Needless to say, unemployment is everywhere and the problems that come with it.

But we are going to ROCK the city of Olhão this Christmas. 9 bands have donated their time and resources to come down for this for-benefit concert, making it affordable (8 "rocks" or 8 euros for the whole weekend) and opening up doors for urban transformation. THANKS to the bands!! You guys rock! And kudos to Denny Hurst who is making it all happen, and to his church back in Penn State for their support [more churches are needed to support the Hurst family btw]. Also kudos to local church pastors who are getting the word out this weekend to their congregations.

We got the posters yesterday. But we still don't have electricity at the warehouse. Anyone else wanna come down? Fly to Faro (really cheap on easy jet) and turn south. Olhão butts up to Faro like two cheeks of a . . . doesn't matter - its right next to it. We are setting up a campsite to make it all affordable for everyone. Bring a tent. And ear plugs.

What about those numbers? Is it really that big? Who did the research? Wolfgang and I have chatted on email and he yesterday he wrote down some thoughts which I will blog here. Bold fonts were added by me.

Another Six Pack of House Churches

by Wolfgang Simson

Many underestimate the number of house churches greatly because of a limiting box they could be put into. There are not only those nice, easily counteable house churches (hc’s) out there, some of whom even have web sites! In addition to organized house churches, some of them resourced by 5-fold ministries, there are at least six more groups:

1 Off-the-grid house churches that intentionally do not want to be known, listed or be on anybody's radar. We find out about them by accident or through opinion polling or sampling, the kind of research George Barna does.

These OoCC (out of Church Christians) gatherings contain a lot of the God-yes-church-no crowd out there.

2 Business groups, either house churches within a company or those connecting folks in the business world. This number is huge but hard to track as many business folks believe it’s nobodies business whether they hang out with witches, freemasons or create or join their by invitations-only organic churches for support.

3 More and more traditional churches are changing their home groups or even transitioning their whole lot into house churches; some, in order to avoid misunderstanding and tension, intentionally misname their emerging or fully functioning house churches as “home groups” or even “cells.”

4 Inside the Roman Catholic culture (I said culture, not church) there is a surprisingly large amount of “small, little churches” that are intentionally set up to cut out the middle layer of clergy and directly connect the people with Jesus & the Bible. Behind this are some born again bishops and cardinals; actually, it goes right up to the top. Again, this development is far larger than most think. But only because it happens in an un-protestant environment does not invalidate it.

5 It is not only the Anglican Church that develops “small missional communities”, but many more denominations do that. Amongst them big ones like the Assemblies of God in certain areas of the world.

6 Insider movements. A staggering amount of under-the-radar-house churches are emerging within religious megablocks, the Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, the New Agers and even within certain cults. But they choose to stay within their religious culture for effectiveness and to build bridges of God. One of my friends is a former Hindu priest, fully painted up and in his safran dress, who now very effectively plants house churches amongst Brahmins in India. If “proper” Christians would meet him, they’d probably shower him with tracts...

7 There is a seventh version of hc’s out there that I do not bring up here intentionally because it kind of messes with the idea of a sixpack. It would be media-birthed house churches, initiated by TV, radio or folks like a friend of mine who became a guru and coach in a (huge!) online gamer community... So for sixpack reasons I would not mention it, but this actually might have the potential to become the biggest initiative of all: a facebookable, twitterable digital spawning of hc’s that emerge – but not stay - on the web.

If you would press me for numbers, I would say that it’s an iceberg situation out there: 5% visible and countable hc’s, 95% invisible, under the water.

To misquote Patrick Johnstone: The (house) church (movement) is bigger than you think! (I think Patrick would like that...). This development is so huge it would deserve a specific global research. I have a whole research project in my drawer called “The church you never knew”, but it would require some serious funds for logistics and compilation, similar to the Natural Church Development research my friend Christian Schwarz did some time ago.

(Wolfgang Simson)

"The latest research indicates that the number of house churches in Europe have already reached or surpassed 10,000, Australia could have up to 10,000, and New Zealand up to 6,000 house churches. Research in the US shows that between 6 and 12 million are already attending house churches, making house churches one of the three largest Christian groups in the country. In the case of Bangladesh or India, with many hundreds of thousands of house churches, the various networks of house churches have already become the largest Christian movements in their respective countries."

Wolfgang Simson, in the report he sent me this morning from last weeks summit in Delhi, India. Global House Church Summit report.pdf

Previously on TSK: Tiny is the new small, House churches 1% - 9% in a decade, Emerging house church movement, George Barna on house church, House churches have no sex appeal.

Good morning family of mine. Good morning sexy wife and good morning kids who had to explain the idea of 'fertilizer' in Farmville to me this morning. I must be getting old.

Good morning Matos family who are letting us park on their land. Paulo Matos is the original tattoo artist in Portugal and also the best. And a wonderful host. He is proud of his latest edition which you read upside down for the full effect.

Good morning to my friends gathering at Mission 21, the church planters meeting in Bath, England. Sorry I cant be with you this time. Reinhold, are you there?

Good morning to John La Grou who has been reading Francis Chan's explanation of moving from a larger resource hungry attractional church to a more underground neighborhood network - the same transition I went through in the early nineties, and for very similar reasons. Good morning Francis. We should meet up one day.

Step my step you lead me.

Good morning Rich Mullins, I know you are passed forward but I am listening to your music right now, after thinking I had lost it off my hard drive. I am listening to it on iTunes on my computer that you never saw because you died in Christ before all that cool stuff arrived but hey - I am thinking of you today and want to remind you, as if you didn't know, that you are just as much a part of the church as we are. Some of us have been talking about "deep ecclesiology" again but no one ever gets around to including the people of faith now passed on - before and after Christ - who are a cloud of witnesses and just as much a part of God's people as those living. Somebody needs to read Hebrews. Rich, you rocked our world and continue to rock it. Your understanding of God and his creation was so much larger than the industry that bought your music. We must talk soon . . . but not too soon!

Everywhere I go I see you!

Good morning to Kirk Bartha has been running across Canada promoting his new book Clairvaux Manifesto

Rich, did you make it to the Maritimes in Canada? You would have loved it. Kirk was just in Halifax. I was there a long time ago. Very celtic.

Good morning OD Mafia. Your post on the "robutt monkey" was the funniest thing i read this morning. heh heh heh!!!

Good morning Ed Stetzer, waking up to a second day of a church planters meeting for denominational leaders. Some good tweats. Must be going well.

Good morning Michael Spencer, waking up to continue the lively conversation about being "post-evangelical".

Good morning Portugal. You are Tarshish, where Jonah was headed in rebellion from God's mission. But God's mission has brought us towards you this time. Ha! Funny!

Good morning to my mum and sisters and their families in Australia.

Good morning to my dad who passed away in Christ. And my brother also.

Good morning Scott and Misty Bower in Bulgaria. We all prayed for Evan yesterday. Scary stuff.

Hold me Jesus, cause I'm shaking like a leaf

Good morning to my mate John BullFrog Smith in Australia. Can't believe you are still alive you wrinkly old bastard! Those Facebook photos didn't come through this morning and where's that bloody blog I made for ya?

Its hard, so hard, hard to be like Jesus

Good morning Ian Matthews who is pointing me to Gerard Kelly's article "Twitter as a Spiritual Discipline" on Everything Christian.

Good morning Gerard. See you in France next year.

Good morning to my relatives in New Zealand.

Good morning to Joan Burgess and David Stockan who are now my facebook friends but have been real friends for a long time. And good morning to "Prophetess Adrienne" who I am delaying accepting as my facebook friend because her name is too scary.

Good morning Alan Simson and Paul Christian, my two best childhood friends that I have lost contact with. Still think about you guys. Paul, I saw your dad in the paper. Hal Christian looks well for his age. Alan, sorry to hear your mum passed away. Starr was an incredible woman. .

Won't you be my prince of peace?

Good morning Turner family in Hatfield's Beach, New Zealand. So grieved to hear of Trevor's passing last week. He was an incredible man and a wonderful part of my memories when I was younger. Did Trevor still swim every day at Orewa beach even when he was old?

Peace of Christ to you

Good morning to my wife's sisters and parents and brother in USA.

Good morning to my blog readers.

Good morning everyone!

everywhere i go i see you

Funny how 24-7 Prayer rooms around the world all look the same. There is always a Bible, a map, coffee or tea, cd player, either paints or pencils, blank paper on the wall with doodlings from previous pray-ers.

It was nine years ago when Pete Grieg started the first one in Chichester. A few months later, Pete was showing me around the prayer room which by then was absolutely stuffed full of art and sculpture and grafitti. The English tend to be messy pray-ers, compared with the other countries who are often hesitant to throw paint on a wall. I took some video of that original prayer room because I thought it was an historic moment. And it was. 24-7 Prayer Rooms have popped up about 63 countries.

Its a great movement and I always appreciate when I get invited to speak to the 24-7 Prayer leaders, esp. that wicked cool time in Spain. I might go up to England next Feb for their Ten Year Birthday bash called IAM10.

Now don't be confused! There are at least two movements with similar names: 24-7 Prayer and 24/7 Prayer. Here's the difference:

24-7 Prayer is a movement that started out of England with my scruffy mate Pete Grieg and a bunch of other misfits and lovely peole. I have been a HUGE cheerleader for 24-7 Prayer ever since the beginning, as well as their Boiler Rooms. We have partnered with them on a number of projects.

The 24/7 Prayer movement started in Kansas City and is led by Mike Bickle. International House of Prayer [sounds like Pancakes - which my kids, upon hearing it for the first time last week said it was "clever for about 5 minutes"] is an American based movement that is probably more top-down and traditional in its approach but also has impacted thousands of young people. I really don't know much about IHOP except for a few friends who have been a part of the IHOP movement.

Mike Bickle entered my radar recently when he was critical of the "emerging church", although its not clear how much he knows about it, and judging from his recommendation of relative EC books, he might have been misinformed. I would say more but my wife suggested strongly I dont. So I wont. IHOP have a meeting next month called One Thing where, according to an open letter last week, they hope to give "an answer to the confusion and deception that is coming from some of those associated with the Emerging Church". Well, I look forward to hearing what that answer might be.

There are other movements with the 24-7 Prayer tag, like the Salvation Army 24-7 prayer, which was influenced by the English 24-7, but I wont confuse you anymore.

Great to see so much prayer. We need to pray more often and more intelligently but shouldn't get stuck in first gear - lets also send the next generation out of the prayer rooms and into the world out to start fresh expressions of the Kingdom. Like 24-7 have done with their Boiler Rooms. All good. Nuff said.

Related: Check out my night of absolute terror as I get stuck in a 24-7 meeting in London and end up taking a vow!

Lloyd Allen, 2nd Opinion: Emerging Church: Threat or Ally?, Baptist Standard

But the best read by far is an interview with Brother Fred Flack, a 100+ year old gentleman missionary, and the other part of UK's oldest twins, who spent over 40 years overseas helping to develop an indigenous church movement in I*ndia.

Which they have in bucket loads at the moment. In fact, there was a conference that happened this week in that country where some friends gathered to discuss and celebrate the efforts of organic simple house church movements. Some have arrived home already. I was hoping to be there myself but BUUUMMMMERRRRRR! I could not make it. The indigenous church there has so much to teach us. But I really don't think a national indigenous movement on this scale would not have been possible without supporters and cheerleaders, over many decades, like Brother Flack, Brother Bakht Singh, E. Stanley Jones, Sadhu Sundar Singh, thousand of anonymous servants, and the leaders of the Christian Ashram movement that enabled an indigenous theology, worship and emerging church forms to arise. This is the country that inspired Lesslie Newbigin and Donald McGavran to think differently about church and mission.

But back to the interview, Brother Flack: Missionary offers insight to Younger Missionaries

Chacko Thomas - What advice would you have for missionaries going to the mission field?

Brother Flack - "Go as a learner. Be prepared to learn from the national people and from the culture of the country. Do not try to make the churches like the one in your own country. Do everything you can to develop indigenous growth. Do not be masters; be servants. Identify in every way you can with the people God puts you among. You are there to establish self-supporting; self-governing and self-propagating churches.

Do not go first to the villages. The Lord and the apostles started in the cities and towns. They were less conspicuous there. When missionaries are mostly among the poor, their converts will be “rice Christians” and any developing leadership will be “yes men.” This is fatal for spiritual development. . . .

Missionaries must be prepared to live a very simple lifestyle. Only then will the people feel we are one of them. National believers who are sent away to Bible school abroad for training are of little use when they return because they have developed a different lifestyle. Our Lord Jesus and the apostles did not establish institutional centres, Bible colleges or schools."

Now is it just me or is this guy not the PATRON FLIPPIN' SAINT of the emerging church?

Previously on TSK: I have talked briefly on the house church movement in this country at Slice of Nicolatia and What can Europe learn from 1ndia? as well as an article I wrote for Christianity Today entitled What did you go out to see?

Eugene Cho, whom I met at Tom and Christine Sine's house in Seattle, is part of a church called Quest and a regular blogger and speaker on all things emerging and missional.

Recently, Eugene started an initiative to end global poverty through tiny gifts. Its called One Day's Wages and its hitting the news big time right now. Which is pretty impressive considering it was launched only . . like . . . last month!  

Here's a snippet or two:

"He [Eugene] asked a village elder what it would take to retain teachers, and they said about $40 each. Not a week. Not a month. “I realized he meant per year,” said Mr. Cho. “It hit me: $40 can make a huge difference.” New York Times

"He wanted to do something. So he thought: Why not start his own global poverty initiative?" Seattle Times

BLOGGERS LISTEN UP. Eugene sent me an email this morning, suggesting that bloggers create a "FUND" via One Day's Wages and "decide collectively where to invest it" and even have ODW guys meet us halfway. Interested? Put some response down in the comments below.

People are already sending in video and this one is the most popular. Buy on itunes or amazon

I think denomination-hopping is for wussies, anyway. And the Anglican communion has launched so many good networks that there's no decent reason to look elsewhere. Here are 10 good reasons for Anglicans to stay Anglicans, each one an Anglican emerging missional church network.

1. Anglimergent, [see my post]

2. Fresh Expressions

3. Churches for the Sake of Others,

4. Resource

5. Small Missional Communities,

6. Dream,

I bet you could think of 4 more and make it an even 10 . . . go on then . . .

Bible and Toilets: The Poverty and Justice Bible has been released. It highlights 2000 verses on poverty and even talks about TOILETS. I have been offered a few copies for readers. So leave a comment below, AND send your full postal address to my email [tallskinnykiwi at gmail dot com] and the first five requests will get a free BIBLE, courtesy of American Bible Society.

Trip to London: Your $5 raffle ticket could win a trip for two to LONDON including accommodatio. And you will be suporting Shannon Hopkins the energetic missional entrepreneur behind Soul Cafe (Texas), Sweet Notions and the Truth isnt Sexy. The drawing is Dec 15, 2009. Email Cathers for details.

Have you attended? Is it worth going?????

[UPDATE] OK - I am going on the 13th. Watch this space.

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.

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss passed away on October 30 at the age of 100. He was one of the greatest thinkers of last century in regards to mythology, anthropology and understanding culture. His bias towards structuralism led him towards universal patterns rather than local particulars so he was at odds with later [post-structural] thinkers like Derrida, Lacan and Foucault but I would imagine that one day we will see it all from a wider perspective and not as incompatible as we now see. In fact, I see in Ferdinand de Saussure the origins of both schools of thought, and many of the influential friends of Lévi-Strauss included people influenced by Saussure.

Since Lévi-Strauss was considered the "father of modern anthropology" I was curious as to what extent he had impacted the cultural anthropology taught in Christian seminaries and mission training institutions. I had already encountered Lévi-Strauss briefly in Paul Hiebert's "Cultural Anthropology", which I studied at Western Seminary. Hiebert's influence on the anthropological training of missionaries was huge, but perhaps more so in USA than other countries

A few years ago, during the final days of Dr. Hieberts life, I was asking how much Hiebert was influence by Levi-Strauss, as well as Saussure, and a blog reader passed on my question to him. Tenny Farnen responded:

"Since I called him up everyday, in the midst of finishing my dissertation with him, I did asked him this afternoon about some of the questions you raised up in the article. With regards to your query whether he is influenced by the anthropology of Claude Levi-Straus, the answer is no. He said that he is more influenced by the classic anthropologists like Hoebel, Spencer, Cliff Browne, and read a lot of Malinowski’s writings. Moreover, he says he has no direct connection with Ferdinand de Saussure. In Hiebert’s book, Missiological Implications of Epistemological Shifts: Affirming Truth in a Modern/Post Modern World (1999, Morehouse Pub. Co), he rejects de Saussure’s structuralism which to Hiebert does create real problem that leads to relativism."

But my curiosity continues. Can anyone else tell me, perhaps from their countries' point of view, what impact the writings of Claude Lévi-Strauss had on the training of their overseas Christian missionaries?

HT: Society of Biblical Literature, who btw are hosting a 'Forum on Missional Hermeneutics' on Nov 21 in New Orleans.

A few years ago the UK experienced a "Deep Church" wave. There were books, blogs, lecture series,  Now the USA is taking a look at this term that C.S. Lewis preferred for his book "Mere Christianity".

Hot off the press is Jim Belcher's book called Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional". I took a quick look this morning.

Initial responses:

- Jim Belcher seems like a lovely guy with a good mind and a big heart. I think we will be meeting up at Lausanne 3 next year in South Africa. Look forward to it.

- Jim has really caught the attention of the American church with this book and it seems to promote unity and understanding. Good.

-. I am a little uncomfortable with the idea that the emerging church emerged out of protest, which Don Carson also suggested in his book. For me, and thousands of others like me, it was a strategic move towards a more sustainable, effective, contextually appropriate way of creating new church structures for a new wave of Jesus followers in a way that jived with the Scriptures AND the denomination's [I was Baptist] framework at the same time. And not having any money to buy buildings or pay pastors salaries meant we just did what we could with what we had and what we could find (coffee shops, etc) . And the traditional denominations and organizations applauded what we were doing and were quick to support it. Of course we had to do a little reminding of what pioneer ministry looks like in our world as well as how it looked like for them when they first started.

- The distance between the traditional and the emerging is not as wide as most people think. Many denominations have a two track (traditional and emerging) strategy reflected in their budget and staffing. I would say most new church starts are actually "emerging" whether planted by traditional or emerging groups. Also, many of the emerging church's key leaders have either been brought on staff on older mission organization or denominations, or they have been deeply embedded all the time and there has not been a significant controversy over doctrine or methodology. The few mavericks get all the attention. Controversy sells.

- A really good review of the book is by Kevin DeYoung, who, despite being on the opposite side of me, comes out with pretty much the same conclusions.

- The Pryos liked it. Who would have thought?

-. The conversation on "deep church" and "deep ecclesiology" happened a few years ago in the UK, and was followed closely by Jason Clark . The key book was Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep Church by Andrew Walker and Luke Bretherton.

- The conversation in the UK pointed back to the Great Tradition, especially as outlined by DH Williams in his two excellent books: Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism; A Primer for Suspicious Protestants which I suggested in my review was a better and more edgy book that his later "Evangelicals and Tradition". Jim Belcher also points to the Great Tradition, and references DH Williams, and I hope his American audience takes note.

- There is plenty of good material online around the subject "deep ecclesiology". I taught on it many times, In fact, I think I coined the word in Europe in 2002. It was later was picked up by Brian McLaren and adopted by Emergent Village officially, and other groups more informally. I dont find Belcher referencing much of this previous conversation. But maybe he is a book person and not a blog person. All the same, Belcher points the church in a good direction and good things will no doubt come of it.

"A deep ecclesiology, from what I have seen, is still around the corner." Andrew Jones, The Ooze, 2002

- I have 200 books on the emerging church and really don't need more unless they significantly add to the conversation. But Jim Belcher's book does and deserves to be on the shelf. However, I am still not convinced that we need a third way. So I will keep on planting new churches as someone equally at home in the traditional and the emerging global mission scene.

The post itself is not very interesting but there were some insightful comments that I guess were interesting reading. Cant remember what they were and I cant remember what the article that I was pointing to said either. Something about why nudes are OK in old Christian paintings but too controversial for photography in the Christian world of the 21st Century.

Nothing to see folks, please move on.

Festival organizer Denny Hurst has asked me to be the VJ [bless his heart] which was a WISE CHOICE! In fact, I really think the entire festival will be all about me and my out-of-this-world video jockeying abilities. Really! Suplementing my video magic will be a number of bands from all over Europe, USA and UK, including Verra Cruz [YEAH!] all of which will do a fine job in accentuating the various subtleties of my pixel painting, brain-numbing transitions, and glorious digital grafitti. Also present will be the legendary Pastor Bob Beeman and Rob Cassels who are probably just coming because they heard that I was the VJ.

Of course the Rock on Christmas story at Myspace is heavily biased towards the music, but its all a matter of perspective.

Hey - wait a minute . . . thats us!

This is me, waking up this morning in Portugal, in a pre-coffee state, standing next to our overlander truck named Maggie. Its a bit small for a family of 7 [and their friends] but we often find ourselves in tight situations where a larger vehicle wouldn't make it.

Because my job has me traveling to out-of-the-way mission projects and social enterprises that are often off the grid, I need a 4x4 truck that can get us there and back again. Its pretty slow on the highway - top speed of 90km - but its reliable. It has an air-cooled 6 cyclinder engine that gets about 14 MPG. Its not much but we carry a lot of people and weight. I call it the Great Commission vehicle.

The most frequent question is about schooling and our 5 children. Answer - we home-school our kids and they love it. Well, actually, my wife Debbie does most of the homeschooling. And right now we have a tudor named Donald who is traveling with us and helping to teach.

We have actually done this "families on the road" thing a fair bit. Our first motorhome was in California in the early 90's. We bought a 1969 Ford based camper van for $2400 and lived in it while I studied at Fuller Seminary in California. In 1998, we traveled around USA in a boring white van, sleeping at National Parks in a tent. A church in Florida took pity on us (Spanish River) and gave us a ten year old Winnebago that was donated to them and all of a sudden we were back to full time life on the road.

Those were great times! In 1999, we covered 25,000 miles around USA, going to almost every state. My job was to help start and encourage new church movements among America's urban youth so it turned out to be a very efficient and economical way of getting around. We went to all the states except the Dakotas.

By 2003, we were living in Europe. We bought an old Czech camper van for $1000 and used it to get around Europe. It died a sad death in Italy, as some of you blog readers might remember.

The next few years we rented a small apartment in Scotland while I flew out to speak at conferences and train church planters. I was gone a third of the time and I struggled to afford getting out to where I often needed to be. And my family felt disconnected from all these overseas projects. Eventually, we decided to get back on the road. We found Maggie for sale for £3500 but it needed a lot of work. Still does. But we are fixing it up as we go along, and as funds become available.

So here we are, on the road again. We have visited a dozen countries already this year and expect to visit nearly 30 by the end of next year. We get to visit the kind of missional entrepreneurs who, despite doing a fantastic job, would probably never attend the kind of conferences I have been teaching at over the years.

And all of this despite a whopping cut to our funds that would have immobilized us if we hadn't switched over to the itinerant lifestyle made possible through a home on wheels. Not saying its always cheap, because there are expenses related to traveling (food costs more) that you dont think about. But it certainly working for us. And about half a million Americans who live on the road. And that number includes quite a few families that travel because its an economical way to arrive at and stay for a while in places that have projects needing people to help.

Any other families like us out there? Love to meet up.

"Dear friends, after a long time in the making I am happy to finally present the release of "The Starfish Manifesto", my latest book. We released it in Antioch this October.   

Why?

The church in the West will use up much of this coming decade to rebound from the financial recession and to restructure in a more sustainable way, much like the church did in the 1930's after the Great Recession which started about 1929. As a response to the financial bruising on the Western church system (church, seminary, publishing. parachurch, conference - all of which are co-dependent and therefore suffering together), new forms of Christian based co-operative structures will emerge, as they did with Toyohiko Kagawa in 1930's Japan.

I wrote in 1999 that the next decade (this present decade) would see young people "turn old church buildings into art lounges". That happened. But in this new decade, many of these new art lounges, recording studios, coffee houses, craft spaces, and new media labs will move to a deeper level of involvement and empowerment.

In the next decade, a stronger business sense will inform these new forms as well as assist the new monastic communities and traditional churches in general. In a concerted effort to get church ministry on a solid financial footing, or to start new ministries with a diminished budget, many traditional churches will offer their buildings mid-week as micro-business enterprise labs and will become micro-credit unions for their local communities. The word "fellowship" will regain its meaning of sharing and risk-taking. Emerging church energies will be re-directed from creative worship arts to creative social enterprises which will enable long term sustainability. In both realms, women will come to the front as some of the most successful missional entrepreneurs

1930' s writings from theologians Barth and Bonhoeffer will continue in their popularity (no-brainer) but we will also revisit Dorothy Day (USA) and Dorothy Sayers (UK).

Having already "re-traditioned" and "re-sourced" our theological and missiological base for church and mission, we will feel more confident to launch out further into the world with transformational models that will change the world without draining the next generation's resources. The next decade will be a time of sustainable outreach, measurable by a far more holistic criteria of success (4 bottom lines?) and we will find helpful and surprising precedents in the 1930's.

But then again, I am not a prophet and I could be horribly and embarrassingly WRONG!