Saturday, 28 July 2007

Good Aussies over here

Mark and Jo Dennett introduced themselves to us at church on our first Sunday here. They are sent from Christian city Church in Whitehorse, Melbourne; here since October 2006 to work with churches and business people towards seeing Cambodian churches sustain themselves. 'Over 80% of Cambodian churches are dependent on western donor money to exist' Mark says.

Mark is an engineer by background; Jo a psychologist and counsellor. Together with their home church (which, interestingly, has put all its missions eggs into a one-nation basket: Cambodia) they have developed excellent resources and a well thought-through strategy to encourage the Cambodian church towards self-sustainability.



Learning vision principles - a hilarious exercise that makes multiple application points!



Mark and Jo enjoying a giggle during the 'Vision' forum

At the heart of the strategy are monthly half-day forums and weekly mentoring groups. The weekly groups have a mix of church pastors and business people in them - about eight people in total per group. I have accepted an invitation to be involved in a mentoring group. There are pastoral leaders from the church Sue and I attend in my group, as well as business people. Frank, who is worthy of a separate blog introduction, balances the group as he is one proficient business guy in a culture that is very interesting to manage a business in.

The monthly half-day forums are held 8am-12noon on a Saturday, followed by lunch together. Today was my intro - a very well put-together session on vision and planning. Mark and Jo mixed it up with a lot of small-group interaction, practical application stuff and good written material. Well done, guys!

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