Idea Camp: Being Present with the City

If you liked yesterday’s post about serving in the city you may want to check out the Idea Camp Pacific Northwest conference taking place November 20-21 in Portland. This is a free conference focused on ‘Being Present in the City’. If you can’t make it to the conference you will still be able to participate by watching online.

Here is what the conference site says about this event:

The focus of this particular Idea Camp will be “Being Present with the City“. We hope to re-imagine what it would look like to be fully present in one’s city. Instead of approaching cities with a mentality of the Church “conquering” or “taking-over”, we hope to embrace our cities by first listening, learning, and loving our neighbors.

Our conversation will center around the posture, ethos, and practice of faith communities that intentionally partner with cities to co-create tangible expressions of love and hope. Our presupposition is that God is already at work in the cities that we live. We must work together with our city stakeholders to bring the kind of change God desires.

Being present in the city is such an important conversation for missional churches to have. I continue to be impressed with the type of dialogue that comes out of the Idea Camp. I’m especially impressed with the balanced mix of church and community participants. Being present in the city requires working with the city. I look forward to hearing the conversations that come out of these partnerships.

If you aren’t familiar with Idea Camp, well you should be. Idea Camp is described as a “free, open source hybrid conference designed to help people move from the realm of ideas to implementation.” Learn more about Idea Camp by joining their Ning community.