If you sense the ‘Church’ has lost its way and you’re ready to let Christ use you, we’ve got exactly what you need. We’re passionate, determined and supportive coaches for those being called to the domestic mission.
“Practitioners creating Missional Practitioners”
Forge Chicago / The Center Collective is a group of experienced and knowledgeable leaders, pastors, and ministry experts who provide guidance, support, and advice to churches that are looking to do things differently. We typically work with new missional churches or traditional churches that are struggling to adapt to changing times or need help with a specific area of ministry.
Forge Chicago helps practitioners by:
Providing guidance and support: Forge Chicago can provide guidance and support to folks as they navigate the challenges of ministry. They can help churches identify areas where they need to improve, develop strategies for growth and outreach, and provide practical advice for implementing change.
Helping groups adapt to changing times: Many traditional churches are struggling to adapt to the changing needs and expectations of their congregations. Forge Chicago can help everyone understand how to reach new generations, use technology effectively, and engage with the community in new ways.
Bringing fresh perspectives: We can bring fresh ideas and insights to help everyone see things in a new light and find innovative solutions to challenges.
Offering specialized expertise: Forge Chicago specializes in areas such as leadership development, conflict resolution, outreach and evangelism. We can provide tailored training, resources, and support to help churches build their capacity in these areas.
Overall, Forge Chicago and The Center Collective is a valuable resource for ceveryone looking to do things differently. By providing guidance, support, and expertise, we help churches reach new levels of growth, impact, and effectiveness in their ministry.
Forge Chicago:
Lunch and Learns
The lunch & learn communities are one day events where leaders and practitioners come together to share experience, strength and hope with each other.
Summer Residency/Internship Programs
We invite the participants (or residents) on a 6-month learning journey to explore the essential paradigms for missionary formation & practices of mission discipleship and sustainability.
Domestic Missionary Formation Training
God is already at work in the everyday spaces of our lives. The places we live and the people we live alongside are important. In fact, these are the places and people God has sent us to. It is here that Forge wants to come alongside everyday individuals to inspire and equip them to join God in His redemptive mission. We do not want to extract people from their context rather we want to come beside them.
We are cognizant not all traditional western churches will are able to completely shift to the missional model. It’s why we offer church partnerships to coach churches to begin making incremental changes to increase their effectiveness in mobilizing everyday people to bring a little of heaven to earth.
We are practitioners who help practitioners through share our experience, strength, and hope. Below you find a couple of recent books:
COACHES
All of our coaches have lived the missional lifestyle. They understand the joys and the sorrows. They have been there, done that and received the T-shirt. They are practitioners who are willing share their experience, strength and hope so you can be a success to where you have been sent.
Robert ‘Bob’ Butler
Specializations
Missional Expressions, Coaching, and Leadership Mentoring
Bob considers himself a missionary striving to create relationships with the “none, done and undone” in the neighborhood, community and the nation. He moved to Itasca from Oswego in 2017. Bob is a former entrepreneur, national sales manager, lead pastor, author, outreach pastor, recovery speaker and church planter. Bob is passionate about re-imagining how the church (Big “C”) engages the culture with the message of Jesus. Bob is currently the lead pastor at The Community Center in Itasca, the director for RENEW and a board member for Impact For Jesus.
Personally, Bob has been married for 35 years. He has been on a number of short term international mission trips. He holds a Masters in Divinity from Northern Seminary and is an ordained minister of The United Methodist Church. He enjoys coffee, music, movies, reading, soccer, conversation, dogs and binge watching TV shows with his wife.
Rev. Dr. Peter Pereira
Specializations
International Missions, South Asian Leadership, Coaching and Leadership Mentoring
Peter began his career as an Engineer. Obeying the Lord’s call, Peter left his promising engineering career to pastor in the Chicagoland area. Short-term mission led them back to India where they saw extreme physical and spiritual poverty. Burdened for those, in 1997, Peter and Esther took their three children, packed their bags and returned to their hometown of Hyderabad, India. They began helping to those living on the streets and in the slums, people of all faiths and socioeconomic status.
Today, Global Hope Partners reaches the people of South Asia with a holistic, three prong strategy of compassion, new expressions, and leadership development conferences. GHP’s tools and programs meet the needs of the whole person in culturally appropriate and effective ways. Through compassion ministries, men, women, and children improve their circumstances and see life beyond the struggle to survive. They discover that their lives have great value as they receive practical care.
Leadership development conferences provide training to equip and mobilize indigenous people with principles of leadership. These leaders discover their personal vision, how to pursue a calling on their lives, and how to maximize the impact of their leadership abilities in their families, communities and marketplace.
Peter and Esther Pereira, are committed to playing their part in the great commission. Alongside his role as Director of Teaching at The Center, Peter also serves on the GHP board, travels to share and encourage like-minded organizations and leaders.
Peter holds Master of Urban Studies, Master of Divinity in Missions and Evangelism, and a Doctorate in Missiology. The Pereira’s are based in Hyderabad, South India, though they call Chicago home when they are on this side of the world.
Unlike many other mission sending agencies, we exist in Chicago as a Training hub and partnership organization. We are missionary practitioners. We long to see the rule and reign of Jesus expand to our neighborhoods, communities and our city. By striving to minimize our overhead, we can remain flexible to assist the smallest of missional expressions to the largest churches. Our hearts are with the incarnational misssionary practitioners. Missionary live is hard so we ask everyone who has been blessed by the teachings of our tribe to consider donating to Forge Chicago via the link below. Thanks for being on mission with us!
If you prefer to send a check, please send it to: The Center, 400 North Walnut, Itasca, IL 60143 Memo: Forge Chicago