It’s been a while since I wrote up anything from the Sydney Intensives but seeing as though Anthea Smitts sessions were of particular interest to Phil I thought I’d better get to it.

Urban Life describes itself on it’s web site:

Having it’s origins in Christian Life Centre Ringwood, urbanlife began its journey as a church plant in January 2005. In August of the same year urbanlife Café and Community Centre opened its doors for the first time, realising our desire to be a community resource located in the heart of our city.

The journey from a well established, traditional church to a new, experimental community of faith arose from a conversation that began in 1997. The conversation asked such questions as; “What does it look like to follow Jesus in a Post Modern Society?” and “What does it mean to be a community who are committed to issues of justice and mercy in our local community?” The answers to these questions resulted in the urbanlife community committing to re-invest our assets and live for the well-being of local communities.

As urbanlife continues this exciting journey of faith, our hope is that we would echo God’s story to those around us, encouraging spiritual creativity and including all in discovering God’s story for mankind.

Anthea spoke at two sessions, in the first session she spoke on leadership styles utilising examples from, of all things, The Wizard of Oz with particular attention to Dorothy as leader. During Anthea’s 2nd session she outlined the processes she used to re-missionalise (a term borrowed from CEGM and it’s description of Anthea) and direct Urban Life’s transformation. Anthea was absolutely brilliant and inspiring - she would be an exceptional person to work with. Urban Life are looking for a new Cafe Manager if anyone down in Melbourne is interested - the Urban Life link above will take you to the position description page on their web site.

Session One
What gives us the right to lead?
There is more to leadership than telling people what to do.

Dorothy as Leader

Dorothy gathers people on a quest, she invites them to join her on a journey and becomes the glue that keeps them all together. She is compassionate, rises to each challenge as it comes upon her and her band of journiers, she is encouraging where others are disparaging - her motto is “Let’s do it”.

Dorothy encourages by listening to peoples stories which draws out what each person needs. She draws out the best in others and helps them to find what they already had within themselves! Alan Hirsch says similar stuff - the answers to finding the forgotten ways, the ways that will cause the gospel to spread like a viral infection, are not far away from us - in fact we already have the answers within each one of us.

Dorothy shows determination, inclusiveness (come and join us - she didn’t just collect Tin Men, or just lions, or just scarecrows - she welcomed and embraced diversity).

Anthea went on to describe the qualities of leadership that will transform, leadership that take people on a journey. CEO (slick rhetoric/know it all/I’m the leader that’s why you should follow me) style leadership works for a while, however te church needs to see Dorothy style leaders to emerge - people who invite other people on a journey.

Character and Heart attitudes:

- All day everyday our leadership is on display
- leadership is not about people following us in some church program but about following us to find Jesus - taking other peoples hands to place them in the hand of Jesus
- How is it that help people find Jesus? Is our character Christ like? Phillipias 2:4 Each of you should not look to your own interests…

Other people give us the right to lead - who is following us (your not leading if no-one is following) There needs to be something in us that’s worth following.
God gives us the right and calls us to lead -Matthew 20:20-28.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 3:05 pm by Greg the explorer and is filed under Forge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.