Total Church Conference

The final schedule for the Total Church Conference was just released and I am pretty pumped for it.  Even though I am familiar with several of the speakers, they seem to be presenting new stuff or at least new slants on it.  I am still reading Total Church by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester, but I like them already and they are pretty new to me.

From the website:

“Total church is a way of thinking about church and mission in the 21st century which sees the local Christian community as integral to Christian living and Christian mission. The Christian life is ‘total church’ – our identity is communal.”

Each of these speakers are on the forefront of the current missional discussion.  Timmis and Chester lead a network of church communities in the UK called The Crowded House, and the other presenters are leading missional churches in areas (Tacoma, San Diego) with a lot of similarities to central Austin.  This should be the most theologically  practical conference I have attended in a long time.

Oh, and I am going with the very awesome and brilliant church planter, Jonathan Dodson.  Fortunately his humility will keep his intellect from making me look bad.

Here are the main sessions:

A Community-centered Gospel – Steve Timmis
A Gospel-centered Community – Steve Timmis
Rethinking Attractional Church – Tim Chester
Remodeling Attractional Church – Steve Timmis
Making Disciples for Missional Church – Tim Chester
Making Disciples in Missional Church – Tim Chester

And some breakout highlights:

Being neighbors: a gospel strategy
Forming a gospel community
One-anothering: a communal gospel
Evangelizing the urban poor
Reading cultural texts
Out of the frying pan… (moving from traditional to missional)
Communication in a post-Christian world
Reaching the domains of society
Developing missional leaders
Urban discipleship

So I am pumped to go and pumped to be going with Dodson.  It should be a great learning time from some gifted practitioners, and my prayer is that it helps me in leading Soma Austin Community Church and being an agent of renewal in the city.