More On Gathering: Life-giving Movements vs History Making Events

I’m aiming for a short post today. In the buildup to Parachute 2010 and coming out of my season at NYWC, my history with Eastercamp and other events in the spectrum – I’m thinking more and more about gatherings.

The Tipping Point
I loved encouraging, resourcing and inspiring youth workers with my work through Eastercamp – examining different expressions of community participation in experiential worship and story. But a one-off experience isn’t enough to sustain long-term or ongoing change. My tipping point, especially with the rest of the team was the shift we were making in core values. For a long time, the core value was fulfilling the role of resourcing and serving youthworkers. There was a point at which another focus, on numbers and getting bigger and bigger took over. It was based out of a genuine motive – we wanted to be as impacting as possible. But as a leadership team there were two very different ideas as to how to get there.

We had been experiencing consistent growth for about 9 years at this point – every year increasing 7 – 23% of our overall numbers. One idea was to throw everything at strategies that would attract other large denominational numbers and independent churches to join us.

I came to the realization that the best possible strategy long term, was to become a movement of youthworkers and communities, rather than a one-off event. Even though we were denominational in roots and history, we had expanded beyond the sense of connection our denominational ties allowed for, and limited/confused as to how to incorporate other values/practices/flavours into our event. However, a movement has a unique ability to draw diversity into unity, based around common purpose.

We could have greater long term relationship and support with youthworkers if we continued to find ways of expressing, sharing and developing our values (community, gospel, fun, locally connected, financially accessible) throughout 365 days of the year.

(Sidebar: It’s actually incredibly easy for events with the right staff to begin to do this nowadays, because of the influence and emergence of social media tools as methodology for creating personality and energy within a set of ideals, even if that ‘community’ only connects annually, bi-monthly etc.)

Follow some of my semi-chronological thoughts…

1. If you want to gather people together – you need more than a reason. You need a common value, a common love, a common cause. You need something that engages both an intellectual, emotional and spiritual reaction.

2. In order to gather people together again and again – you need more than a cause, you need a movement.

3. The best movements are chapters in the story of a Tribe, a community of people connected in some way  that share commonality of values and/or expression of those values and within the history of a Tribe there may be several movements. Similarly there may be movements shared by multiple Tribes..

4. One-off events make history & “do you remember when” stories in the history of Tribes. They are great moments that inspire the future but in of themselves, they are not the future. They are turning point gatherings, or reconciliation gatherings, or healing gatherings..

5. The future is carried forward by life-giving movements that gather for the sake of gathering, because when they are together, the story continues. Movements are embodied by a set of values or principles.

6. The most sustainable business model for those communities that wish to be Gatherers, is to build movements, rather than events. Creating a movement is about shaping leaders, people, listening to the ongoing expressions and finding ways of broadcasting that to the rest of the Tribe, sharing it with the rest of the movement. One-off events connect people to a place and time, but a movement invites people into an ongoing story – in essence, a shift between “I heard x & y at z?” to “I am talking with x & y. Simplified but it works.

7. Movements find their health in other places than numbers. They still need to make their budgets, but often values of a movement overtake the values of an individual or justification. Multiple not-for-profits demonstrate this, when a commitment to getting dollars to the field, overtakes the desire for clever and aesthetically pleasing marketing materials.

8. Of course, if the movements are shaped by leaders, voices, prophets, etc – then the most interesting question becomes.. how do you build a Tribe? A tribe has to be sustaining.. in other words, there must be space in the natural order for the young to be constantly arriving and growing. This is an incredible challenge withing our culture.

The shift from being an event to a movement changes loyalty, ownership and expectation on the part of the organization as well as the customer/client. However, the long term benefits outweigh the bumps in the road. Movements can exist equally well in micro and macro climates – because they can operate by different rules than one time events. Similarly, you can’t simply duplicate a one time event model and think you’ve created a movement. The rules of Movement are clear – commonality in purpose/values/cause and connectedness.

More later… what do you think so far?

Gathering Together.

In late 2009, a friend of mine made some pretty strong statements about the future of conventions, conferences and gatherings in the Christian ministry world. I really like Mark Riddle and you can read his thoughts here. There are about 7 posts and you’d do well to read them all. I told him I was going to write a response and here it is. Not a theological positioning statement .. just a collection of thoughts. But first some background, so you know the context I’m coming from.

I was in the middle of working on NYWC with Youth Specialties right in the middle of a really crazy season in the history and future of the company. In the middle of recession, owned by an ‘about-profit’ company, competing in a market full of youth ministry and leadership conferences and training opportunities.. for sure, there has been cause to ask some serious questions about the nature of our gatherings.

We were also working with some of the core talent from Catalyst, one of the conventions Mark talks about. It brought a very different flavour to our events, which I think highlighted, in many ways the nature of the discussion that was bubbling away.

And bubbling away it was…late at night in hotel rooms and over meals with folks I have been exceedingly grateful for..Mark Riddle, Mike King, Adam McLane… they were spillover of conversations with Marko, and others here in NZ too. I was excited to find that innovations I had worked on here in terms of experiential storytelling, programming, interactive gatherings and tribal narrative were also being talked about and expressed with folks like the Imago community and at Youthfront.


At the same time… I was conscious of how my own experiences of ‘gathering’ had changed in the last year. In addition to moving home churches and reassessing those values in my own life, I was then overseas and looking for a place to land.


I was listening to the stories… of many of my friends and then some former students who were bowing out of church life and the “gathering way” for the first time. Processing and understanding what that ‘space’ meant for them on the road.

Here’s my response to Mark in a nutshell….

I think we collectively understand there is a primal need to gather. There’s something important that we intrinsically are drawn towards as a tribal gathering.

My thoughts could be expounded with lots of reasoning and example.. but I think it’s simple enough to state the one question that resounds in my mind.

What shall we do when we gather together? Not how, where, who should gather, who should lead, who should plan, who should pay… but, what shall we do when we gather.

Our western thinking leads us towards a linear development of timeline, a sense that a gathering begins with a purpose and all things lead towards that purpose. However, a circular or mountain/valley shaped development would suggest that the gathering itself becomes a catalyst or causes precipitation of whatever is to occur when we gather. 

That there would be a calling together (it’s easy to think of this in Maori for me.. although a simplified version)… a meeting, breaking of bread, sharing of breath…and a celebration.
– a karanga, a calling of the people into the marae (home base), this signals the beginning of “gathering” as locals welcome visitors onto their home turf.
– much wiata (song) & karakia (prayer) – both equally as important expressions as speaking alone in the Maori culture
– speaking and dialogue
– eating together, resting together, playing together
– departing..

 Historically, our faith talks inherently of the importance of gathering. I agree with Mark’s point that we gather too often to listen to singular voices – he calls them experts. I want for us to gather more often to listen to many voices, and to hear many stories.

But I also think that what we have spent our time and energy in, especially for YS in the last 40 years, has not been wasted. I think something good and meaningful in all the models, has – like anything – the capacity to lose it’s purpose or intent.

Here it is for me: I won’t separate it like Mark does, to defining the value and place of expertise. Nor do I want to tear away the holy work that the Spirit in constantly going about in open hearts, whether by practical skill, theological discourse or ideological construct, however…

I will say that when we assume that we gather to share or expound to others an already determined endpoint, we are mistaken. That would suggest we have finished a journey and have gathered to share the story. But our stories remain undone, with loose ends and unknown final endings.. just ask Bill Hybels at Willow Creek, or Doug Fields or just about anyone else about the time they realized they were still in the middle of the story. So, my hope in the future is that we gather with a profound sense that we gather in the middle of the story – with something to say, something to ask, something to offer, something to listen to, with an open hand to receive something in return. 


That’s why I believed in Open Space dialogues at NYWC. They were a great opportunity for something to spark and start in the midst of our gatherings. How we frame those conversations needs work. Which is why I think we need to start asking the right questions, rather than trying to solve the wrong problems. 

I’ve realized too, that the magnetic point that draws me to my own ‘gathering space’ has not been the purpose of the gathering. I do not gather on Sundays for the theological presentations, nor for song along. I gather for the experience of being together and what will come from our gathered expression.

Might sound a bit airy-fairy, but the reality is that the same authenticity drew me to the most unusual gatherings in my travels too, yet they held the same mystique, comfort, wonder and God-full-ness as my home community.

Alister McGrath talks about the power of Incarnation being caught in the moment of ‘the revelation of the Glory of God’..that by the time the head and mind catch up, the heart is already won in the visible wonder of the revelation. The Incarnation holds so much power for us, because it wins us in the intangible, yet visible and allows us the space to reason with it.

I believe much the same experience to be necessary and truthful as we look to what new tribal gatherings will express or be or mean. What does it mean to be global or national or regional? It begins with a call to gather, a present revelation of who God is and then the catalyst of being with one another.. to see what happens, to record a story for ourselves and future generations and then to bathe luxuriously in the wonder and possibility of what it means and how it can impact us, before we leave again, our memories and stories interwoven and connecting us to those spaces.

Read that like a narrative and hopefully you see mountaintops and plateaus, valleys of expression and plenty of places where time becomes crucial.. to be able to spend it.