Verge is a “Missional Community Conference” in Austin, Texas, Feb 4-6, 2010. They have offered to bring me over to blog it and I have tentatively accepted. Hard to resist because church planting guru George Patterson is one of the speakers. And Austin rocks!
Related: Small missional communities is a social network that was just started by Ian Adams in the UK. Expect some good resources in the near future including how to start your own small missional community.
Nice, I will be there, also blogging the event! Should be fun, and yes Austin rocks.
Austin does rock, but don’t you find the single gender leadership of the conference rather disconcerting.
You said what I was about to say … and not just gender. We also need to question why we’re still lily white in 2009. I had a talk with another person about a transformative missional meeting where the two “stars” invited to speak were both white dudes. I was told they were there to bring in the folks – my response was yeah but aren’t they the same folks who show up to just about every other US Emergent event?
But any event where Andrew is present will at least have an international voice – yippee! 🙂
Bill, if someone was hosting a Christian based missional social enterprise gathering in Austin then I would bet that males would be in the minority. But for starting this kind of missional structure, men are the majority, although not as much as a decade or so ago. So I find it pretty normal to see so many males and (hi becky) so many lillies in what should be a
more colorful garden
but there are so many of these events and they look quite different. I don’t expect any one of them to hit all the spots each time
And there are some other streams that have been neglected or passed over that the organizer (stew) told me he would like to see highlighted:
– the impact of practitioners and missiologists from previous decades like George Patterson and David garrison
– the current example of church planting movements in India and what Americans can learn from them
I find that refreshing
This should be a good gathering. Regarding the transFORM event I’ll be one of the ‘dudes’ presenting.
Fantastic