2012 Missional Church Think Tank
By Robin Morgan

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Church Innovations’ 2012 Think Tank is in the late planning stages. The planning team has been meeting for months to put together an inspiring experience for our participants. In April, along with our partner, Pinnacle Presbyterian Church of Carefree, AZ, we will be hosting a gathering of about 70 people to ponder this question: “What are the practices for listening, reflecting and consciously living in the life of the triune God by the power of the Holy Spirit?”

To help stimulate our conversations, we have invited four presenters who will be looking at our question from a variety of vantage points. The first is Dr. Allen Hilton whose focus will be on the first chapters of Acts. Using Acts 1:1-2 as his springboard, “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen,” his emphasis will be on the agency of both the Holy Spirit and the risen Jesus in the movement of the early church.

Our second speaker will be Dr. Lois Malcolm whose presentation is entitled Missional Church Practices and the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Hope, the Cross and the Spirit in Times of Anxiety and Conflict. She will focus on three ways Paul talks about the Holy Spirit and how these emphases might be applied today. First, she sees the Spirit at work in Christendom-type life in Paul’s emphases in Galatians. Second, she sees the Spirit’s movement in a time of anxiety and upheaval much like post-Christendom life in 1 Corinthians. And lastly, with 2 Corinthians, her focus will be on the Spirit’s activity with leadership--empowerment and reconciliation.

Our third speaker will be doctoral student, Harvey Kwiyani. Harvey will be contrasting the fall of Christendom with the shift to post-modernity through the cultural diversity of the congregations he works with in the Twin Cities. He will contrast a typical North American way of perceiving the work of the Holy Spirit from the global perspectives that immigrants are bringing into the churches in the U.S.

Our fourth speaker, The Reverend Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, was installed as general secretary of the Reformed Church in America at the 1994 General Synod and served in that position for 17 years, initiating a widespread process of missional change in the denomination. Rev. Granberg-Michaelson will be sharing with the Think Tank the wisdom of his experience from that process.

All of these presentations will be followed by cohort group conversations that are initially sparked by the question, “What are we learning about what God is up to?” After the cohorts have brainstormed what they heard in relation to their own contexts, the groups will rejoin the plenary and share their insights with everyone. Our goal is for each participant to go home with meaningful and inspiring ideas to help them move forward with their life in the missional church.

Robin J. Morgan, convener of the 2012 Think Tank planning team, spent 15 years in development and re-development ministries with the ELCA, most recently in conjunction with Church Innovations’ Partnership for Missional Church.