GCM Collective – Discussion about the Gospel forming a Community on Mission
It has been six months since we went live with the GCM Collective website and already there has been tremendous fruit. As of today, we have emails for 10,131 church planters and missional leaders who are somehow interested or connected to the collective. Of these 1,422 are part of the community site participating in the hundreds of discussions, praying for one another, sharing resources and events. Have you joined the collective to take advantage of this valuable exchange of ideas and resources?
Why Join the GCM Collective?
A Community of Missional Thinkers
Over a thousand missional leaders and thinkers are gathered together online to share insight, experiences, resources, prayer and more to help you in your effort to lead a local community on mission. Engage in meaningful conversations with others from around the world or who live near you.
Discussions & Messaging
There are numerous groups that allow you to join the conversations that are most important to you. Get a daily email digest of new conversations, reply to email to post or login to interact. A few of the groups discussions include:
- Bible Teaching in a Missional Church
- City Renewal
- Community Life
- Everyday Mission
- Fostering a Missional Culture
- Planting Missional Churches
- Transitioning to Missional Church
- World Mission
- and many others to chose from!
Resource Sharing
Upload and share resources. The community site has an open source policy toward exchanging files. Grab the resources you see on this website and many others and edit them for your local needs. Request the resources you need to fulfill the mission. Join and download files such as:
- Contextualization Assessment Starter
- Understanding and Studying the City
- Intergrating community and mission into your normal routine
- Mission through community
- Questions to help you understand your neighbourhood
- The difference between gospel communities and house groups
- Missional Community Leader Role Description
- Small Groups. From Participant to Leadership
- Missional Community Formation
- and many others.
Prayer & Needs
Share prayer requests and pray for one another. Prayers that are posted can include the urgency, be tagged to include the people or primary areas that need prayer. People can respond with encouragement, scripture or even let the person know they prayed for them.
Post the needs you have for resources or help for others to jump in to assist you.
Keep aware of important Missional-minded Events
Stay aware of the important missional events throughout the year on one site. Be in the know of the large national conferences but also the local training events to equip your missional community leaders. Connect with others in your city to reach the city with the gospel.
All this and much more!
Join now by going to the GCM Collective community sign-up page.
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The Future Church influenced by Technology
Technology is a powerful agent that shapes those who use it in ways that are often unintended. For example, Air Conditioning has been credited with being one of the most culture-altering technologies because people tend to stay inside more- isolated from the community around them. As the Church we can see this unintended technological consequences as well. Consider the printing press, something we celebrate as believers who are now better able to study God’s Word. One of the unintended consequences of the printing press is the growth of individual interpretation over a communal interpretation. This has led to denominationalism and the elevation of personal interpretation. 
Add to this a Bible where the chapter and verse were printed, it influences a move from seeing the Bible in it’s whole as a story, to approaching it as a dictionary or encyclopedia of facts and trivia. (Concepts presented at my session at Echo: A Look into the Near & Distant Future of Online Ministry)
As we are in another significant technological revolution it is important to consider how technology may influence the church, and what unintended consequences could impact future generations. Here are three I’ve been thinking about:
1. Sickly Online Christianity – With the increased access online to preachers, teachers and resources many Christians may try to self-select their own content rather than participating in the life of a community. One unintended consequence is people will only seek out the things that interest them, therefore they will avoid the whole counsel of God’s Word.
2. Homogeneous Digitized Churches – With technology, more churches will find ways to automate and/or systematize their discipleship programs. These programs will tend to be one-size-fits-all with a small variation. These Christians may develop homogeneous traits thereby trending toward an inability to use the diversity of the body to ward of heresy and/or be equipped to be healthy replicating community.
3. Internet Generation: Bible Illiterate – Recently a speaker at a church conference said 85% of content will be video in 2015 (if I recall or some date thereafter). Video is a powerful tool that brings many benefits but an unintended consequences could be more Christians relying on and learning through this video teaching rather than studying God’s Word on their own, becoming increasingly Bible illiterate.
As someone who is involved in serving thousands of churches with websites, technology and media I don’t want to appear an alarmist as I’m thankful for many of the blessings the Internet and technology has brought to the greater Church. My desire is that more thoughtful theological consideration and prayer will continue to surround the websites, applications and technologies we endeavor toward as they do impact the user in ways we may not have considered or intend.
Porterbrook Missional Training launching at Kaleo
The Porterbrook Network is a developing initiative aimed at contributing to a wider church planting movement by equipping individuals and churches to rediscover mission as their DNA through training, and resourcing.
Kaleo is launching the program to students in the Southern California area.
Porterbrook: San Diego
The course is delivered through distance learning with an introductory day and 3 residential weekends throughout the year. It will require about 5 hours study each week. The full course is over two years, comprising a foundation year and advanced year. Students can join either year or both years depending on their needs and circumstances. The advanced year is for people who have had some previous theological training or experience of church leadership or have completed the foundation year.
There will be assignments to prepare for each residential weekend, either in the form of a short presentation or as a written assignment with notes for discussion. The aim is to help students keep on track, apply their learning to their context, and learn from other students who are applying the material to their church and context.
We require each student to have the support of their local church, and where possible, would look for some level of involvement from the church leader(s).
Dates 2010 – 2011
Introductory day 25th September 2010
Winter residential 3rd – 5th December 2010
Spring residential 25th – 27th March 2011
Summer residential 8th – 10th July 2011
Fees: $1,250 per year, which includes a CD of the materials, and accommodation and catering for residentials.
Below is the year one syllabus (click image to see the second year).
GCM Collective 2010 Conference Schedule in Austin
The GCM Collective will be hosting their first GCM Conference in Austin, TX this October, bringing together church planters, pastors, and leaders to collaborate on the practice of missional communities. This three-day conference will feature main and breakout sessions under the theme of GOSPEL, COMMUNITY and MISSION.
You will get to hear from, meet and interact with leaders who are daily practitioners, living in gospel communities on mission in their cities. This is a unique experience that will present the why, what and how-to of starting, leading and multiplying missional communities. Interactive plenary sessions, breakouts and unique training experiences will fill our days both on-site and off.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28TH
3:30 – 5:00PM Pre-Conference: Forming a Collective Drew Goodmanson
7:00 – 9:00PM Main Session ONE: GCM Collective Vision Panel Discussion
9:00PM – Meet-Up at Gingerman Pub
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29TH
9:30 – 10:30AM Main Session TWO: What is the Gospel? David Fairchild
10:45 – 12PM Breakout Session [ 1 ]
12 – 1:30PM Lunch Break
1:30 – 2:45PM Main Session THREE: A Post-Christendom America Ed Stetzer
3:00 – 5:00PM Breakout Session [ 2 ]
5:00 – 7:00PM Dinner Break
7:00 – 9:00PM Main Session FOUR: Gospel Rhythms Caesar Kalinowski
9:00PM – Downtown Experience
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30TH
9:00 – 10:30AM Main Session FIVE: Making Disciples on MIssion Jeff Vanderstelt
10:45 – 11:45AM Breakout Session [ 3 ]
12 – 1:30PM Main Session SIX: Stealth Church Steve Timmis
Goodmanson.com Reboot
I’ve had the chance to update the blog with a brand new design, upgrade from WordPress 2.x to 3.0 and move from MySQL 4.x to 5.0. While these add to the reboot, more importantly I plan to write a new set of blog posts exploring a few ideas from a review of Friendship at the Margins, some thoughts on dialogical preaching, GCM (gospel, community, mission) updates as well as research and discovery we’ve been doing on church website strategies.
Thanks for you patience with my lack of postings, here’s to a solid second half of 2010 of writing…
Graphic Designer – Position Open
MonkDev (Monk Development, Inc.) – an industry leading, innovative web development and software as a service company based in San Diego, CA – seeks a graphic/web designer to be the visual lead behind our design projects and brand. MonkDev is one of the largest web developers and fastest growing private companies in San Diego. We provide web solutions across all industries but we are thought leaders in the non-profit space, where thousands of churches, ministries and other non-profits use our services and technology. The designer will be responsible for creating our corporate website, re-designing our web applications (eg. our Content Management System), mobile apps, product websites and many other projects.
Learn more here: San Diego – Graphic Designer
Read MoreDrew Goodmanson
CEO of Monk Development creators of Ekklesia 360. Co-Founder of Kaleo Church where I served as Pastor for 8+ years and helped coach several church plants in San Diego. Co-Founder of the GCM Collective, President of the Board at the Center for Church Communication, Board Member of the Entrepreneurship Organization, Internet/Technology Advisory Chair at the Christian Leadership Alliance. Connect
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