"City Vision" - 1st European City Reaching consultation

Sept 10-12, 2001, Luke's Fellowship, Berlin

Origins

Already in 2000, we realized that one of the developments in Europe was the forming of city-wide strategic networks to reach whole cities with the whole gospel through the whole church. In the DAWN European Network conference in February 2001, we saw that there are many cities with prayer networks but few who were going a step further and working strategically. The plan of a European consultation arose.

Berlin

The new German capital is central, has more than 3 Mio. people in need of Christ, and a city-wide network of leaders is emerging, even with a full-time coordinator. The pastor of the hosting church, Hans-Peter Pache, has a heart for networking and church planting. We met in his church from which several daughter churches and house church networks have emerged in past years. The church accommodated us in an excellent, serving and loving way.

Jack Dennison

We agreed on Jack Dennison as guest speaker. Everyone had to read his book in advance so that there was a common ground of understanding and no need to talk about absoulute "basics". Jack was aware that the European situation and mentality is very much different from the American one, and he succeeded very well in adapting and blending his and our points of view. His style of teaching was very creative, succeeding in a common learning process.

The participants

We were 29 participants from: Switzerland (3), Czech Republic (1), Germany (8), Italy (2), Norway (2), The Netherlands (6), Sweden (1), Finland (1), UK (4) and USA (1). Practically all were already engaged or very much interested in a strategic city reaching process.

The Learning process

Some topics:
· What is City Reaching? Why is it important today? The global perspective - since yr. 2000 the world more urban than rural.
· In spite of evangelical growth - the negative factors of our societies grow faster. Why is this so and what can be done to reverse this?
· What are the most common roadblocks to a strategic citywide process?
· How important it is to work together as churches in a city, as parts of the body
We discussed:
· The closure paradigm (versus "just growth"). Although it is accepted in many places of the 2/3-world, Europeans partly have problems accepting it.
· What is the goal? What do we need to achieve in our cities? This is a key question that needs to be further worked through theologically, missiologically and strategically.

We identified some of the main roadblocks for a city reaching process:
1. Not being able to define or to agree on the goal(s) - what do we want to achieve?
2. Pastoral inside view versus apostolic outside view. Churches are usually led by pastors, not by evangelistic or even apostolic leaders. Most pastors ask "what does my church need" instead of "what does our city need". Leaders mindset / paradigm shift needed
3. Lack of faith / Fervent prayer
4. A Citywide apostolic team is missing, engaging other leaders with the vision
5. Denominational walls
6. Time and priorities for this task vs. current activities

In the midst of the conference, the terrible tragedy of Sept 11 brought us to our knees and into a prayer time for hours, making it very clear that it is not a "sand-box-game". Satan is targeting cities - so is God.

Practical outcomes

a) We defined some types/stages of a city reaching process
For easy understanding, we categorized cities into four groups:

1. A city where regular pastor's and/ or inter-church prayer meetings are held (many) Milano, Utrecht
2. a city of 1. plus goal(s) defined that reach out into society (less) Berlin, Rotterdam Oslo (close to 3)
3. A city of 1. plus 2. plus some tactics applied (even less) Bergen, Thun
4. A city of 1. plus 2. plus 3. plus a long-term strategy defined/applied (a few) Liverpool

b) We defined the cities we knew in terms of these categories (see above)

c) We chose as Pilot cities: Berlin, Liverpool, Bergen, Thun, Humber-Wash.
Reinhold will gather material from these cities/areas and make it available on the DAWN website. All of us will exchange informations and take special interest in what these city networks are doing.

d) We decided to connect among each other and thus start a European City Reaching network.

e) We will meet next at the Hope for Europe conference 2002 in Budapest and then at one of the model cities. We will connect with the Hope for Europe City Track and look for common ground.

f) Until we have a European City Reaching coordinator, R.Scharnowski will serve as contact person to Jack D. and as City Vision coordinator, in team with Marc van der Woude and Oyvind Bjoerkly.