It’s disappointing that Peregrinations, the emerging church forum in Kelowna has been cancelled — or at least reformatted. Due to the amount and type of interest, it will now be a day-long local gathering only, which means I can stop saving up my pennies for airfare. I wish them will in the gathering they’ll have, and hope that we can do something larger and more widespread at a later date.

In the meantime, Providence College & Seminary is holding an Emerging Church Conference on October 21st-24th. The event is largely a counselling-focused one (which they call “coaching” to make us EC-types more comfortable; don’t tell them, but I can see right through it) on Friday and Saturday. On the Sunday evening they have a worship session to be put on by Soul Pastor and the Soul Sanctuary crew, and on the Monday they’re holding a pastors and leaders seminar on the emerging church. Originally Gary Collins was going to explain about 9 days of material that day (read the conference writeup), but it’s morphed a bit now and invitations have gone out to some emerging church voices in the area to sit on a panel for some emerging church discussion as part of the event. It’s great to see them now inviting some people who are actually engaged in the EC-conversation; I did receive an invite to the panel and have responded affirmatively, so I’m now waiting for additional detail on the event.

Anyone in range of Winnipeg who is interested in this event and I guess if you qualify as a pastor or leader (??), please consider taking in the Monday session. I’m not sure what exactly to expect, but I do anticipate a generally conservative church crowd and I’m hoping that I and whoever else is on the panel can make efforts to provide some type of “comfort level” with the emerging church and dispel any fear of straw men that may yet linger in many such circles.