Knowledge Centre
When we describe Bethanie as a ‘knowledge centre’ for mission, we are borrowing language from manufacturing: specifically the motor industry. The term was coined by the Toyota organisation. Highly committed to the pursuit of quality, Toyota realised that they had factories in many different parts of the world in which valuable lessons were being learned. Every small improvement in one manufacturing process was potentially a lesson worth applying elsewhere: but they realised that they had no mechanism for the exchange of these ideas. Their proposal was the creation of ‘knowledge centres’ – training facilities where the remarkable stories of different plants and units could be shared an exchanged. Knowledge Centres are a kind of university-of-the-practical, always linked to real-world operations and always open to change and innovation. ‘If we have no such centres‘, the Toyota leaders asked themselves, ‘how will we learn from all our stories?‘
We believe strongly that a knowledge centre is needed for mission in contemporary Europe. At a time of wholesale change and significant challenge, when God is seeding innovation in local churches and missional projects from Reykjavik to Rome, we need to join the Toyota compnay in asking ‘how will we learn from all our stories?‘
We envisage Bethanie as a place of study and storytelling; of conversation and collaboration; of reflection and renewal in mission – with a focus on one of the planet’s most pressing missional questions: is there a church for the future of Europe?
