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Steve Swain continued on with some of the thoughts from the April Gathering.

At one extreme are the Traditional Answers and the other are Emerging Questions. Crossing them on the other plane are Practice and Theory. The sorts of questions being asked are:

• What is church?

• What is mission?

• What does faith look like in the 21st century?

• What is leadership?

• What is ministry?

• What is the difference between ministry and mission?

Traditional is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living (going through the motions). How do I serve God in a way that pleases him in the 21st century? Where do we have church, how often, who pays, etc?

In Christianity Rediscovered (by Vincent J Donovan), despite 100 years of ministry, there had been no conversions. Donovan looked at the emerging questions from the viewpoint of the Masai. Its all about context. We shouldn’t live our Christianity the same way as a 1st century Palestinian Jew. Some things won’t change, but many will. How do we communicate the message in a way that makes sense, in the context of our community, our culture, our time.

In 2002, statistics for Australia showed that 40% were unchurched and 40% were dechurched. These latter people still believe in god, but are unsure about so many of the issues and questions, so have drifted away from the church.

What is church? Not just a gathering of people, its also about prayer, fellowship, communion, teaching. What may be missing is the purpose of the gathering.

History has no meaning with Jesus of Nazareth. The church, on the back of that, has meaning. We can join in with the vision of others in our church such as Jeff, Fiona and Judy, or we can have our own vision and ministry.

We must have a reason and purpose for it to be church. Maybe God has more for us than we know.

As to the difference between Ministry and Mission - those gathered there acknowledged that there is a lot of overlap between them, but that maybe the difference is that Ministry is within the Christian community and Mission is reaching out.