I met with Simon from Swindon YFC and Mel (a colleague from YFC) today to chat about integrated mission in Swindon.

Integrate is our ‘project’ at the moment from YFC. It’s about real consultation, real collaboration and planned follow up to be able to help our local centres take their mission and evangelism one step further. For some this may mean setting up an ‘Alpha for Youth’ in a local school, for others it may mean setting up a missional community – it will be, and is, so varied as it will depend on what is relevant to the location, and must depend on this if we want to see sustainable and long term mission.

We spoke for over 3 hours in The Chandos and looked at ‘stuff’ from different angles and chatted vision, dream, expectations and resources. Simon and I then went off for a couple of hours to continue our conversation and chat ‘general’ stuff.

Usually 3+ hour meetings really tire me out. This one did not as this is one of the great bits of my (not so new anymore) job. I find it really energising and exciting to meet with people to not just talk about mission, but to meet with people that have such a burning desire for mission and are involved in it day in day out. You could almost sense the missional desire coming out of Simon’s pores!

I look forward to seeing the results from this meeting … that’s why it is so exciting!