Develop a Discipleship System
Fresh Expressions UM Preconference at General Conference
By Michael Beck and Jessica Taylor
Join us on Monday, April 22, 2024, from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. at First Charlotte United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a Fresh Expressions Preconference titled, “Fresh Expressions: Spirit-led, Trauma-informed, Evangelism, Discipleship, and Church Planting for the Continuing UMC,” hosted by Fresh Expressions United Methodist.
Post-Christendom has brought new challenges, and the church’s wellbeing is inextricably linked to how it seeks the wellbeing of the world around it. Attractional-only forms of church are not connecting with most people. We now need a blended ecology of inherited and Fresh Expressions of church (i.e., attractional and missional, gathered and sent, analog and digital) to thrive on a new missional frontier.
Jesus said, “Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved” (Matthew 9:17 NRSV). The blended ecology is a and/both way of being church.
A Fresh Expression is a form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church. It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission, and making disciples. It will have the potential to become a mature expression of church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church and for its cultural context. These compassion-centered communities can be analog, digital, or hybrid.
This movement equips the whole people of God, the “priesthood of all believers” to be unleashed in new ways to join the Spirit’s work of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. During this preconference, you will learn practical skills and competencies to become a movement that reaches new people, in new places, and in new ways.
Some of the speakers will include Bishop Ken Carter, Bener Agtarap, Michael Adam Beck, Stephanie Moore-Hand, Jessica Taylor, Luke Edwards, and Kris Sledge.
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