DAY SIXTEEN: MONDAY APRIL 3 TOWNSVILLE: CROSSLINK LEADERS ROUND TABLE

Today we began the first of two days of regional cluster meetings with Crosslink pastors and a few other leaders associated with them either as oversight or other. We planned this from last year in response to the need to ensure that the Crosslink Churches all have working relationships with apostolic oversight. It is also a time to pursue whether the network might push ahead to create some kingdom advance through the values they represent in a given area. It is a big call in a way. We are not a dispirit group, but we are a very different collection of churches with no designated common agenda. We had a discussion at the last Conference somewhere to see whether we were in reality a car park or a roadway.

If we are a car park, we are just here to allow churches to park themselves if they have no other place to park. It doesn’t mean the churches are going nowhere, it means that Crosslink just provides a convenient place for their national identity to sit. We simply provide a few services to keep them safe and maybe offer a car detailing service and minor mechanical repairs if needed (and I think if I go any further the analogy will get way beyond any usefulness).

If we are a roadway of some sort it means that God has brought us together, perhaps even in a Moravian-like way (the Moravians began as a bunch of refugees from religious persecution in the eighteenth century and found a place to stay on the estate of Count Zinzendorf and became one of the great movements of God and influencers of the advance of Christian purpose across a number of centuries), then our ad hoc beginnings may well be part of some greater sovereign plan to give witness to some spiritual values and the advance of the kingdom of God as a collective. Perhaps because we have nothing to defend and because we are no threat to anyone, God could use us to bear testimony to the values of an expression of church that is yet to emerge. Not to infer that it is a house church or new church as has been described by some current observers (e.g. George Barna and James Rutz). Not that at all, but we could hold a revelation of the kingdom of God that has not yet been widely adopted. We could hold a view of apostolic and prophetic leadership that has not yet been seen in the church. We could represent a commitment to missional identity that we have only seen glimpses of in the Western church. Or maybe its “Dream on Brian……”

Anyway, I don’t want to die with the song still inside me, or die wondering as the footy coaches like to talk about. I want to go there and see what might happen.

So we had a number of hours to talk about all this stuff with a very high quality bunch of people. I shared some of my observations about the Crosslink story. Everyone talked about changes that had come in their lives because of someone’s input that had left a deposit of the Word of God in their ministry. This is an apostolic function by the way and a prophetic one. Everyone was ready to share and we witnessed some sacred stuff that had happened in people’s lives. After that, Rob talked about what the apostolic and prophetic looked like and why what we have seen in the past has such gaping holes when it comes to an application of e.g. Ephesians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 12:28 and the like. We had discussion around these things and after lunch watched a video clip that pointed out some of the glaring holes in the community that need a word (action ) from heaven, matters of justice and mercy from God.

Rob Holmes mentioned a book that has been out for just a while that picked up some of this stuff and was talking about the same book as Ian Shelton had been reading on our way around the nation. Its called “Gods’ Politics” by Jim Wallis. It does contain some strong Biblical warnings about our propensity to take our cue from contemporary Christian culture rather than a Biblical and prophetic standpoint. We end up choosing a party policy rather than something that resounds with the cry of God’s heart for people he loves. Wallis says the issue is almost always justice, not moral values. He has some interesting applications of that and all of them are ones that we may not agree with, but the principle is still the same. It turned us to a time of prayer and we called on God to use us in the bigger purpose.

After the session Rob and Graeme and I found a place to drink coffee or a less addictive alternative and we did a review of the day and tried to set up some directions for tomorrow. That conversation went on till after 6:00 and we headed home, only to come right onto a car accident about a kilometer from Matthew and Kathy’s house. We had to give a bit or support to the people involved. No one was hurt, thankfully. After about fifteen minutes fire and safety and ambulance turned up (the tow trucks had been there for quite some time of course) but the police had not arrived by the time it was okay for us to leave. There had been a lane of traffic closed by the accident and it was on a long stretch of straight road so there was a need to slow down the traffic so that they could merge lanes. Graeme did a good job at that.

After tea with the Bolte family Matthew, Kathy, Rob and I had a long conversation about many issues that our hosts were facing in the city and beyond. Issues to do with the fragmentation of the prayer movement with the prayer for Israel group pulling in one direction and the Wagner and Co in another. There was yet another coming out of Britain and maybe one more that I have forgotten. They (rightly I believe) have some concerns about this and we shared some insights and tried to figure out where to walk on the road ahead. There was also stuff about prophetic ministry and prophets and leadership in cities and regions. We talked about para-church ministries and how they fitted with churches and how churches fitted with them. What they both represented. It was a very good and useful time. I am always encouraged when people who don’t collude find things in their heart that they mightn’t even be able to express fully, but that resonate with what God has been saying to others. The collective is always much more fun to gain clarity of understanding and strength of conviction than trying to get it all on your own. The trick is to choose the right collective….and I don’t just mean the little group of people who you know think just like you.