Welcome to Modem’s website
2019 Conference
MODEM’s 2019 Conference, in partnership with the Susanna Wesley Foundation, will be held at Sarum College from lunchtime on Thursday, 21st – lunch on Friday 22nd November. This year’s conference builds on the ideas generated at last year’s conference, and is entitled ‘Losing Control – Enabling Withness’. We will be exploring ideas that Sam Wells has been developing in ‘A Nazareth Manifesto: Being with God’ (2015), ‘Incarnational Ministry: Being with the Church’ (2017) and ‘Incarnational Mission: Being with the World’ (2018), and how these can relate to ideas from organisation studies about emergence and non-imperialistic forms of organising and non-control. We shall be relating these ideas to experience and wisdom from local churches. A Nazareth Manifesto has been described as ‘nothing less than a call to rethink Christian witness and mission, based on a profound re-telling of our relationship with each other and God’. This conference is an opportunity to think together about how church organization might better facilitate such a retelling. The ideas follow on naturally from our consideration of witness in the 2017 conference and asset based community organization in the 2018 conference.
Speakers include Sam Wells, Nic Beech and Paul Hibbert. Click here for more information.
Call for contributions. We would like to include some case studies from participants to help us all to think through how ‘being with’ meets church organization. Do you have a case study from your own experience that you would be happy to think through and offer within the conference? If so, please let us know. We do not need those offering case studies to feel that they have arrived at definitive conclusions about the situations they are talking about; MODEM participants are usually extremely helpful in developing one anothers’ thinking and in developing thoughts together.
Dissemination. We are very excited about the potential of this conference to offer something new and important to the church. We hope that the papers, case studies and the discussion will give us material for a publication, so that the work can be offered more widely.
2018 Conference
Our 2018 conference asked the question:
Where does the power lie to bring about change in church and community?
Our speakers came from:
- an understanding of communities, and how positive change can happen within a place, culture or community, and;
- a background of church change and development, with an understanding of how power works within congregations.
Here is the conference home page, and here is the conference poster.
Book Reviews
We regularly provide reviews of newly published books that are relevant to leadership, management or ministry. Check out our book review page.
Archbishop of Canterbury supports MODEM’s work
“The work you do in bringing together perspectives on leadership and ethics from church and commerce is immensely valuable and I am grateful to you for developing these channels of communciation.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Revd & Rt Hon. Justin Welby sent MODEM a letter of “warmest good wishes” for its 20th anniversary conference in 2013. He challenged MODEM to continue its work with a reflection on “the love of Christ urges us on…” from 2 Corinthians.
You can read the full letter in a special conference issue of MODEM Matters.