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Well since I've been back we've established a trust board for fresh expressions in New
Zealand and also we've established FEASTs and we've got three FEASTs, one in Auckland,
one in Wellington and one in Christchurch. For us in New Zealand we're going to focus
a lot of our time and energies through the FEASTs rather than establishing a large national
team. So this is where our focus will be at this stage.
We've also run a vision day and also an msi in Wellington and we're expecting to have
another msi start later this month. And Auckland and Christchurch are planning to start msis
and vision days within the next couple of months.
There is a number of challenges. The first of which is probably that we've experienced
a little bit here in the UK where in the rural and other areas there's sort of sparse population.
But more so too when it comes to the Pacific Island and Maori cultures. Their concept of
mission and church is very different from the European. So if you look at the European
style of church it's rather more individualistic, we tend to say the way I look at religion
yet for the Pacific Islanders it's the village style. So therefore when they are talking
about mission it is actually more to their own families and for the Maori what we call
Whanau which is an extended family. So there's a lot of challenges actually face us with
actually establishing mission not only for fresh expressions but right across the board.
We do need to develop the style that we actually do for teaching because while again for the
European style again... well there's many styles, but for the Pacific Island people
too again because its concepts are very different. Images that they would take on board to understand
the material will be quite different as well. Still very early days, we've actually got
a young lady, a Pacific Island lady who's actually going to be writing - or is in the
process of actually writing up what mission and church means to the Pacific Island cultures.
So we're really looking forward to this type of research.
I think it's actually gaining fast momentum. When I first got there, there was quite a
number of people. Now there's been a lot of work already done with Graham Cray's visit
has really stimulated a lot of thinking and talking about fresh expressions. But one of
the things about New Zealand culture is that they tend to want to use, rather than a top-down
approach they are very grass roots. So for us fresh expressions will probably develop
in a very loose type of fashion rather than a formalised structure.