Dear Cities Affinity Group participant,

Thank you for registering for the cities affinity group at the Annual Leadership Consultation of the Mission America Coalition!

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The Detwiler and Warner articles are attached, and the Sanders and Walker-Barnes articles are online at

http://ccda.uberflip.com/i/83422/62 and http://ccda.uberflip.com/i/83422/82 

respectively, and can be downloaded.  Again, no worries if  you can’t get to all the articles, but they are all pretty short and very readable. Thanks!

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The design team for the cities affinity group has been praying and working on a group experience that, by God’s grace, will help us advance God’s loving mission in our increasingly diverse cities, especially through expanding our capacity to relate to and collaborate with a greater part of the Body of Christ.  While it’s likely that most of us have already been crossing lines of culture, ethnicity, race, and neighborhood for dynamic kingdom collaboration, surely all of us could grow more in this area! Let’s go for it in our time together!

We have invited a group of wonderful city leaders to share with us and know that all of you bring a wide range of expertise to the table, so that we can expect inspiring encounters and conversations.  To make most out of the time, and help you prepare your heart and mind for our dialogue around each table, we are attaching some (short) recommended readings:

• Gregg Detwiler’s Developing Safe Environments for Learning and Transformation (attached).  Why we chose it: We long for our conversations in Denver to “go deep” even though many of us are meeting for the first time. Diversity looks beautiful from the outside, but living it out, listening to different voices, moving towards genuine reconciliation and collaboration, can be quite a challenge. This article will help us prepare to create a new kind of “safe environment” for dialogue in our Affinity Group.  It will also be a helpful tool for you to take back to your organizations and collaborations as you seek to work better together.
• Stephen Warner’s article Coming to America (attached).  Why we chose it: We all share the desire is to reach our cities for Jesus. But we cannot do it alone, we need allies. The cities have diversified and this short article by Stephen Warner gives us a new perspective on who our new allies could be.
• Two articles from the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA)’s Theological Journal 2012 Edition:

o    Alvin Sanders’ Life Lessons: A tribute to Glen Kehrien. Why we chose it: Sanders’ reflections on Glen Kehrien give us a beautiful, personal glimpse of a wonderful cross-cultural mentorship and partnership of great impact in the city of Chicago through Circle Urban Ministries.

o   Chanequa Walker-Barnes’ Internalized Oppression and the Challenge to CCDA’s Theology of Racial Reconciliation. Why we chose it:  Though this article assumes a “CCDA” audience, the same principles apply to our city reaching community of leaders.  Walker-Barnes’ analysis of internalized oppression covers ground that every city reacher should be familiar with, not just because these dynamics are part of our cities, but also because these dynamics are common outside the US and are relevant to immigrant and diaspora communities here as well.

If you are able to get to the readings or even just one, I think you’ll be blessed—they offer good food for thought and heart.  If you find they are too much for you given all that is on your plate, certainly we understand and there is no condemnation!   Save them for future cup of coffee or tea or for reflection with your team post Denver.

Thank you for reading this far—so looking forward to seeing you next week!

 

Liza Cagua-Koo

Champion, Cities Affinity Group

Mission America Coalition National Conference

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Liza A. Cagua-Koo
Assistant Director
@liza_ck

Emmanuel Gospel Center, Inc.
p. 617.262.4567 x169
[email protected]     
www.egc.org
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