“The marketplace for religion has changed very dramatically, and I don’t think new sermons or new hymns or new seating will help until the overall public association between intolerance, as young people see it, and religion fades.”
—Robert Putnam, in the new book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us

Quoted in “When the church itself needs saving” published by the Washington Post

TransFORM Network (http://www.transformnetwork.org) and The Parish Collective (http://www.parishcollective.org) are joining forces to host a West Coast regional gathering on missional community formation, Friday-Sunday, April 29-May 1, 2011, at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, Washington.

Launched in Fall 2009, TransFORM held its first regional gathering earlier this year in Washington, D.C., which was attended by around 250 people. Participants in that gathering took up an impromptu collection to help fund a similar West Coast Gathering, which yielded $1,000 to help get this April 2011 event off the ground.

The Parish Collective, which began in Fall 2008, held a series of city-wide gatherings (in conjunction with Forge Canada) in June 2010 in four Pacific Northwest cities — Edmonton, Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland.

As the network organizers for TransFORM and The Parish Collective, we are very excited to be working together now on a regional event to focus on training and mobilizing people to form missional communities of practice with a special emphasis on rootedness in neighborhoods and a robust theology of place. Thanks to Mars Hill Graduate School for their hospitality in hosting this event. More details will be announced soon as planning moves forward!

For more information, please contact Steve Knight (TransFORM Network, stevek@missionalshift.com) or Paul Sparks (The Parish Collective, info@parishcollective.org).