Tag: missional practices

Putting the Missionary into Missional Communities

Posted on February 20, 2009

The Austin Stone Missional Community blog is putting out some good posts. This post helpfully raises missionary questions that will promote MCs that think and act more wisely, communicating the gospel with greater missional savvy. Here are some questions your MC can ask in the process of understanding your culture and mission:

  1. What are the emotional needs of the elderly, families, teens, singles, men, women, children?
  2. What are the social, economic or educational needs of the same?
  3. What are the flaws and difficulties with the systems of the community?
  4. What is their worldview?
  5. What redemptive analogies best fit this culture?
  6. What does this culture understand about the basic components of the gospel story?
  7. What questions are being asked in the culture that point to their need for the gospel?

Herrington on Building Missional Cores

Posted on May 28, 2008

John Herrington, Director of Church Planting for Hill Country Bible Church, recently spoke to the Austin Area Church PLanters Network. His topic was “Rapidly Building Missional Core Teams.” He launched his reflections from Matthew 9. Let me guess, you are thinking, not another “the harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few” message, but stick with this. John brought some missiological and good old fashioned evangelistic reflections. What follows is my re-wording of a couple of John’s solid insights:

1. To reach the harvest you need more than laborers; you need to know the soil. Borrowing from Keller, John exhorted us to study and understand our target group’s “baseline cultural narrative.” In other words, spend enough time with the harvest to know the cultural soil it grows in. What are their values, hopes, fears? What motivates them to work and to play? What is the major story that influences their decision making? Singleness? Relativism? Capitalism? Sex? Power? Do you spend enough time with your harvest to answer these questions?

2. Evangelize sparingly, Reap unbelievers sparingly. John challenged us to quit hiding behind the broken defenses of the postmodern harvest–“door to door doesn’t work with us”; “community over conversion”; etc. John shared a story of going door to door with one of his planters to “get in the door” with his community. Sometimes it was straight for the spiritual jugular, other times it was simply getting to know the neighbors. John encouraged us to get out, get a dog, and meet your neighbors. Get into conversation, stir up community, and invite folks to something, a BBQ or whatever, but DO SOMETHING. Lots of folks turned out for the planters BBQ and his core team is thriving. If we sow sparingly we will reap sparingly. Get unchurched into your missional core. Sow abundantly, reap abundantly.

3. Put your hope in the sovereign, immanent God, not best missional practices. From Acts 17 John reminded us that Paul grounded his evangelistic hope in God “determining alloted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him…he is actually not far from each one of us…” Ultimately our hope can not be in great cultural savvy or best missional practices but in the sovereign immanent God who is here.

Celebrity Planting & Missional Practices

Posted on May 7, 2008

Celebrity status of some church planters is killing some never-will-be celebrity planters. It’s not the celebrity planter/pastors fault. It’s our proclivity to enthrone and exalt a person other than Jesus.

Yesterday, I was at a church planting conference where some guys whom I know and admire spoke. They had some great things to say. God used them to minister to me. But here’s the deal. When given an opportunity to ask these leaders (whose churches are in the thousands) any question, the planter questions often revolve around “best practices” and how to “grow your church.” Why? Because we lack wisdom and experience.  Because we need an outside voice. But also because celebrity planters have attained “success.” Because we want to grow big churches like theirs. Because we want a model or practice to implement to attain that level of success. Adopting a model that works is not planting a missional church.

Missional churches develop their missional practices and ecclesiastical models not by copy-cating but by understanding their own context so well that they become the expert on how to best be the church in their town, city, county. Instead of looking to the celebrity pastors, we should be looking to other planters in our own contexts, conversing, praying, and growing city-wide, region-wide strategies that are contextually birthed, not celebrity copied. And if we are going to understand the heart and culture issues of our peoples and areas, demographics will not do. We must listen carefully to the stories of unbelievers and believers and, with a gospel filter, allow their stories to inform our planting models and missional practices.

Missional practices must also be matched with a passion for Jesus-centered, gospel-adorning discipleship, counseling, preaching, teaching, and so on. And that comes from the Spirit of God who searches out all things, even the depths of God. Asking best practices questions are not the questions we need to be asking. Instead, we should be inquiring regarding: marriage, personal holiness, church discipline, faithful discipleship, missional-community tension, idolatry of the ministry, and so on. So, in addition to planting indigenous churches, we need indigenous practices and Spirit-led passion for Jesus Christ, who forgives our idolatry of celebrity planting and offers soul-strengthening passion for God.

God grant us grace to plant repentantly, contextually, and redemptively.