| The Think Tank: A Time of Spiritual Discernment About a Movement Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site. Once in a great while we get a sense beforehand of the significance of a meeting and envision it with great detail. This Spring’s Think Tank sponsored by Church Innovations was such a meeting. We envisioned an open-ended time of spiritual discernment around one question: What is God’s preferred future over the next 5-10 years for the missional church movement? We envisioned a gathering of 70 or so persons that would be personally invited from various stakeholding groups. These groups would meet as cohorts with facilitators most of the time and only a part of the time meet as a plenum. The groups would include churchwide, international, scholarly (three generations: the original generation, the 35-55 generation, and under 35 generation), judicatory, and local church leaders. We would have worship, dwelling in the Word, and one keynote address. The keynoter, we envisioned, should be one of the identified leaders of the Gospel and Our Culture movement. Wilbert Shenk, one of the key international and national leaders, agreed to do that initial keynote. In his speech he outlined the deeper roots of the movement in Willingen (1952) and its subsequent developments. He spoke of how the movement has come to a pause or, even, a halt in its effectiveness in the local church and many church organizations. He indicated the importance of this event as a chance to catalyze the movement. Check out the quotation from his follow up evaluation of the Think Tank. His response was typical. Something very important happened in those cohort conversations. Something very important happened in the plenary sessions, too, especially the time of prayer and blessing between generations and stakeholders. Without much fanfare, the conclusion of Marie Failinger seems accurate: “It’s got to be the Holy Spirit.” We counted on our Lord’s promise to give the church the Holy Spirit and we trusted the Spirit’s guidance. Will wonders never cease! To give you an even clearer picture of this event, let us share with you what participants in each of the 6 different cohorts have said, reflecting back on the experience. From our Founding Generation group: Dr. Wilbert Shenk, Mennonite missional historian, our guest who gave a presentation on the past and present of the Missional Church conversation, said this:
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