Brave Future is a collaboration of thought leaders, organizations, and church networks committed to the establishing and flourishing of kingdom ecosystems.
We are not an organization. We are a fellowship of organizations. We want to build a community of friends committed to the emerging work of the church. And by mining our best stories, sharing our best ideas of innovation in the last 10-20 years, to step bravely into a new, unwritten, and yet undiscovered future. Built on sharing and no single organizational leader; we are partners learning together and experimenting toward the goal of a beautiful, healthy, and thriving church. You can see the list of current partners here.
Brave Future is held together by a simple Rule of Life. Applied to everything we do together these 6 rules define our aspirations and shape our partnerships, community, and leadership.
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Jesus is Lord, is both the oldest creed of the church and also a statement of our deepest unity. It is a unity not forged by the things we may or may not agree on, but the person we follow. It is in that spirit that Brave Future holds to the historic creeds of the church (ancient and modern) as a way of describing what the church has historically described the Lordship of Jesus. For us, that would include the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds, as well as the Lausanne Covenant.
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Humility is a non-negotiable for us; both as a personal aspiration that each of us commit to embody, but also as a posture for our conversations and collaborations.
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Many of us have been shaped by the modern missional movement, which is itself an iteration of the missionary impulse alive in every generation of the church since its inception. We are convinced that the mission of God and church of God are inextricably bound (we are not the church without mission). Inspired by the idea that is not that the church has been given a mission but that the mission of God has been given a church.
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While we are theologically conservative we are missiologically innovative. We believe that the eternal and unchanging good news of the Kingdom of God should be carried into the world through brave experiment and tactical/missional innovation.
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We do not all believe that the microchurch is the best or only form of the church, only that it is both a valid and beautiful form of the church which must be honored, nurtured and reproduced. And it is a special concern for us to support and accelerate it as an empowered and innovative form of church in our time.
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We are also committed to continually look forward. helping the church not just embrace what is the best practices of church and mission today but keeping our eyes and thinking on the horizon of what might be next.
If your church, organization, or network is interested in becoming a partner, we would love to hear from you. Contact us here.