Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Forge Australia Winding Dooowwwn

Had a phone call then got the email from the Forge crew last week about Forge winding down its operations in Australia. Then Al put up his note on Facebook.

The official line from the Forge web site as follows::

Several factors (among others) have contributed to this:

1. There has been an encouraging shift in the Australian church context in regards to missional awareness. Forge began very much as a prophetic voice that helped catalyze a missional movement. That shift has necessitated a change in our identity and structure, but it is not a change we have been able to successfully implement for reasons outlined in points 2 & 3 below.

2. A depletion of people and financial resources. We have struggled to keep operations sustainable and we observe that this may be an indicator that it is time to seriously re-assess our viability as an organization.

3. Our current decentralized organizational structure has made it difficult to move ahead cohesively. The challenges associated with transitioning Forge to be an effective training organisation for the new context proved too costly.

I suppose one of the things that I observed was that a lot of Forge was based around some amazing personalities, who were held together by the c haracter of Alan Hirsch. When Al left for the states a lot of these people just wern't around like they used to be... Anyway...

Its with a fair bit of saddness, both Christina and myself feel about its winding down. Forge for us was a breath of fresh air when we needed it most. Helping us break through a religiousness of the way of doing thing in our own denomination. There is a bit of a question now looming for me. Where will we find kindred spirits? Where will the tribe now gather?

Forge for a long while was the only voice, but now they are many and in many ways fragmented. Often having a denationalization or theological bent. In some ways that's a bit sad. It will be interesting what the future brings.

2 comments:

steven hamilton said...

my hopes and missional prayers are with you and christina and all at ranges.

i have the same sort of feeling at-times here in the US - where are the kindred? yet, hope remains...

peace to you

Scott said...

I'm glad, in a strange way that you have that 'feeling' as well. I have been putting little stars next to your series on the Holy Spirit. Just haven't had time to read it though....