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Letter From the President Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site. Partnership for Missional Church Gains Partners The last couple years has brought a new dimension to the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC). From the beginning in the late 80s, PMC, then called Project for Worship and Evangelism, depended upon partnerships. The first partners involved congregational leaders like Bob Wallace who gathered the first 13 congregations in 1987-88. He brought on a great group of congregations and eventually the Delaware/Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Then PMC added clusters around North America, still mostly Lutheran. In the mid-90s, PMC gained partners from other denominations. These partners expanded the breadth of experience significantly. They strengthened PMC through these new challenges. In 2001 a group of pastors and judicatory leaders from South Africa invited us to join them in forming clusters in southern Africa. Initially comprised of Reformed churches in Namibia and South Africa, PMC Southern Africa has grown to 9 denominations, hundreds of congregations, and expansion to other countries. It is hard for me to imagine that conversations have begun to start clusters in Zambia. Frankly, I still need to pinch myself every time I get on a plane for Africa and realize how close a team the St. Paul gang and the Stellenbosch gang have become. This year alone we have had dozens of pastors and leaders from southern Africa join us at Church Innovations in St. Paul. Some have come for several months. As I write this newsletter article, I am on a flight to the United Kingdom to begin PMC-UK. Once again we enjoy multiple denominations and great partners. Our chief partner in the UK is Together in Mission headed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Robinson. Martin bring years of missional experience and adds depth and breadth to our ability to grow in all our locations. In February pastors and leaders from Norway will join us to visit PMC congregations, clusters, and partners in the U.S. The Norwegian and Danish churches are looking to join the growing international Partnership for Missional Church. In March Pat Taylor Ellison and I are headed to Germany and the beginnings of partnership with the Evangelical Church of Germany, the Protestant church of Germany. Our partners there include the Rev. Dr. Prof. Michael Herbst who heads the Institute for Church Development, Greifswald, Germany. Last October representatives from Australia and New Zealand joined us in St. Paul. They invited me to visit them in May and started the initial steps towards PMC Australia and New Zealand. Their energy and excitement alone makes the joy of that possibility overwhelming. As those of you with PMC experience know, we begin the entire journey of spiritual discernment by discovering our partners. The first partner we invite congregations to discover is God. While of course almost all congregations believe God is their partner, or rather they are very small partners in the mission of God, they actually seldom experience God as a partner and seldom discern a specific missional vocation for their local church. As the PMC process of spiritual discernment takes place, it is such a delight to see the lights go on for congregations and the excitement of experiencing God as their partner. Frankly, these last few years have given all of us at CI a deeper and broader sense of being partners in the mission of God. We are experiencing through these new partners around North America and around the world a greater awareness of God’s partnership. Deo Gratias. Peace, Pat Keifert Spring Conference Our first annual conference, Sustaining Missional Transformation, is being planned for Thursday, April 26th until midday Saturday the 28th. Mark you calendars and look at our recent e-mail for more information about the conference. |
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