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Workshops #1

• “With: Re-imagining the Way You Relate to God”

  About the Workshop:

  This workshop explores the narrative of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and the stories of faithful women and men throughout history, to show that we were created to be with God, and that restoring this connection is his mission. When we neglect this calling in favor of a life over, under, or even for God, we will not know the freedom Christ intended. But a life lived in rich communion with God cultivates faith, hope, and love in a way that transforms both us and the broken world we inhabit.

  Presenter: Skye Jethani

  Skye Jethani (www.skyejethani.com) is an author, editor, speaker, and pastor. He is the senior editor of Leadership journal, a magazine and online resource published by Christianity Today International.

• Developing a City-Wide Prayer Movement

  About the Workshop:

  What if all the congregations in your city or region had the same vision for planting Gospel communities in every neighbourhood? What could happen if a city-wide prayer movement was backing up this effort? 

  Presenter: Richard Long

  Richard Long, Executive Director of Together Canada, has been working with city-wide efforts in Canada for the last twenty years. Having helped to launch city-wide movements like Mission GTA and Love Hamilton, he is now a member of Mission Ottawa, where he currently resides with his family. Richard travels among the 40 largest cities in the nation coaching city transformation efforts and prayer movements. Visit www.togethercanada.ca to learn more about Richard’s dream of bringing Canadian churches together.

• Learning to Live in the Neighbourhood for Transformation

  About the Workshop:

  Living Among- what if instead of gathering people for worship to start a church, we began by loving our neighbours and being the Presence of Jesus right where we are? Discuss and share stories and Scriptural principles for being incarnational, on mission in your neighbourhood.

  Presenter: Karen Wilk

  Karen is a National Team Member for Forge Missional Training Network, and a Missional Leader Developer for the Christian Reformed Church in North America. She is also a neighbor, wife, mom, and minister who is leading her own neighborhood community. Karen is the Pastor of Community Life and Discipleship at the River Community Church in Edmonton, Alberta, where she actively engages church leadership in moving their congregations out into neighborhoods. She has been pastoring in Edmonton for 25 years and has a Masters in Theological Studies from Tyndale Seminary and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Missional Leadership at Northern Seminary. Along with preaching and teaching in numerous places, Karen has written a number of books including her new one entitled, Don’t Invite Them To Church: A Devotional Guide to Pursuing God’s Mission Together in Your Neighbourhood, which has been commended as a top notch resource for neighborhood transformation.

• It's A Flat World After All: Welcoming God’s new world through developing community among the poor

  About the Workshop:

  This workshop tells the story of Flatlanders Inn – an intentional Christian community that is welcoming to the marginalized in Winnipeg’s North-end. It explores the practices and undergirding theology of this 5 year-old community. It is also about God’s new world that he is creating in and through his followers as they find themselves on the margins of society, culture and economy.

  Presenter: Andy Wood

  Andy is a pastor at Winnipeg Centre Vineyard and a founding member of Flatlanders Inn – an intentional community that is especially welcoming to people at risk of homelessness. He lives with his family of (currently) 6 in Winnipeg’s North-end, enjoys teaching, hanging out in places where he’s the minority, and riding his new motorbike.

• Missional Spirituality: Embodying God's Love From The Inside Out

  About the Workshop:

  What sustained Jesus for mission? What is the connection between spirituality and mission? What does the Great Commandment say about the structure and substance of a “missional spirituality”? What practices will enlarge our hearts for mission, disciple-making and church planting? Come prepared to interact with Dr. Roger Helland around these questions. 

  Presenter: Roger Helland

  Roger serves as the district executive coach of 26 Baptist General Conference churches in Alberta with a mission to help establish and empower missional, disciple-making leaders and churches. He has served in the Vineyard, Mennonite Brethren, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and Baptist traditions. He is an adjunct Bible college and seminary instructor and author of several books, including the recently released Missional Spirituality (IVP), The Journey (Regal), and The Revived Church (Regal). Roger loves good food, rock music, baseball, squash, powder skiing, the church and church leaders, and Starbucks lattes! He is a native California boy who lives near Calgary with his impeccable wife, Gail. He also blogs on http://missionalspirituality.com.

• Coaching towards a Church Planting Movement

  About the Workshop:

  We know that Christian leaders need the support of others to increase their leadership edge and effective ministry performance. This workshop gives a simple model of how you can coach another person and explore how coaching can assist in fulfilling the Great Commission.

  Presenter: Brian Archer

  Brian is a Regional Ministe1r with the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada serving in the Western Canadian Region. Brian values his role as a coach and catalyzer of God's Mission for EMCC Churches across Canada, stemming from over twenty years of pastoral and denominational service. Brian has helped to train coaches for the last eight years and is a part of Church Planting Canada National team as a leader of the Alberta Regional Catalyzers. He works with church leadership and congregations to help them focus on their mission and engage in new churches that form out of new groups for new people. Brian's prayer and hope is to see followers of Jesus multiplied and working together to transform communities and neighbourhoods across Canada and around the world. He lives in Didsbury, Alberta with his wife, Diana, and their children. Brian enjoys fixing computers and electronic gadgets, reading, golfing and hiking.

• Starting Points - Planting the Gospel Prior to Planting the Church

  About the Workshop:

  This workshop will explore several current examples of extending the Gospel to New Canadians using starting points such as a New Canadian community centre as well as a daycare. Each strategy is simultaneously establishing unique discipling communities (aka: churches). Attention will be given to the critical and transferable processes used in each scenario.

  Presenter: Doug Balzer

  Doug Balzer has served as a local church pastor for 15 years and currently serves as the Church Multiplication Coach for the Alliance churches in Alberta. He also chairs the CMA national church planting implementation group, “Sea to Sea.” He lives in Calgary with his wife, Teri, and 2 sons, is part of the church plant community of North Point Community Church and loves to ride his sport-touring motorcycle and build furniture in his spare time. Other important
  info: Mac. Starbucks. Coldplay.

• The Life of a Planter

  About the Workshop:

  How to survive and possibly thrive as a church planter. (Planter health)
  This workshop will explore major pitfalls for church planters as well as advantages church planters have over other ministry roles and how best to set up disciplines and structures which will protect the church planter, his family, and the church from losing the linchpin of the church planting project: the planter.

  Presenter: Jay Pinney

  Jay and his wife, Kathy, arrived as missionaries in Quebec in 1987 and planted a French speaking church as part of a missionary team. He is now the Quebec regional coordinator for Church Planting Canada and teaches church planting principles in several venues in Quebec. Jay did a DMin at Fuller focusing on coaching tools for church planters. His workshop will draw on the material from his thesis.

Workshops #2

• End of Evangelicalism?

  About the Workshop:

  David Fitch examines the political presence of evangelicalism as a church in North America. Amidst the negative image of evangelicalism in the national media and its purported decline as a church, Fitch asks how evangelicalism's belief and practice has formed it as a political presence in North America. Why are evangelicals perceived as arrogant, exclusivist, duplicitous, and dispassionate by the wider culture? Diagnosing its political cultural presence via the ideological theory of Slavoj Zizek, Fitch argues that evangelicalism appears to have lost the core of its politic: Jesus Christ. In so doing its politic has become "empty." Its witness has been rendered moot. The way back to a vibrant political presence is through the corporate participation in the triune God's ongoing work in the world as founded in the incarnation. Herein lies the way towards an evangelical missional political theology. Fitch ends his study by examining the possibilities for a new faithfulness in the current day emerging and missional church movements springing forth from evangelicalism in North America.

  Presenter: David Fitch

  David Fitch is the Betty R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary and the founding pastor of Life on the Vine Christian Community- an emerging church in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago. He is the co-founder of Up/Rooted, an emergent cohort that gathers leaders and thinkers to engage issues of the emerging church and the post-modern context. Up/rooted now has chapters all over the Chicago area. He has been aspeaker and presenter at "emerging church" gatherings, the Ekklesia Project, as well as academic and denominational gatherings on the issues of church, postmodernity and culture.

  Dr. Fitch is the author of numerous articles on church, culture and theological ethics in journals as diverse as the Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education, Discernment, Pastoral Psychology and the Journal of Christian Education.  He is the author of "The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from American Business, Para-Church Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism and Other Modern Maladies" (Baker Books, 2005) and the upcoming "The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission - Towards an Evangelical Political Theology" - (Cascade Books, 2011) Theopolitical Visions Series.

• The Cost of Community: Being & Seeing Christ in Inner City Ministry

  About the Workshop:

  Through the stories of church planting in inner city Winnipeg, Jamie Arpin-Ricci draws on the example of St. Francis of Assisi and his commitment to live the Sermon on the Mount to challenge us to live Christ together.

  Presenter: Jamie Arpin-Ricci, CJ

  Jamie Arpin-Ricci, CJ, is a writer, pastor, and missional church-planter living in the inner city of Winnipeg. The pastor of Little Flowers Community (www.littleflowers.ca), he is also the director of Chiara House (www.chiarahouse.ca), a new intentional Christian community who share life "on the margins". He is the author of the upcoming book, "The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis & Life in the Kingdom" (to be featured at the Congress) & writes at a blog by the same name at www.missional.ca.

  He is also a third order Franciscan with The Company of Jesus, an ecumenical order under the Anglican rite.

• Best Practices for First Generation Immigrant Church Planters

  About the Workshop:

  This workshop will include three components. First, the results of a major research project done by LifeWay Christian Resources, Nashville, TN which included Canadians in their study. Second, the top ten Best Practices of Toronto China Bible Church and thirdly, the importance of first generation church plants for the Chin people in Canada.

  Presenter: Gord Martin (with Ming Peng Gong)

  Gord Martin is the Executive Director of Vision Ministries Canada, Binghai Zeng is the pastor of the one of four campuses of the Toronto China Bible Church and Indy Cungcin is the National Coordinator of the Chin (Burmese tribal group) Christian Fellowship of Canada and also pastor of a Chin congregation in Winnipeg.

• First Nations & Church Planting

  About the Workshop:

  A friend from the Nisga’a Nation once shared that many of her traditional stories and ceremonies had prepared the way for her people to hear about Jesus but when the missionaries came, they brought religion.  As a result in our current reality, Aboriginal people may be guarded or opposed to Christianity. How do we reach contemporary urban Aboriginal people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ in an effective manner? From an Aboriginal perspective we will embark on a journey through concerns with contexualization, cultural differences and traditional values in ministering with Aboriginal people. 

  Presenter: Shari Russell

  I am originally from Rose Valley, SK – registered with the Yellow Quill Nation (Treaty Saulteaux).  I received a  B.A. from WCBC (presently Booth University College) in 1992 and a M.A. from Providence Theological Seminary in 1994. In 1999, my husband Robert and I were ordained as Salvation Army Officers. Our first pastorate was at the Toronto Harbour Light followed by teaching at the College for Officer Training in St. John’s Newfoundland. We then returned in July 2004 to Winnipeg where we served as pastors at the Weetamah Corps, which is predominantly First Nations.     

  Presently, I am teaching at the College for Officer Training in Winnipeg with the additional responsibility of being the Territorial Aboriginal Liaison for The Salvation Army.  As Territorial Aboriginal Liaison, I have had the privilege of travelling throughout Canada experiencing the richness of our First Nations within our country.  I also serve on the Board for the North American Institute for Indigenous Studies (My People International).  This provides an opportunity to connect with other First Nations people throughout North America to engage in theological conversations from an indigenous perspective.    

  In September 2008 I had the amazing privilege of travelling to the World Christian Gathering of Indigenous People in Jerusalem, Israel. This was a pivotal experience for me in integrating my identity as an Indigenous woman and my faith as a follower of Jesus Christ.     

  We have three boys:  CJ (15), Gavin (11) and Brannon (7) who keep us busy with sports, music and church activities. As a family we enjoy God’s beautiful creation while camping and travelling.

• The Critical Importance of the Equipping Evangelist

  About the Workshop:

  Nurturing an Evangelistic Ethos –Instead of focusing efforts on doing evangelism we need to focus effort on becoming evangelistic. When a church becomes evangelistic everything it does reflects that evangelistic nature. In this workshop we will explore the nature of evangelism and the four primary aspects of that nature that need to be fostered to grow an evangelistic culture within the church.

  Presenter: Merv Budd

  Merv Budd is the National Director of the Equipping Evangelists, a movement whose mission is to champion the role of the evangelist and enable them to equip the local church. He is also the Sr. Minister of North Burlington Baptist Church. He has served on the Mission field in India and Nepal where he did open air preaching and literature distribution. He earned an M.Div. from Regent College during which time he helped to plant Southside Community Church. He and his wife, Lisa, have two children.

• Planting Churches Using Alpha

  About the Workshop:

  Intentional. Holistic. Missional. Alpha?
  Is it possible to have an organic, intentional, holistic discussion around the person of Jesus Christ? Can Alpha be re-orientated within a missional context of church planting and used to explore new expressions of Christian community? Come hear models that have seen success and participate in a discussion around using Alpha in your context.

  Presenter: Shaila Visser

  Shaila Visser is actively involved in her community with a passion to make Jesus known.

  She leads a mid size missional community within her church in Vancouver. She also leads Alpha Canada and is deeply committed to making it relevant in our nation. Shaila is married to Ryan who is a Vancouver Police Officer with the K9 Unit.

• Church Planting Summits

  About the Workshop:

  Canada needs planters who have a passion for and a need to understand their neighbourhood. Canada needs planters who are rooted in a deep understanding of the Gospel and who are poetic and prophetic enough to bring the Gospel to life in their context. Canada needs planters who are supported well enough to survive the long haul. Come and hear how Church Planting Summits can help prepare you or your planter for the current and future Canadian context. 

  Presenter: Jared Siebert

  Jared Siebert serves as the National Director for Church Development for the Free Methodist Church in Canada. His main responsibility is to prepare the denomination to respond to the massive cultural change that churches are facing. He hopes to accomplish this goal through planting new kinds of churches and bringing churches face to face with the mission in their respective neighbourhoods and regions. Jared began ministry 1998 with his wife, Katherine, in a church plant called the Next Church. They live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with their two boys, Soren and Nathan.

Workshops #3

• Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as Christian Tradition

  About the Workshop:

  Welcoming the stranger is an age-old Christian virtue. By visiting historical figures (e.g., Chrysostom, Calvin, Wesley) as well as modern communities (e.g., LArche, LAbri, the Catholic Worker, Jubilee Partners), Pohl equips us for this vital ministry.

  Presenter: Christine Pohl

  Dr. Christine Pohl is professor of Church and Society/Christian Ethics. She has taught at Asbury Theological Seminary since 1989.  She worked in various ministries for 11 years before attending seminary. She also worked in advocacy and refugee resettlement. She currently serves as an occasional advisor for homeless shelters and refugee programs. She has also helped plant three churches and is currently assisting her brother in planting a church in Nicholasville, KY.  She is a passionate follower of Jesus Christ.

  Dr. Pohl is the Kingdom Conference co-chair and is the author/co-author of several books, including "Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition" (Eerdmans), "Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission" with Chris Heuertz (IVPress).

  She received a B.S. in Special Education at Syracuse University, 1972; a M.A. in Theological Studies, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 1986; and a Ph.D. in Ethics and Society at Emory University, 1993.

• Borderlands: A Congregations Introduction to Missional Living” (Canadian)

  About the Workshop:

  Moving beyond techniques and programs and instead living into the neighbourhood is the future. “If the borderlands are the places where ‘faith, no faith and others faiths intersect’, than context and neighbourhood is everything. How do we connect and make beginnings in the context that God has placed us? How do we discover the unique ways context shapes ministry? Neighbourhoods are different and their difference shape ministry and missional intent. Its all about living the adventure of the borderlands.

  Presenter: Gary Nelson

  Dr. Gary Nelson is the President of Tyndale University College & Seminary and author of "Borderland Churches: A Congregations' introduction to Missional Living" (Chalice Press, 2008).  The book serves as an introduction to the challenge of missional living at the congregational level from a distinctly Canadian perspective with global application.

  Dr. Nelson brings to the Seminary proven experience in pastoral work and congregational revitalization as well as teaching experience at numerous seminaries across Canada. Before taking up his role as General Secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries, he served congregations both as staff member and lead pastor, and was the founding director of an urban leadership training initiative. Most recently he served as pastoral leader of a historic downtown church in Edmonton that underwent significant renewal and revitalization into a dynamic contemporary congregation.

  Teaching and speaking take him throughout Canada, the United States and around the world, animating congregations and denominations to think in new ways. Gary’s passion is encouraging local congregations to engage their local communities and the global world. He is co-author with Don Posterski of Future Faith Churches (Woodlake Books, 1997).

• Missio – n – aries: Bearing Witness to the God of Mission

  About the Workshop:

  Every follower of Jesus is invited to follow Him on mission. This does not mean going overseas alone, but also learning to dwell in our neighbourhoods. We always reflect what we believe about God. Therefore it is crucial to be able to reflect on the missionary nature of our God and discern how He is working in our neighbourhoods. Then we will seek to invite Him to be Lord of every area of our lives so that we will be missionaries in every aspect of our lives as we love Him with all of our hearts, minds, strength and as we love our neighbours as we love one another.

  Presenter: Cam Roxburgh

  In the early ‘90’s, Cam planted a church in the inner city of Burnaby, BC. After seeing that neighbourhood transformed, Southside Community Church has grown to four congregations in four neighbourhoods. Out of this Cam has developed the Forge Canada Missional Training Network which helps churches and leaders across the country to become missional and see their churches involved in neighbourhood transformation, and to multiply. Cam has also served as the National Director of Church Planting Canada for the past number of years. Cam has had the privilege of speaking at numbers of conferences and schools both in Canada and Internationally. He has consulted with a number of churches and denominations, and has served on a number of committee’s for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. His great passion remains for Christ working in a local community of followers of Jesus to see neighbourhood transformation. Cam is married to Shelley and they live with their four children in Surrey, BC.

• Consuming Youth: Youth Ministry in a Branded Age

  About the Workshop:

  What does youth ministry look like in a branded age?  It's not what you might think ...  We are learning that it's about moving with youth through the hyper-reality and marketed hype of consumer culture while living mission with them in a consumer's world. This workshop invites discussion and participation around the shifts needed to move from a fragmented, isolated and consumer driven reality for youth and towards a more compelling story of meaning and a life lived differently than the one served up by consumer culture.

  Presenter: John Berard

  John Berard has more than twenty-five years of experience in youth ministry as a practitioner, professor and consultant with churches and organizations on issues of youth ministry, education and leadership development. He is the lead author of Consuming Youth: leading teens through consumer culture published by Zondervan / Youth Specialties and currently serves as facilitator and national director of continuous learning for YFC Canada.

• City Church: Stories of Intercultural Church Planting

  About the Workshop:

  In the fall of 2008 they formalised this work by partnering with Grant Memorial Baptist Church in planting City Church.  City Church is an intentionally intercultural church with an average Sunday morning attendance of about 280 people from Asia, Africa and North America.   At the same when they planted City Church they also, along with a team of dedicated people, started City Connexions (CCx).  CCx is in the early stages of becoming a city wide ministry centre where former refugees and evangelical churches build meaningful friendships together.    In this workshop Indy and Tim will present their philosophy and mechanics of planting a first generation Intentionally Intercultural Church.  They will share both successes and trials of this ministry model.  Join them as Indy tells the audience why he was nick named Indiana Jones while he was a refugee in Thailand for more than ten years. 

  Presenter: Tim Nelson and Indy Cungcin

  Indy Cungcin, former refugees from Burma. He is a part time staff with Vision Ministries Canada (VMC), and the National Coordinator for the Chin Christian Fellowship of Canada, a network of 10-12 Chin (Burmese) churches associated with VMC.

  He also provides leadership at City Church through Grant Memorial Baptist Church and the Manitoba Chin Christian Fellowship. I am also serves many refugees in association with City Connexions which is the ministry of City Church.

  Tim Nielsen is the co-church planter and pastor of City Church.  He is a full time employee of International Teams Canada (ITC).  ITC is dedicated to “helping churches help the poor”, especially as it relates to refugees, widows and orphans.  Previous to Tim’s ministry with ITC he and his wife Sue, for nearly 20 years, were involved in Aboriginal ministry.  They have six children ranging in age from 12 to 23.

• Developing Leaders in a Church Plant

  About the Workshop:

  What causes a church plant to fail? In my experience, one of the most common causes of church plant failure is poor leadership. Too often, we put people in places of leadership and authority without proper training. This workshop will explain how to start a new church with the best possible leadership, and how to teach, train and model, healthy leadership in your church plant going forward.

  Presenter: Gord Fleming

  Gord is the Director of Church Planting BC and National Director of the C2Cnetwork. Before serving in this role, Gord served on the leadership team of Church Planting BC as a volunteer and served several years as the chair.  In 2006, God called Gord out of the marketplace to give leadership to CPBC and has blessed the ministry under Gord’s leadership.  Gord and his wife Marcy live in Langley, BC and attend North Langley Community Church.  The Flemings have three adult daughters and two sons-in-law.

• When Church Plants Fail (to meet expectations!)

  About the Workshop:

  This workshop will respond to two questions: How does the church process the failure of a church plant to meet expectations?; What is available in the way of pastoral care for planters whose plant fails to meet those expectations?

  Presenter: Nick Brotherwood

  Nick Brotherwood is Team Leader of Fresh Expressions Canada, and Assistant Director of the Wycliffe College Institute of Evangelism. Nick lives in Montreal, QC, where he is pastor of St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, Westmount. From 2003-2010 Nick and wife Sue led a young adult-focused church (emerge) in downtown Montreal.

• Living the Gospel in an Urban Context

  About the Workshop:

  What does it mean to live out the gospel? In our efforts to plant churches have we let ourselves become consumed with strategies, buildings, services, and programs, so that we’ve forgotten the heart of our message? What is it that we are to build? What defines success? This workshop seeks to answer these questions by understanding the church as “Gospel fluent, loving communities on mission together.”

  Presenter: Dennis Wilkinson

  Dennis was born in Calgary, grew up in Winnipeg, and experienced college in Wisconsin.  In college he felt the need to return to Canada and plant a church. This idea marinated, as Dennis served as youth pastor, graduated from seminary, and became an associate pastor. Marriage happened, four kids happened, and the years went by.  These were great years, but this idea to plant a church kept growing. Finally in 2010 all of the puzzle pieces came together and the Wilkinson’s moved into the heart of downtown Vancouver where they are currently planting a church.