How to Start Missional Communities
A lot of people are asking me for training on how to start Missional Communities, so I thought I would mention several resources. In the past couple of months I have done variations of the talk Missional Communities in Cities and Suburbs. (Note: I went more generic/urban than suburban in this one.) Also Leading Missional Communities from LEAD ’09. This training covers three main areas:
What are Missional Communities?
How to Form Missional Communities
How to Lead Missional Communities
Also consider coming to VERGE: a conference on missional community. I’ll be there!
Evangelism-Driven Mission
My new article on the shortcomings of Evangelism-Driven Mission is stirring up quite a bit of interaction on the Resurgence FB page. Here is a brief comment to clarify my intention:
I am trying to chart a gospel middle between liberal and conservative methods, to show that the gospel must be contextualized, communal, and propositional. I am not anti-tract, anti-apologetics, and so on. God uses these means of grace, but that doesn’t always make them right, in content or delivery. However, the greater struggle in evangelism lies in our hearts. Will we put our faith in Jesus or in defenses, in the transforming power of the Spirit or in methods, in the sovereign electing will of God or the will of our hearers? In the end, the evangelist must first have faith in the gospel himself, this authenticates our words more than any saying, method, or defense. All too often we share the gospel without believing it.
How Not to Be a Missional Church Continues
Some of you may have read the beginning of this series, How Not to Be a Missional Church, on my blog. I’ve pushed the series to Resurgence, where it will be running all week, and will conclude with the Evangelism-Driven critique. Others of you are reading some of this for the first time. As each post goes up this week, I will post some further commentary for explanation and interaction.
Event-Driven Missional Church:
I am not saying events are bad, but that event-driven churches miss the mark of missional church. If we put all our eggs in the basket of out-reach events, in the name of mission, we have misunderstood the purpose and nature of the missional church. The missional church is a Jesus-centered community that redemptively engages peoples and cultures. It’s not a switch you turn on or off, a date on the calendar, or an item we tick off the list. Mission is our identity, because we have be rescued by a missionary God and placed in his missionary family.We live missionary lives, doing everyday things with gospel intentionality.
At Austin City Life, we do events. We baptize, we preach, we gather on Sundays, we do fund-raising garage sales for Operation Turkey, we clean apartments for homeless women and kids, we visit nursing homes, we do Teen Therapy Room Renovations. One difference, however, is that these missional events are typically linked to a greater community over time. They are done with non-Christians, for non-Christians, to address real needs in the context of a long-term relationship. I like to call them strategic social partnerships (in-house language), to convey the importance of missional churches/communities making a long-term social, cultural, and relational impact through gospel witness. Events aren’t bad, but when we mistake event for missional church we get off track. People will see it as just another program, which it is, unless we explain to them that mission is our identity, responsibility, gifting, and joy. (scroll through to our mission series for more)