You can catch Joe hanging out at The Freeway next Saturday and presenting a piece on storytelling at Cultivate. If you’re interested, drop us a line.

However, occasionally we do host our own events at the coffee house as well. One of those events that I get excited about is a learning party that we’ve been doing basically twice a year since 2005: Cultivate Gathering. It’s for those who are interested in creating and developing new and evolving forms of missional church in Canada.

We already have a pretty full house for the upcoming Cultivate Gathering on Saturday, March 20th, 2010 but if you sweet-talk us, we may be able to fit in a few more people. Check out the website for more details: www.cultivategathering.com

We will be “live blogging” the event here in this space with some guest bloggers, so be sure and tune-in on March 20th. And in case you miss it, we will be videotaping the presentations at the event as well and posting highlights here eventually.

1. If there is already a third place in your neighbourhood.
2. If you are thinking of designating a room(s) in your church building for the third place.
3. If you are planning to create a third place as a way to evangelize, or grow your church.
4. If you are planning for this to be a place that is seldom/rarely open (ie. one evening per week).
5. If you think this will make you a bunch of money to fund your church.
6. If you think this is the new model for missional church… the next thing to do in church… everyone’s doing it.
7. If you have a hard (impossible?) time with living in tension.
8. If you feel the need to see results (quickly?) in terms of the number of people who join your church, find Jesus, etc. through the third place.
9. If you are not completely aware of the neighbourhood you are wanting to start the third place in. Do your homework. Live there for a few years.
10. If you have not gone through a process of discerning what the Spirit of God is up to / creating /doing in your neighbourhood.

It may sound silly, but I can’t tell you the number of church leaders who have approached us to “learn the ropes” and more than one of the above applied to them.

If you would like to arrange a time to chat with us further about third places, mission, or neighbourhood engagement, drop us a line any time: info@frwy.ca, or consider coming to our Cultivate Learning Party on Saturday, March 20 in order to spend the day learning alongside us.

1. We have revamped and reconfigured our leadership hubs (and the way we organize leadership at The Freeway).
2. We have updated the spiritual retreat page with details about our upcoming Fall retreat.
3. We have updated our neighbourhood networks page with details about our networks which just re-started this week.
4. We have added some new contributors to this blog, so we will get more fresh content regularly. We intend to post about events, happenings and the general goings-on around The Freeway, but also other articles of interest, videos, photos… and more. Check back often or subscribe to our RSS.

Soon enough we will tell you more specifics about each hub and who the people are who will be a part of them. We also hope to continue telling the ongoing story of the exciting things that these hubs are up to and the challenges we face as our story unfolds. For now, I want to briefly introduce to the leaders of the five hubs (we will tell you more about them soon):

1. The spiritual formation hub will be led by Pernell Goodyear.
2. The neighbourhood, culture & justice hub will be led by Miranda Ciarroni.
3. The children & youth hub will be led by Jeanette Eby.
4. The coffee house hub will be led by Steve Calverley.

For the past couple years we have basically had two leadership groups/communities/teams: the cohort (6 people) which led the church community, and a management team (6 people) which led the coffee house. In an effort to more actively blur the line between the coffee house and the church community, and to simplify decision-making and leadership development, etc. about a year ago we decided to join the two teams into one group for all intents and purposes.

We are changing this structure up at this time for three main reasons: 1) We have found that the current team is too big to really work well. 2) Yet we want to bring more (and some different) people into the leadership community. 3) We really sense and discern that Jesus wants us to do this at this time.

Here’s what we have come up with:

We will form four new leadership hubs. Each hub will be made up of about five people (including a leader for that hub). The four hub leaders will form the “new” cohort and will meet weekly to concentrate on overall vision of The Freeway and forming each other spiritually as leaders through the development of some key practices.

Each hub leader will also meet (likely monthly) with their own hub in order to engage in leadership development, make decisions, and basically ensure that the mission of that hub is being accomplished.

So, this new system of organization will, hopefully, allow us to:

1. Have the cohort not be a decision-making group, but a visionary group who help discern the path forward for The Freeway.
2. Keep decision-making more focused, flattened, grassroots and team-oriented.
3. Double the number of people currently in leadership, while keeping each team to a “lean and mean” five people.
4. Allow hubs to be practical, vision-oriented and mission-oriented all at once.
5. Make it way more possible for coaching and mentoring of leaders and emerging leaders to happen intentionally.

Here is an overview of the new hubs we are creating:

• The spiritual formation hub will facilitate weekly worship gatherings, church planting initiatives, leadership development, and networking opportunities/connections.
• The neighbourhood, culture & justice hub will facilitate the planning and leadership of our coffee house programming and to develop our church community’s ties to our neighbourhood and to justice.
• The children & youth hub will facilitate, develop, and plan all programs and initiatives relating to youth (including the development of some community-based youth initiatives).
• The coffee house hub will facilitate the day-to-day operations of the coffee house.

We will attempt to flesh all of this out further in subsequent blog posts. In the meantime, drop us a line if you have any questions.