Tag: Missional Church

Missional Network Gathering & Savvy Core Team Training

Posted on November 10, 2009

I am off to the Missional Network Gathering in Kansas City tomorrow with Brad Brisco as my host. I’ll be speaking on two main topics:

  • Planting to Movement: Forming City Networks
  • Best Practices of Missional Communities

Afterwards, I will be coaching the Watershed Church Planting team on Missional Core Team Development. They have developed an interesting approach, really savvy, as I have reflected on it. This team invited me to do customized coaching and teaching for their church plant.  Here’s why I think they came up with a savvy idea:

  • Contextualized Training: Instead of generalized training at a bootcamp, they get both general and specialized training, for their context.
  • Method-specific Training: They get to select a particular church planting model and go deep into it with an experienced planter.
  • Cost Effective Training: They save a little money by not paying for hotel, airfare, meals for the whole core team or leaders. They just pay the trainer/coach.

Mission is More than a Command

Posted on November 6, 2009

“Since the advent of Protestant missions, the dominant motivation for missions has been an appeal to the “missionary mandate.”  Thus, missions became a response of obedience to a particular set of commands, most notably those texts commonly referred to as embodying the Great Commission.  In contrast, Lesslie Newbigin has pointed out that in the New Testament we witness not the burden of obeying a command, but rather a vast “explosion of joy.”[1] Jürgen Moltmann described it as the joyous invitation to all peoples to come to a “feast without end.”[2]…

Harry Boer in his Pentecost and Missions rightly points out that none of the key figures in the book of Acts ever makes a direct appeal to any of the Great Commission passages to justify their preaching, even when questions are raised about the emerging Gentile mission.  He further points out that the earliest believers who took the initiative to preach the gospel to Gentiles (Acts 11:20) were very likely not even present at any of those post-resurrection commissioning events.”

Read the rest of Tim Tennent’s fine post.

Why Aren't We More Missional (Pt 3)

Posted on November 5, 2009

So far we’ve seen that God motivates us for mission with our gospel identity (missio Dei) and missional responsibility (mandates). Another way God motivates us to mission is by giving us particular graces. These graces come in the form of spiritual gifts. All of these gifts are intended to advance the mission of Christ. The Holy Spirit empowers us for mission by giving us missional gifts.

Missional Offices

In Ephesians 4, we learn that, not only is mission our identity and responsibility, but it’s also in our gifting. The Spirit gives missional offices to the church—Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, and Teacher—who exist to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The first three offices are inherently missional, for building out the church, adding to her number, advancing the mission through starting new ministries and churches, leading people to Christ, and proclaiming the gospel. The latter two, pastor and teacher, reinforce the mission by teaching God’s people about the missionary God and the missional church (along with a lot of other things). All five offices exist for the advance of teh gospel. Peter O’Brien comments on these five offices as “ministers of the Word through whom the gospel is revealed, declared, and taught.” So, these five gifts to the church are missional gifts for the sake of the gospel.

Missional Gifts

But that’s not all. Ultimately, these five equippers (Woodward) exist to mobilize the church for mission, for ministry. The Spirit has given you, each one of us unique gifts to advance the mission of Christ, to redemptively engage peoples and cultures (1 Cor 12; Rom 12; Eph 4). In Ephesians, we see these gifts operating in the church community, the Body of the Head. Fine enough. But then something interesting happens. The body grows. It grows up and it grows out, into the full stature of Christ. We build the church up with our gifts (community), and we build the church out with our gifts (mission). As it turns out, the gospel converts us to a Missional Church. The Pauline vision of the Church is a growing, diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural new humanity created by the Spirit. How does it grow? It grows through the godly, responsible, and gracious use of these gifts. If we are in Christ, the Spirit has given us missional gifts, to build the body up and out. To not use these gifts for mission is to to squander God’s graces. The Spirit motivates us with these graces. Be yourself in the Spirit, not yourself in the flesh. Walk out your gifts in the Spirit in everyday life.

More on this approach to mission can be found in my LEAD ’09 talks and a recent sermon on Missional Gifts.

Why Aren't People More Missional? (Pt 2)

Posted on November 4, 2009

Despite the preponderance of missional church resources, American Christians are slow to live missionally. Why is this? In our last post, we suggested that one reason is that we are motivating the church with best practices of mission, instead of an identity of mission grounded in the Missio Dei. Today, I’d like to suggest another motivation, with a twist.

Any evangelical can tell you that they are supposed to be on mission, but very few are. They can rattle off the Great Commission by memory, while running along no differently. Yet, all four Gospels contain missional mandates from the resurrected, King Jesus himself (Matt 28, Mark 16, Luke 24/Acts 1, John 16/21)! Why does missional disobedience persist? Perhaps because…

  1. We don’t take Jesus seriously. Jesus is our friend, not our Lord.
  2. We think the missional mandates are for apostles or super Christians only.
  3. We have a functional God that we like more than Jesus.
  4. We believe that mission is optional and that we won’t be judged for our missional disobedience.
  5. We don’t actually believe the gospel.