Hey, Church…let’s go to The World Café!

Have you read or heard of a book entitled “The World Café: Shaping
Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter”? From their
website, I found this synopsis: “Authors Juanita Brown and David Isaacs
introduce readers to this simple yet powerful conversational process for
thinking together, evoking collective intelligence, and creating actionable
results. World Café principles and processes have been used
successfully over the past decade with organizations and communities
on six continents.”
Many others had their own glowing praise reports on the book. Peter Block,

author of Stewardship and The Answer to How Is Yes, said, “This book is

required reading for anyone who cares about a better tomorrow. The World

Café offers tools that can convert analysis into profound change and provides

a structure for connecting people that is pure genius.”
Esteban Montezuma Barragan, Mexico’s former Minister of Social Development

said, “The World Café serves as an inspiration to help make greater mutual

understanding across social and cultural differences possible.”
On Amazon.com, author Gerry Stern wrote, “The book provides a means for

engaging with many others in exploring important issues at a variety of levels:

group, corporate, community, national, or international. It presents the World

Cafe Process (Cafe or WCP), which generally consist of three rounds of

progressive conversation, each lasting about 20 or 30 minutes, followed by a

dialog among the whole group.”
Stern continued, “This book can help people break out of the linear,

encapsulated world of every-day life, in which most are ensnared and help

organizations and networks achieve collective intelligence and formulate

future-focused plans.”
The night before this year’s National House2House Conference, I attended the

Leader’s session. John White of DAWN Ministries facilitated this gathering by

mentioning this book and how we would be subscribing to the concept. After

all, we who ascribe to the Simple Church model - even in our conferences and

meetings - often find ourselves right back where we came from: listening

passively to one person’s perspective of the things of God. Truth is, the

average spectator and conference attendee retains a very small percentage of

what is taught while those who participate in a more interactive setting will go

home having gleaned much more from the experience. The Leader’s session

was enjoyable, interactive, stimulating, satisfying and fun. There was not one

opportunity to blend in, “zone out” or day dream as we each had the

opportunity to voice our opinions, express concerns and play an active role.

I found the exercise to be a great model for any gathering of humans, including

those within The Church.
This morning, after having received a written testimony from one of our African

brothers regarding some recent meetings in Kenya, I wrote back to him and

made the following suggestion:
How exciting! What wonderful testaments to the power of our God.

It is my belief that we must never cease in teaching about the Kingdom of God.

Once people realize that there is a King who has a kingdom…a kingdom that

exists within THEM….and that this King desires to care for their needs and

work WITH them…I believe that’s when people will experience miracles. Once

experienced, they’ll tell others, thereby causing the Kingdom to grow quickly.

Sadly, far too often, ministers teach a Gospel of Salvation with so much

emphasis on “getting people saved” - using one of the techniques that vary

from denomination to denomination. Jesus didn’t do this. Neither did Paul. The

Sinner’s Prayer  is nowhere to be found in Scripture. The altar call isn’t either.

In fact, there are many more dialogues than there are monologues throughout

the New Testament. I’ve often wondered what the meetings would be like if

many ministers were planted throughout a gathering to facilitate conversation

among groups of 6 to 8 people after one main speaker cast the topic to the

crowd for discussion. Just thinking. The facilitators could direct the

conversations within these groups, answer questions from a Christian

perspective, yet people would be allowed to have their own questions

addressed while absorbing a greater portion of what they hear from within

their own groups. (We actually only recall about 7% of what we hear spoken

at us in sermons and lectures; over 90% when we learn conversationally. Sorry

if that’s a blow to some egos, however, I’ve heard it said that a Professor was

one who talks in someone else’s sleep. Most of us aren’t really as good as we

think we are anyway.)

What are YOUR thoughts on this?

I know. I know. It’s WAAAY outside the box. I don’t REALLY see it catching

on where the Church World is concerned. On the other hand, I have actually

applied some new teaching techniques along these lines that have worked really

well in recent meetings. The participants really seem to be grasping the concepts

and are actively participating. I contend that they’ll remember more of what they

learned from these experiences than they might  from a much better speaker than

myself. Ultimately, no matter who we listen to, the bottom line remains in what

we DO with what we heard.

House2House ministries (House2House.net) has kindly made this 6-minute

Workshop Teaching Video available on YouTube. If you’re a teacher or

speaker, watch it…then implement it! Don’t just make an appearance; make

a difference. After all, “A wise teacher makes learning a joy,” (Prov 15:2).

Every blessing,

Michael Tummillo

A servant of God

www.YourTown4Jesus.com