HeartEdge 2021

A programme of seminars and panel discussions introducing the HeartEdge ethos and its mission model (the 4 Cs – compassion, culture, commerce, congregation) to the Anglican Dioceses’ of Southern Queensland and Melbourne. This series will feature stories, case studies, ideas and approaches presented by clergy and lay leaders from the two Dioceses.

• 3 February, 5–6.30 pm AEST – The pandemic & the future shape of church 
  Sam Wells explores what church might need to look like and some opportunities for change as we emerge from the experience of the pandemic. The pandemic has been a complete nightmare, but can still be a gift, if it restores our clarity about our core purpose: to be with people in the night-time of their fear with faith, hope and love in the God who in Christ heals our past and frees our future.

• 10 February, 5–6.30 pm AEST – Living God’s Future Now
  Christianity must take the present opportunity to be what it was always called to be: an alternative society, overlapping and sharing space with regular society, but living in a different time – that’s to say, modelling God’s future in our present. The HeartEdge mission model of the 4 Cs offers a model of what a renewed society might look like. The interdependence of commerce, culture, compassion and congregational life is this model. It sustains itself, is open to the gifts of strangers, and exhibits the life of faith. This session will explore 4 Cs stories with clergy from the two Dioceses’.

• 3 March, 5–6.30 pm AEST – What virtues are called for in a post Covid world?
  Sam Wells suggests that, through the nightmare of the pandemic, we’ve been given the greatest opportunity of our lifetimes to be pastors: to rediscover our core identity and to exercise our unique calling by doing some very simple things very well. But to do so may require a change of heart and soul and mind and strength; which is why we need the Beatitudes of Lockdown.

• 10 March, 5–6.30 pm AEST – The public role of the Church in complex times
  Exploring complexity/emergence work and conversational/dialogical approaches in relation to partnership. Working with those “on the way” into conversation; seeking a transformative spirituality and inclusive faith that speaks to real issues of today.

• 7 April, 5–6.30 pm AEST – Investing in the Kingdom: The Divine Economy
  Sam Wells explores the New Testament call to discipleship as an all-embracing thing requiring our heart and mind and soul and strength. The church has found it hard to live that call in practice and has adapted its ways to what we might call a partial approach. Any solution to the churches’ present woes about money that are based on a partial approach are unlikely to succeed, given that they are seeking to restore a flawed model. Therefore, a renewed all-embracing model is suggested that might give hope and reignite the imagination of our conversation about money.

• 14 April, 5–6.30 pm AEST – Good business & the Church
  This session will explore the potential for hybrid structures that build community understanding of how we all flourish in complex working environments including church engagement with business/commercial enterprises including business ethics and pastoral care. Exploring the potential for hybrid organisations that stand with one foot in the business community and the other in the church and which work to hybrid structure and practice in an evolving form of secular public engagement for the Anglican Church of Australia.