Today Paul Donders of xpand provided pastors in Utrecht with some handles on leadership in a city-reaching context. I found his holistic and strategic approach highly refreshing after the past few "let's fellowship for the fellowship" sessions. Paul has his roots in the Jesus movement, moved to Germany after his studies to start a community, but didn't want to live in two worlds: the Christian subculture and society. So he started a company that aims to empower leaders in church, business and society with Kingdom leadership principles. Here are some of my notes:
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Lots of good connections and inspiration over the past few days. Wednesday afternoon we took a cable car up to Mürren, a car-less village built on a steep mountain overlooking the Jungfrau range (pictures here). In the evening Andrew Jones led us in an alternative 'worship by numbers' session, followed by an improvised Connect Europe team meeting in the local pub.
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The main contribution to the conference came yesterday night from Florian Bärtsch, an apostolic evangelist from the Luzern area. There are not many organic church networks that are apostolic in the sense that they incorporate three elements:
1. a supernatural dimension of signs and wonders, and Spirit-led risk-taking (like we read in the book of Acts); 2. strategic focus and planning; and 3. a relaxed team learning attitude. Florian is a zealous speaker, and really got our attention. Alexander Campbell was so good to list the key lessons learnt, and also Andreas and Gabi blogged their reflections.
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