I spent last week in Germany speaking at events held by several networks of church leaders involved in both missional and emergent conversations. My first stop was in Erlangen (just outside Nuremberg) at a conference on missional church put together by a coalition of young leaders seeking to frame an emergent conversation across Germany. I then travelled to Marburg for a one day conference sponsored by Marburg Bible Seminary attended by some 270 leaders from across the country.

What impressed me about each event was the leaders giving shape to the conversation. They belong to both the State and free churches. What impressed me was the absence of criticism toward existing churches. I observed a core of high quality men and women with a deep love for and respect toward the tradition that has shaped the church in Germany.

I spent last Thursday evening and Friday in Edmonton, Canada at the annual Breakforth Canada Conference. I hadn’t been to this event before but was invited to do a one day workshop with the generic title of “Missional” with no modifiers attached. This was a delightful change from other events where the missional language has some modifier, such as ‘church’ attached to it and one has to spend a lot of time explaining why missional isn’t primarily about church.

Last week I travelled into New Mexico and Colorado meeting with pastors, congregational leaders and executives across several different denominations. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, I met Harry Chronos, Pastor of White Rock Presbyterian with a number of other pastors in the community. Harry had connected with me about the Moving Back into the Neighborhood workshop that Mark Lau Branson and I had led in San Diego several months earlier. Harry’s church is wrestling with the question of how their church could faithfully follow Christ into the neighborhoods of Los Alamos.