Thanks John. It's not a huge secret who the couple was - Eric and Kimberly Tonn. I'm not sure if you ever met them or not. He came to Denver after finishing at UGA a couple years ago and was excited to get back near family.

As for perceptions of ATL and Denver, I think you're right. Your experience shapes your perceptions about a place, but often those perceptions are also shaped by your own actions. Great point. Thanks for reading and for commenting!

Thanks John! Great to hear from you. I appreciate you taking the time to read it, and I'm glad it provided some helpful insight. Hope all is well in Capetown!

Hahaha! Agreed!

Very cool Lisa. If discipleship is something you've been thinking about I'd definitely recommend checking out some of the info from 3DM. In particular the book Building a Discipling Culture was helpful in thinking through developing a language and creating environments for discipleship to happen. I think we need more people bridging the gap between what we understand about spiritual formation and people working in the church to bring that knowledge to bear in discipling relationships that shape and form people. I've been thinking a lot about that...lots more to say in future posts. Thanks for tracking. :-)

Thanks Steve. Hope you and Bianca and Shep are doing great. I probably owe you a phone call to catch up one day. Lots of changes in NP world these days!

Hey Gene,
Thanks so much for tracking with us! You'll have to take a road trip and come visit us one day. Hope you, Jackie and the whole fam are doing great.

I'll second your comment about Denver Andrew, with some qualifiers. We are definitely finding that some people without any church background are regularly coming to New Denver's Sunday gathering. This is almost completely due to relationships with people in our community who invite them. We still see the weekly gathering as a safe, predictable opportunity for people to introduce their unbelieving friends to our community, but it is not the only or even the best. I'd say we still have more active ongoing connections of influence with non-believers through people living intentional, missional lives in their neighborhoods and workplaces and through our small groups and our young adults mid-sized community than we do from our Sunday service. We recognize that it takes a lot of missional/relational work to get most truly unchurched people to a place that they have any interest in coming to a Sunday service.

I think our bigger concern, which is slightly outside the scope of this discussion (but not much), is how what we're doing forms people spiritually and what the effect of a fairly standard Sunday service (i.e. prayer, singing, teaching, sacraments, fellowship) specifically has on forming people for mission. I think you'd agree that if we're going to reach the unchurched people of Denver it will have to be by our community going out and engaging them. They're not going to come to us on their own. Which is I think Dave's main point in this post.

Great post Dave. We look forward to seeing you at the Ecclesia national gathering next month.

I took the $20 I received and invested it in a micro-finance loan through Kiva.org. I chose to invest my money in Gicela Yocedt Vargas Camacho. Gicela is 35 years old and has an 11-year-old son. She is married and lives in the canton of Chillanes, located in the Bolívar province of Ecuador. She requested a loan from Cooperative San Jose, a partner of Kiva.org, to invest in her two businesses – selling clothing and her call center. More specifically, she is asking for the loan to purchase phone cards, pre-paid call time, and to buy clothing to sell. The loan support will provide a better life for her son who is ill. Her dream is to buy a house because she is currently renting a small house. It is difficult because she sometimes does not have the money and is afraid that she won’t be able to support her son or buy medicine because she is somewhat sick as well. If you'd like to read more about Gicela or invest in her loan request go to http://www.kiva.org/lend/236151.

When Gicela repays her loan I will reinvest the money in another project. So as long as the loans are re-payed, this $20 can keep benefiting poor and marginalized people trying to provide for themselves and their families indefinitely.

Thanks to the input of lots of the folks in Ecclesia, this foundational idea of discerning and responding to God in the process of discipleship is something we're wrestling to apply at New Denver currently. It hasn't been easy to figure out how to implement these ideas. One helpful metaphor that my co-pastor at NDC came up with for what we're struggling with is that discipleship is a bit like playing music. On one end of the spectrum you have a regimented perspective focused on learning to play notes, trusting that the music will emerge (classical). This would be the highly structured discipleship process where you take people through the same process and teach them to play the notes (spiritual disciplines and practices both personal and communal). On the other end of the spectrum is a highly improvisational approach (jazz). In discipleship this is a highly organic and non-linear process that is driven by the leadership of the Spirit of God. This seems to be how we see the concepts from Mike Breen and 3DM being applied.

The problem is that as with jazz, the best musicians are often classically trained. So it often is with discipleship. People who have journeyed long enough with God to understand and implement disciplines in their life that allow them to hear and respond to God's leadership do best in settings where reflecting and responding communally to the orienting questions is the goal. But most people I'm working with at New Denver are still learning how to do that. So I'm trying to figure out how we could equip our small group leaders to begin thinking this way of reflecting and responding to God's leadership as the goal as they also lead people in ordering their lives around practices which will help them (and the community) better discern God's leadership. I look forward to tracking with you guys as you explore this at Life on the Vine.

Definitely. We'll come up w/a hash tag to use and we may even have some folks live blogging it.