The Inaugural
Christ & Cascadia Gathering
April 25, 2024

12:30 PM to 6:30 PM at Church of Christ in Federal Way, WA
in partnership with The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology
and the Inhabit Conference 2024

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Click the link below to explore the discussion topics for our Gathering and to get to know our facilitators!

You’re invited to a relationship-forward event centered on questions specific to our place and time, designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas among Christ followers to explore, imagine, and create the future of Christianity in Cascadia.

The 2024 event is the re-imagined, reinstated annual gathering, and the first under The Seattle School’s stewardship. The bulk of this half-day event will consist of convened conversations over locally roasted coffee, and end with locally grown and fermented hops and grapes and (we hope) exchanges of contact information for ongoing support and connection of the Christian community in the region.

This event is for:

• Pastors, church planters, and leaders from the wide river of ecclesial traditions;
• Innovators and gatherers of spiritual communities that aren’t easily classified;
• Spiritually-led creatives in music, poetry, visual arts, and genre-bending mediums;
• Faith-motivated community developers, activists, and nonprofit workers;
• Academics, researchers, and writers in related fields;
• And you! This event is for you, however you practice your spirituality in place.

Schedule

12:30pm – 1:30pm: Registration
1:30pm – 2:00pm: Welcome
2:30pm – 3:30pm: Small Group 1
3:30pm – 4:00pm: Break
4:00pm – 5:00pm: Small Group 2
5:00pm – 6:20pm: Networking Happy Hour

This year’s gathering question:
What is distinct about ministry in Cascadia?

We have some hunches — our love of nature, the post-Christendom secularity, the fully justified distrust of religious institutions (not to name names). And we know that our counterparts in the central and eastern parts of the continent just don’t get it. Their resources are often unusable here, and even the best-intended conversations leave us feeling bewildered and isolated. So let’s get into it. What’s different here than in other regions? How do we understand ourselves — and how do we narrate those distinctives?

We authentically don’t know, and invite you to not know with us. At this event, there are no keynote speakers; there are no academics behind a podium reading you their philosophical theories of how to do ministry here; there are no subject matter experts with 3- or 5- or 12-step answers. Instead, there’s you: practicing Christians in daily ministry, as the experts of your own experience, coming together to discuss those shared experiences and your unique insights. When you attend the Christ & Cascadia gathering, you will have the opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation facilitated by a convener that will help us collectively process what it means to serve God and neighbor in our distinct contexts.

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