Innovative mission training underway

Around 60 people have attended recent Missional Masterclass training sessions at The Ark Salisbury Lutheran Church in South Australia and at Our Saviour Lutheran Church Rochedale in Queensland.

Two new LCA evangelism resources were launched and explored during the sessions.

New Life New Love by Rev Dr Noel Due is a biblically based discussion resource, which explores God’s invitation to participate in new life and new love in Christ as the Holy Spirit creates faith and helps that faith to grow.

In Lighthouses: Christian Coaching in a Post-Christian World, LCA Church Planting Mentor and Mission Facilitator Dean Eaton has teamed up with Christian clinical psychologist Dr Paul Whetham to propose a fresh approach to gospel-sharing, based on a coaching model.

It presents a model for engaging with people who are barely curious about the gospel or even openly resistant to it.

‘This new book explains how to engage people in a “wellbeing conversation” that leads naturally to an exploration of their identity in God’, Dean said. ‘It draws heavily on materials developed by Dr Whetham for Soul Food Café, an online resource centre for contemporary gospel-sharers. The basic idea is that by transforming community meeting places and church cafes into informal sacred spaces where people “do life together”, you can embark on the search for meaning and give voice to the deeper things of the soul.’

Both resources are recommended for people looking for a fresh approach to mission and evangelism.

Future Missional Masterclasses will be held this month in Sydney, in April in Albury New South Wales, in May in Melbourne and Canberra and in July in Perth. For more information, and to register for upcoming sessions, go to www.lca.org.au/departments/local-mission/ and click on the Lighthouses drop-down from the New & Renewing Churches pointer above ‘Resources’.