September 28, 2005

Our first gathering has been planned for Sept. 28th from 10am - 4pm at Camp Crestfield.

Here's the invitation and info so far:

we are trying to get together a Pittsburgh Missional Church Cohort that would meet once a month for a day of retreat, prayer, conversation, contemplation and study. I am taking initiative with this to get the conversation started and will willing serve as the coordinator but need others to help grow the cohort. Here is what I am thinking.

We will gather the last Wednesday of each month (starting September 28th) from 10 am – 4 pm at Camp Crestfield in Slippery Rock, PA to get out of the city a bit. The day would flow something like this:

9:00 Travel time
10:00 Arrive and gather together
10:30 Personal solitude, retreat, prayer and contemplation (there are trails, a labyrinth and a fireplace in the winter)
12:00 Lunch (bring your own)
1:00 Missional Church Conversation
3:30 Prayer
4:00 Departure

We realize that not everyone will be able to make each gathering so we will be starting a blog that will post a summary of each month’s conversation which will allow others to contribute to the ongoing monthly conversation. Secondly, in order to facilitate the best conversation we will limit each months gathering to 15 people. So you will need to RSVP each month so we can plan for food and make sure we do not have too many people.

Here are the ways you can contribute to the Pittsburgh Missional Church cohort
Take notes during our conversation and post it to the blog
Set up and manage the blog
Provide a monthly topic, article, story, ministry scenario that will springboard our afternoon conversation (I will take care of September).
Bring snacks to share
Feel free to invite others but initially we will limit this cohort to 15 people per month and see how it goes from there.

For our first afternoon conversation we will talk about what characterizes the Emerging Church and how that relates to us. We will use two articles to springboard us:
Alan Roxburgh
and Doug Pagitt's Relevant Magazine article. I'm posting it below.

Let me know if you can come in September!
Directions to Camp Crestfield