I just attended (Nov. 23rd) the Scandinavian Consultation for Church Planting in Copenhagen Denmark hosted by DAWN Scandinavia and SALT (Scandinavian Academy of Leadership and Theology). While I was driving down from Gothenburg, with my friend Marcus Fritsch (CA), I thought about how cool it is to be going to the City of Kierkegaard to attend a Consultation on Church Planting with an emphasis on the Emerging Church.Kierkegaard is the father of Existentialism, which IMHO gave birth to the PoMo (post-modern) era, which gave birth to the EC (Emerging Church). There are those who would disagree with me that Existentialism was the mother of PoMo.
If PoMo is the mother of EC then I suppose that SK would be a Grandfather. SK talks about either/or and EC is more about both/and. SK talks about the Individual and EC talks about Community. SK talks about Subjective Truth and well so does EC. I guess it is there that the DNA connects. This would be a good topic for deep discussion.
Dr. Martin Robinson leader of Together in Mission UK was the key speaker at the consultation. He had two talks, The Challenge we face in Europe and Finding the First Fifty, a missiology for church planting in the cities of today’s Europe. There was a time for a responds from delegates from Sweden: Michael Martinson (EFS), Norway: Helge Standal (Luthern Church), Denmark: Anders Michael Hansen (SALT), Europe: Reinhold Scharnowski (DAWN Europe).
I think DAWN is going to post more information about these talks on their site.
There were six seminars we could choose to attend. I attended the one on Church Planting in the emergent generation. The Blog Guru Andrew Jones also known as the Tall Skinny Kiwi from the UK and Marc Van Der Wolf of Holland held it.
Andrew talked about Church planting in the Emerging Culture as telling stories, having parties, making friends and giving gifts, Church happens on the way, Post-Modernism as Complexity. Mark followed up by talking about Church as community and the different forms of Church, which was followed by a Q&A time or better said a Q&Q time since in the EC questions are answered by more questions.
We had a delicious buffet severed Danish style. I was happy they served Turkey cordon bleu since it was Thanksgiving Day (USA). I stuffed my plate full just as I would at home on Thanksgiving. I had the privilege of having dinner with Andrew Jones who stuffed his plate more then mine. Thanks again Andrew for hanging out and the conversation over a T-day dinner.
I met a Danish brother (I am half Danish by blood thus the name Molgaard) by the name of Steffen Boeskov he is doing some cool things with his church in Copenhagen. I hope to hear more from him what is happing there.
I also met Linda and Terje Aadne from Norway. They are planting a church somewhere around the Oslo Airport. I would like to visit them sometime.
I talked with Michael Matinson briefly. We both thought it would be a good idea to get some sort of EC or Missional round table started in Sweden. As Michael pointed out in his talk Sweden is possibly the most secular nation in the world and I would say leads the PoMo way. We as a church should be talking together about how we can reach a PoMo culture in Sweden.
Marcus and I visited the little mermaid, walked along the famous Nyhavn harbor and the shopping streets of Copenhagen and drove home listening to Meatloaf’s new CD. What passion!
