Wow — can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted last. So here are three posts in a row. We had a fantastic SCO two weekends ago. SCO is short for Staff Candidate Orientation: a four-day training weekend for people with an interest in joining Christian Associates.
What made it so good?
- the participants: 4 Dutch people from Holland (good friends of mine); 2 Dutch people living in Belgium; a Dutch/Canadian couple living in Holland but with an interest of doing ministry in France; and an American guy from Dallas, living in Munich, Germany and working with our Citychurch project there. A wonderful crowd!
- Working with Al and Elisabeth Dyck, Phil and Laina Graf and Jeannie Folbrecht. Great teamwork. Oh… and of course Sophie too!
On Sunday we visited the Graf’s in Amsterdam. Phil and Laina taught on missional living (pictured above). They did a great job — nice to have them do this before they move to Portugal (their house is for sale here | pictures by yours truly here)
After it was all over I thought it would be a whole year before we would have another SCO. But already we have a number of people who want to go through one sooner than that. Right now we are planning for one in the fall.
Had an interesting thought about the SCO during the weekend. We should not think about the SCO as a giant sales-pitch, but rather as a time during which we talk about the mission we are on – and for which we are looking for fellow mountain-climbers. Our desire is to see a new church planting movement spread all over Europe. That’s a bit like climbing a really tall and somewhat dangerous mountain. Not everyone can participate in that: it’s sometimes dangerous, requires skill and it certainly is difficult. So during SCO we talk about ‘our mountain’ and this effort — and then we carefully select who we want to work with. Sounds exclusive? Well, it is a little bit. I’ve never done any physical mountain-climbing, but I’m told accidents do happen. As they do in church planting. Better we protect ourselves and each other by moving forward carefully and strategically.
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