Friends,

We will be gathering again for the Central Valley Cohort This Thursday
October 26th from 7pm-9pm. James Bergen & Matt Insley have graciously
invited us to North Fresno Church for the meeting.

We will be discussing the first chapter of The Shaping of Things to
Come. If for some reason you have not been able to pick up the book
and have not read the first chapter we invite you to still join us as
you will still easily be able to participate in the dialogue. Below
are the directions:

North Fresno Church - 5724 N. Fresno Street. 431-0333 church office
number / 375-0243 James' cell. We will meet in the conference room -
enter through the church office (entry closest to Fresno Street). If
you are coming from out of town call James for more specific
directions.

I hope to see many of you there.

Friends,

We are excited to get together again after the Summer for a new year of conversation and learning. Our September meeting will be held this Thursday, September 21, 7:00pm. We will be meeting at Wesley United Methodist which is located at 1343 E. Barstow (map). The church is located in between First and Cedar near Fresno State. Bet Hannon will be our hostess. We will be meeting in the conference room in the office which is located at the center of the church campus.

We hope that everyone will be able to join us. Tom Cotter will be leading a discussion at the cohort this week. There is no preparation necessary. However, if you wanted to do a little reading you could browse through the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation. Tom will be bringing copies as well.

Also, we will also be introducing a book that we would like to read together as a cohort this year. The book is called The Shaping Of Things To Come: Innovation & Mission for the 21st Century by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. We hope everyone will be able to pick this book up and read the first chapter for our October gathering which will be held on Thursday October 19th. Overstock has it for $14.29 with shipping (Amazon is 13.57 without) .



We are really excited to launch a new year of growing together to better understand what it means to be an active follower of Jesus Christ.

Barry Falke & Tom Cotter

Friends,

The next gathering for the central valley cohort is scheduled for July 19th at 7:00pm. We tried as hard as possible to pick the day that worked for the most people. We will meet at Tower Mosaic Church. There is a map attached below. We hope to see as many of you there as can make it.

Sojourners,

It has been a while since I have really had time to sit and think about
our cohort. With a six week old and some sleepless nights it has been
hard enough to focus on my full-time job. That being said I wanted to
coordinate a gathering for July. I know that the summer is somewhat
hectic so what I propose is that we try to meet in July, take August
off and then connect again in September. I feel deeply that our times
together have been rich and are necessary as we progress together in
joining God's mission for the world.

I would love some feedback for a date in July to connect, which week is
best and which day? Please either e-mail me or leave a comment about
what might work best. I hope this e-mail finds everyone well and I
will look forward to seeing you all again soon.

Barry Falke

Friends,

I felt energized when I left out cohort last week. For two reasons really. First, I feel so grateful that I have some new friends who are willing to think about what it means to follow God in the postmodern context that we are living in. Second, Ii feel that our dialogues together thus far have been insightful really great. Thanks again to James for leading us last week. I have been further reading Exclusion & Embrace and I truly have been changed by Volf's writing on forgiveness, making space for others and inviting them in. I really pray that we would be involved in transforming communities so that we can make space like that for even our offenders as Jesus did. See my post on that on my newly created blog at www.barryfalke.blogspot.com. Anyway, I am so glad to be journeying together with some like minded people. Let's continue to consider who else would be interested in the conversation.

Our next Cohort gathering will be April 20th at 7:00pm. We will be talking about some topics out of Brian Mclaren's More Ready Than You Realize. This is a wonderful, not to heavy read. If you have a chance to pick it up before next month I would say do it. If not, I am going to try to post or e-mail some segments that we will focus on for next meeting. I am especially excited about discussing the idea of "in/out" mentality in the Christian church. By that I mean the way that most Christians view others in their context as either inside the Christian community or distinctively outside the Christian community. If I remember right, Mark Baker (Prof @ MBBS) also writes about this topic some in his book: Religious No More: Building Communities of Grace and Freedom, InterVarsity Press, 1999.

To begin the conversation, I am wondering how we have seen the church be inclusive or exclusive through the use of "in/out" mentality? Any thoughts?

Posted By Barry