As a member of the VERGE social media team, I recently received The Tangible Kingdom Primer, an 8 week study to put incarnational missional community to practice. The Primer seems eminently helpful, and has been used by megachurch Austin Stone, host to VERGE, to promote missional community in their own church.
As Halter & Smay point out, when a church grows, slowly or by leaps and bounds, something is needed to continually reproduce your missional values. Their response was the Primer.
The Primer offers helpful exercises, thought-provoking questions, and insightful comments along the way. Here are a smattering of those:
- The reason we struggle to live a missional life is that it pulls against every natural fiber, sin, rhythm, habit, muscle, and thought pattern we’re used to. viii
- Right now, what is hindering you from living a missional life?
- Imagine what could change if the Good news of Jesus was allowed to shape and inform all the area of our lives.
- What personal interests and hobbies can you turn into communal ones?
Although the Primer is highly structured, it provides very practical help in cultivating missional communities. On the other hand, I find it difficult to imagine our church working through a 200 page primer (I thought primers were supposed to be short!). In the end, every pastor and leader must find the methods that best suit their people and their context. No doubt the TK Primer will be a good one for many!