Thursday, May 07, 2009

Mission/Innovative/Monastic/You Name It

A busy week on the National Mission front, with work started on enabling Supervision to become more of a reality for ministers and laypeople around the country. ('Supervision' as in the process where a person goes, about once a month, to discuss their work and life with someone trained to listen and enable them to keep moving forward.)
That's my excuse for not having posted much on this blog this week - it hasn't been for want of trying (!)
Anyway, just 'discovered' Urban Vision. No doubt they'll be happy to learn that they've been discovered after some 13 years (they 'began' in 1996). As they state on their website:
Urban Vision is a group of households and ministries in Wellington, Porirua and the Kapiti Coast who focus on building life-giving relationships with those on the margins of mainstream society, and doing justice in the midst of urban poverty. We’ve come to realise we’re a local expression of a global revolution of hope and transformation, worked out in the neighbourhoods of need we’ve relocated to.
You might consider it a church without walls, but in fact its members belong to a number of different churches and denominations. In the last couple of years however, Urban Vision has taken on a new form:
In 2007, we took the imaginative step of becoming a contemporary Order, following Jesus on the margins. In making this step, we’ve recognised Jesus is doing new things right now in Aotearoa/New Zealand (contemporary), and that we have some things in common with some of the monastic and missionary movements of old, specifically a spiritual rhythm to life (order). We have been students of history and experience: we wanted a durable structure, enabling the continuing vitality of our pioneering, prophetic and Jesus-centred threads.
There's more on their site, as you'd expect, and they're even debating how people outside Wellington can connect with their form of contemporary Order. And they're advertising some opportunities for those who are in Wellington.

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