Why Gathering?

With Gathering 2004 a couple of months past, it might be appropriate to reflect a little on the apparent success of this event. The report of the MB Herald and various positive comments I received personally demonstrated that success.

Certainly this event was a team effort. Vic Thiessen and Nancy Boese were key Ontario volunteers who coordinated local efforts. Michelle Penner, my assistant, was event planner and headed up the coordination of staff as well as registration and liaison with the hotel. Conference staff headed up worship, registration, exhibits, ushers, and a myriad of other components. Thanks to all for their energetic work beforehand and on site.

Besides great people and good success, however, lies a question: What value is Gathering to the Conference?

Our national convention needs to be driven strategically, just like anything we do. So how did we try to make Gathering a necessary component of Conference life? Through vision and values.

Our vision for a national event is to create a forum to inspire, equip and challenge our movement to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. It needs to reinforce our Conference mission: “Healthy, growing churches reaching their worlds.”

Gathering must help to shape the MB movement in Canada. This is not only through decisions made, but also how we make those decisions. Even the features of the event itself have potential to shape us. In planning those features we also try to discern and reflect our movement. As one might suspect, this is not always easy because we are very diverse.

But there is a larger driving force to Gathering. Indeed, it is the reason for the name. Gathering is an occasion to express our community in covenant relationship. Ideally, every church should desire to be represented at Gathering because of our covenant relationship.

I realize that the idea of covenant relationship doesn’t spring to mind first as a description of Conference/congregation connection.

I’m convinced, however, that we can recover the covenant community value. Mission/vision focus and values clarification as a Conference have helped do this. Building more communication between Conference leaders and churches will enhance it. Deliberate consideration about the meaning of covenant community will be needed.

In light of our community shaping objective, we set out a number of values to characterize Gathering.

We wanted the event to be fun and participatory. The optional trips to St Jacobs, Niagara Falls, and into urban Toronto catered to both guests and delegates.

Community and shared experience values led us to try the hotel setting where people could stay together. We channelled business discussions into minuted breakouts so people could interact more significantly than in plenary sessions. I believe this approach countered the disadvantages of not having everyone hear shared ideas through plenary discussions.

Intergenerational elements included activities for children and urban plunges for mixed ages. The “Midnight Spiritual Scavenger Hunt” into Toronto on Friday night saw a wide range of people heading downtown to see how God is at work in the heart of the city.

Since our Conference is made up of a wide variety of national groups, we wanted to build in international flavour through exposure to some of our international churches in the area. This is one key value I want us to work to improve significantly.

Equipping was also a core value, which was the reason for the “recharge” day and the Reggie McNeal seminar.

But something greater was desired. We wanted people to detect at a more emotional or even intuitive level that “something more” was going on. We prayed that people would sense God moving and touching lives. For me that happened when people stood to ask for prayer and others came around them; when Jacqueline Dugas mentored us in prayer at the end of her passionate message; after Reggie McNeal stunned us with the hard questions we need to ask if we really want to be serious about loving our world.

The vision, the values and the “God moments” build community. People go away sensing they met God together, and had the bar raised for them – for ministry, or even just for personal encouragement.

These values will drive future Gatherings. We know there are many areas to improve. As we work to fulfill the values, though, I believe Gatherings will become times that people will not want to miss and that our movement will be shaped through them, hopefully always toward Kingdom ideals.

I’m already looking forward to Gathering 2006 in Alberta!

David Wiebe is Executive Director of the Canadian MB Conference. From mid-September to mid-December he will be on sabbatical, taking a Certificate in Non Profit Management from the University of Victoria.