadership teams. These are also being held at other
venues across the country. I would be most grateful if you could pass
this information on to your networks. 

Innovating the church for the 21st century
- a one day seminar to stimulate and motivate churches in engaging with
today's culture (11 June Stafford - other dates in Edinburgh and St
Albans). Includes sessions on children's work, media in services, modern
worship, as well as looking at how culture is changing and how the
church can engage. We believe that the content of this seminar will be
of great help to churches. For more details:
www.willowcreek.org.uk/event.php?r=22

Global Leadership Summit
- a 2 day conference with world class speakers including Bill Hybels,
Bono (U2), Wess Stafford (Compassion International), David Gergen
(Adviser to four US Presidents), plus other church and organisation
leaders by videocast speaking on issues of leadership and vision. Takes
place 2-3 October in Stafford. Also at other venues throughout the UK.
For more details: www.willowcreek.org.uk/events_gls.php

Many thanks for your help


Malcolm Egner
Rising Brook Baptist Church
malcolm.egner@risingbrook.org
www.risingbrook.org

Alison Morgan on Darwin and God

Alison has sent one of her careful and thoughtful review-articles for circulation here - this one on Nick Spencer's "Darwin and God".

The full article is here for download: Download Spencer 09 Darwin & God

And the introduction to give you a flavour:

Not many books sell out within 24 hours of publication, but Nick Spencer’s careful study of Darwin’s faith and lack of faith is one of them – and justifiably so. Written in an accessible and readable style, this book clears up a number of misunderstandings and offers a balanced discussion of this little studied aspect of Darwin’s life. Tracing three distinct periods in Darwin’s journey of faith, Spencer shows that whilst a committed Christian believer at university and during his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin’s faith was challenged and undermined both by his experiences on board ship, and most tellingly by the death of his daughter Annie at the age of ten some years later. During the last years of his life Darwin moved from this theistic, if no longer Christian, position to one which he described as agnosticism – though he avoided religious controversy throughout his life and often remarked that he could see no reason for antagonism between science and faith. 

This book is an important contribution to the often highly charged Darwin ‘debate’, and gives the lie to those who would claim Darwin as an atheist. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is Spencer’s conclusion that the kind of faith which Darwin lost was, as for many at the time, a fundamentally rational, propositional one – more a philosophy than a faith, and one which carried with it no personal experience of God and no specific commitment to Jesus. For his wife, it seems it was not so – but for most educated Englishmen it probably was. It really does matter, Spencer concludes, what you base your faith on. How are we doing, he asks, today? 

Canadian church planting conference 2009

Paul and Phil Potter (Liverpool) were the keynote speakers at this event, following the apostolic succession of Graham Cray and George Lings. 

Check out the emerging Canadian fresh expressions scene here: http://www.freshexpressions.ca/

And pray for our Canadian sisters and brothers as they continue on this journey.