I'm part of NieuCommunities - a group which trains missional leaders. It's part of a wider organisation called Church Resource Ministries which has a podcast section on their site. Their latest podcast is a discussion on the shift happening within church. Here's the summary:

Hugh Halter, director of CRM's Missio team discusses Zer0 church plant training with Vance Grace, director of Church Planting for the Mid-America District of the Christian Missionary Alliance. Topics discussed: the shift from a program / attraction-based church to a relational / community-based church. Vance discusses how Zer0 has done in his own denomination, including the positive kingdom and financial implications of the missional model vs. an attraction-based model.

We tried to reconceptualise communion as a meal - just like it was done in the early church. As they ate and shared life together, they would remember Jesus and celebrate his life, death and resurrection again. This post details some of the planning and thinking around what would be appropriate. Eventually we settled on this structure:

A welcome which includes everyone ("Present among us!") - taken from the Greenbelt_06 communion intro.
A invitation prayer from the Iona community (of which we just used the last verse), and then into the communion proper, inviting everyone to serve each other and to then enjoy the meal in the presence of the risen Christ.

I've colour coded the lines in the attachment, as we'd originally hoped to have Desiree alongside Bert leading communion; then Bert's voice died and we didn't look hard enough for Desiree (sorry!) so Ed ended up doing it - and did a sterling job! With the colour coding we wanted the red bits to be read by Bert, and the blue by Desiree (adapt as necessary).

Communion as a meal

Welcome to the first "communion meal" at Change Agents. All are invited, all are welcome.

If any of the following sentences apply to you, please loudly say, "Present among us."

(Response: Present among us)

So...everyone who can hear me
People who have been to Change Agents before
People who are here for the first time
Teenagers between 13 and 19
All who are not in their teens
People who showered this morning
People who will shower tonight
All who are not wearing what they wore yesterday
People who can like to be wearing a jean pant
All who believe that this is the day that the Lord has made
People who believe that the earth is the Lord's

This is the table,
not of the Church, but of the Lord.
It is to be made ready
for those who love him
and who want to love him more.

So, come,
you who have much faith
and you who have little,
you who have been here often
and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow
and you who have failed.

Come,
not because it is I who invite you:
it is our Lord.
It is his will that those who want him
should meet him here.

For on the night that he was betrayed he took bread, and when he had given you thanks, he broke  it, and gave it to his disciples saying, "Take this and eat; this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me."

So too after supper he took the cup, and when he had given you thanks, he gave it to them saying, "Drink of it all of you; for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins; whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me."

Friends, take the elements and offer them to each other, saying, "The body of Christ....the blood of Christ." Then continue eating and drinking, remembering that Jesus is present among us.

Thank you God, for love, for food, and for friends to share it with. Amen.

"Aim Lower" is the video from Bert which we showed - all about thinking smaller in terms of church and evangelism. It's cartoon-style in black and white and is developed in Australia (aside from the American-sounding voiceover). If I was showing it as part of a presentation I'd want to split it into several segments and show one at a time, then open it up for discussion. You can download it at http://www.logosdor.com/resources/movies.aspx?page=aimlower

Thomas looks at the good parts of "how things used to be" in South Africa, both culturally and in youth ministry. He then talks about the bad and ugly things regarding youth ministry in this country and does all of this in a most engaging way.

He gives an excellent history of youth ministry in South Africa. The good things from the past are:

The Truth Remained The Truth
Product-drivenness
Knowledge Explosion
Exciting Faith
Missional Scope
Binding Relationships
Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills Completed A Circle Of Creativity
Sacrosanct Authority
Ubuntu (I Am Because We Are)
No Blurry Lines
Values-based Endeavours
Genuine Love

The bad and ugly things were:

Unfounded Definitions Of Youth
Cookie-cutter Expectations
Lack Of Trust
Rote Learning
Racism
Superficial Relationship
Living Within The Boundaries
Lack Of Youth Ministry Skills Training
No Mentoring
Paternalism

Thomas heads up Youth For Christ Southern Africa.

"Compassion" is a prayer installation in which the viewer is shown an image loop 3 times. Before each loop a question is asked: "What emotions do these people invoke in you?" "How would Jesus respond to each of these?" and "What prayer would you offer to each person?" The participant is then invited to write out a prayer for some of the people portrayed, and place them at their "feet" (on a bowl on the floor underneath their printouts). The intention is to encourage the participant to outward-focussed prayer.

This is simple concept: find some photographs of people which invite a response from others, create a video loop, and ask some questions of the viewer and then allow the viewer to pray for some of the people shown.

In our case we took some people who are anonymous but whose images are open - in other words, many different contexts and interpretations can be read into their photographs. There were two kids who look poor, a lady who looked middle eastern and an old man who was deep in thought. People then identify with the pictures and pray for the people using an outward focussed prayer.

You can use pictures of people from your church, your country, the world, whatever. I imported them into iPhoto on my Mac, created a new album, created the questions in Photoshop (800 x 600 pixels; the font is Helvetica) asking 1 question on each slide, placed the slides between each series of photos. After each question I repeated the series of photos. My iPhoto window looks like this:

Then export the movie as a Quicktime. 640x480 is fine, because we're going to burn this to dvd next, and that pixel size will transfer across to dvd without a quality loss.

Then open up iDVD, choose "Create DVD from movie..." from the File menu, find compassion.mov and burn away! This means that the DVD will automatically loop in your DVD player without needing to press play every time or setting it on "repeat", which is exactly what you want.

Once you have the DVD, hook up a DVD to a TV and run it. We put it in a room with arrows towards the TV where the viewer would watch the loop, then towards a table on which was written, "What prayer can you offer these people? Write your prayer and place it at their “feet” as an intercession for them with God." We'd provided pens and paper.

Print out the pictures, stick them on a wall, put a bowl underneath each picture, put some arrows on the floor to indicate how the viewer should proceed throughout the whole thing, and you're good to go.

Resource list
TV
Tables (both stations)
TV raised high on table
DVD Player with 2 pin power plug, cable and DVD
Pens
Paper
Bowls (6)
Printout of Images (6)
Pins
Arrows (10)