The Encarnação Alliance
of Urban Poor Movement Leaders

06/10, updated 11/10

Beginning from early linkages between urban poor incarnational missions in the 1990's, a consultation of 25 leaders met in Brazil in 2002. In 2004, a further gathering in Bangkok of indigenous urban poor mission leaders from Asia extended this.  There was a felt need to move from a relational network to a formalised alliance which remains highly relational.  The following draft developed from the discussion and modifications at the consultation and was further extended by the leadership team at the Global Gathering in 2006, Chennai.

Self-Identity

We are a global alliance of movement leaders serving among the urban poor.

Our Direction

Building on the work of those who have gone before and working with the Lord who is moving history towards the eternal city,  we commit ourselves together to catalyze holistic church planting movements in slums of 200 megacities and 1700 least evangelized cities.

• To create vision for holistic churchplanting movements among the poor.

• To strengthen the existing training infrastructures of alliance member organizations and movements

• Through prophetic envisioning, prayer mobilization, consultations and developing training processes, to encourage members of the alliance to send 50,000  mature cross-cultural workers to these slums by 2010. These workers to catalyse indigenous movements.

• To expand training materials so that urban poor workers are able, over ten years, to develop into fully equipped workers, able to extend the Kingdom into significant transformation of the slums.

• To integrate, and disseminate theology from the grassroots urban poor movements

• To be an evangelical voice on issues of advocacy for the urban poor in civil society and church

Structure

Relational: We accomplish these goals primarily through personal relationships built through ministering together.

Consultative: We seek to learn the mind of Christ through each other's diversity in gentleness and humility.  We expect that his synergy between us will catalyse creativity.  We are not seeking to franchise a model of ministry.

We connect by videoconferencing and email at a balanced pace in a series of work teams and commissions, gather in regional consultations primarily with every 2-3 years a global gathering of key leaders, and in between, consultations in regions or cities.

We value storytelling as a primary way of learning from each other.  We seek to develop regional story-telling conferences/training processes yearly.

Statement of Faith

We are diverse but generally evangelical in background and operate within the framework of the Lausanne Covenant. What holds us together is our common theological commitment to preach the gospel in word and deed to the urban poor, and to follow Jesus' incarnational style outworked in poor people's churches as the centre of transformational mission in the slums.

Global Leadership Team

Chairperson:    Coordinator: Viv Grigg

The network will be led by a leadership team selected by the international chairperson and coordinator that includes the Chairperson, Global Coordinator and either Coordinators or Chairpersons of the Project Groups or commissions, plus others.  Chairperson is ex officio on the commissions. Regional/ National coordinators in the team:

• India:    Chennai Coordinator: Biju Davids,  Hyderabad Coordinator: Pr PK Moses Kolkata Coordinator: Rev Kaushik Das. Naga Coordinator: Pr Rongsenmeren

• South East Asia: Chair: Dr Cory de Boer, Coordinator: Mars Rodriguez

• Latin America: Spanish _______ Brazil: __________

• Africa:  Southern_ __________French / West: ___________  East: Richard Mayabi  Kampala, Uganda, Pr Paul Lukwago

• Middle East: _________________

• Pacific: _____________

• North America: One of the incarnational mission leaders

Each coordinator to select a chairperson

International Leadership Team Members at the Chennai Consultation: Rongsen Meren, Arthur Thanggiah (Prayer Coordinator), Mars Rodriguez (Grassroots Training Chairman), Corrie de Boer (MATUL Representative), Pushpa Waghmare, Viv Grigg (International Coordinator), Bryan Johnson (Training Consultant), Richard Mayabi  (East Africa Coordinator), Ed Bradley, Gerson Celetti (West /Francophone Catalyst), Viju Abraham (Chairman), Cathy  Delaney (standing in for the Western incarnational missions).

• Qualities of Chairpersons  & Coordinators and leadership team members

• Can communicate by email

• Committed to the collective vision

• Have operational capacity to accomplish their jobs utilising their own organisational bases

• Faithful in fulfilling their tasks

• Can commit a % of their time and capacity outside their organization to the collective tasks.

• Networking gifts

Project Teams

We form the following commissions/ project teams, each with a chairperson and a coordinator who share the leadership load according to gifting but walk two by two.  Generally, the coordinator carries the workload, the chairperson carries responsibility for public representation, public leadership of meetings, resourcing, some recruiting of team members:

MATUL Training Commission:

1. Coordinator: Viv Grigg.  Chairperson: Cory de Boer, Reps from each of the participating training institutions

   Develop for urban movement leaders a degree at an MA level, which can be adapted and utilised by partnering organisations within the network.

2. Grassroots Training Network

Chairman

Consultant:

• Develop training modules that are accessible to urban poor church planters

• Develop an integrated urban training process for urban poor churchplanters at certificate and bachelors level

• Develop learning networks in next 30 cities

3. Resource Channelling Commission (Pipeline Company):

Members:

• Access resources to build the capacities of members to engage in ministry, bringing in large funding agencies.

• Develop processes for collective resourcing of the network

• Develop models of group cluster funding in cities

• Develop training modules for project proposal writing, design and evaluation

• Pressure for capital funding for expansion into least evangelised cities

• Research to identify needs, summarize statistical material (i.e. where the unreached cities are and the number of poor in those cities)

4. Communications:
5. Coordinator: _____________  Prayer Coordinator: Arthur Thanggiah

• Website with articles of interest, discussion board on various topics (land rights, community organizing, house churches, training, contextualization, development theory, etc.)

• Urban Poor e-Newsletter - sent out monthly by Arthur Thanggiah

• Produce a quarterly scholarly journal

5. Next Global Consultation Task Force:

Members: Leadership team, plus co-opt several others, one from each continent.

• Develop and execute a 2 1/2 -3 year plan for the next global consultation for the network in 2009, possibly in Africa, Mumbai or Latin America.

6. Research:

Coordinator:________________

• Identify % slums in all 1700 target cities

• Identify no of slum churches in all cities

• Identify responsiveness data for cities

• Develop a profile for each city

• Raise funding for this process

Global team job descriptions are developed by each coordinator and chairperson and submitted to the International coordinator for review on a yearly basis.  All jobs are assigned till either the leader ceases to be able to functionally complete them or the next Encarnacao Alliance Global gathering.

Membership

There are three levels of membership: personal, organisational and national/regional.  Individuals or organisations may request that their name be added to the official members list.