Missional Places in the Suburbs

May 30, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 1 Comment

Here is an excellent post titled “Looking for the Poor in the Suburbs: 10 Ways to Engage Missions in the Suburbs” from David Fitch at Reclaiming the Mission. Fitch acknowledges the difficulty of identifying the poor (in spirit and well as in wealth) in the suburbs.

However he writes that as he walked and prayed throughout the neighborhood his imagination was “stoked by the Spirit.” As a result he shares 10 “missional places” in the suburbs that lend themselves to great ministry opportunities.

To continue your reflections on Fitch’s last point, which is hospitality with your neighbors, you might want to check out this piece as well.

Minister From the Margins

May 28, 2008 | Filed Under missional | No Comments

“For all its challenges, postmodernism presents the church with a tremendous missional opportunity. By learning to minister from the margins, the church will rediscover the true power of the gospel.”

– Craig Van Gelder

Reggie McNeal

May 20, 2008 | Filed Under kingdom of God, leadership, missional | 3 Comments

Here are two excellent presentations from Reggie McNeal recorded at the Reformed Church in America’s One Thing Conference last February.

While McNeal’s presentations are always laced with an abundance of humor, he never fails to present a great challenge to the church to struggle deeply with why and how the church functions. These two sessions are certainly no exception. I especially appreciate McNeal’s emphasis on the Kingdom in the first presentation. His thoughts on developing a “blessing strategy” are also very refreshing and applicable.

You can also download the audio of both sessions here.

Concerning A “Theology of Mission”

May 19, 2008 | Filed Under books, missiology, missional | No Comments

Is there, in the light of the present state of theology of the Old and New Testament, any occasion to speak of a separate “theology of mission”? One can maintain this, it seems to me, only if one misunderstands the Church as well as mission.

The Church which has been chosen out of the world is chosen for this end — that she performs for the world the service of giving witness to the Kingdom of God which has come and is coming in Jesus Christ. If theology is really theo-logia — a speaking about God, then she cannot do otherwise than speak of the God who is not a statue but an overflowing fountain of good.

The triune God who is involved with the world in the sending of the prophets, of Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, also sends the apostles and the Church. I think that it would be a “back-translation” into old and theologically abandoned categories, if one were to vindicate the “theology of mission” as a separate field of theology.

The unity between Church and mission, the unity, that is, between mission as a service of the Church and the Church as sent into the world, does not mean that there is no longer room for a basic reflection regarding the conditions and manner and extent of the service of the Church to the world.

But every separate “theology of mission” will make acute the old danger of the separation of things which God has joined together in His Word. This can be nothing but a source of difficulties and problems.

There is no other Church than the Church sent into the world, and there is no other mission than that of the Church of Christ. The consequence for theology, I think, is that a theological reflection of missionary service is possible and extremely necessary, but not a “theology of missions.”

– Johannes Blauw in The Missionary Nature of the Church

When the Missional Church Gathers

May 13, 2008 | Filed Under church, missional | 7 Comments

The purpose of the formation of these communities, initiated by Jesus with his disciples and continued by the apostles, was not to create enclaves of the pure and the righteous who lived in legalistically defined isolation from their polluted environments. These communities were to demonstrate before the world the nature of the love and healing that God had made real for all in Christ in the way that they lived and related.

Their work, beginning with how they earned their bread, to how their families lived, to the character of their called communities, to their interactions with their neighbors, was defined as their witness. It seems to me to be clear that the necessary outcome of the basic assumptions and insights of the current missional church discussion must be a strong focus upon the work of witness, which means, I believe, that the lay apostolate merits our full attention. As we see more and more evidence of the “end of Christendom,” especially in our public and cultural life, the issues of ministry in daily life become more urgent.

The constant question of the earnest Christian in the workplace is, “How shall we then witness?” The answers are by no means easy. To assume that North American society is still, in its core, Christian, is both dangerous and illusory. But the response is not to retreat to “fortress ecclesia.” Rather, it is to take the fundamentally missional character of the gathered church so seriously that we begin to ask, “How shall we prepare one another for our work as witness when we are gathered for worship, nurture, and fellowship?”

Darrell Guder from “Worthy Living: Work and Witness from the Perspective of Missional Church Theology” in Word & World, Fall 2005

Cultural Distance

May 11, 2008 | Filed Under books, missional | 3 Comments

Alan Hirsch, in The Forgotten Ways, shares a concept called “cultural distance.” It can be applied to missions and church in the sense that certain people and groups are really close to the gospel and others are very far away.

That is, some share much of what evangelical Christians hold dear, so all you need to do is provide a church in the middle of the suburb that provides safe child care, school tutoring, ice cream socials, divorce and alcohol recovery, and basic moral training, and you’ll probably see some growth in the church. Whereas people who don’t share the same biblical values will completely uninterested in our homogenized church expressions.

Cultural distance explains why there is room for some churches to stay the same, but also why most churches will need to make radical adjustments. It all depends on who you are called to reach. If your calling is to influence those with the most similarly held values, then you can keep providing the same thing. But if you want to influence the massively growing percentage of people who are much further from the gospel, you’ll have to provide, model, and invite people into an inclusive community that welcomes people with alternative values.

Halter and Smay in The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community

Missional Video Clips

May 7, 2008 | Filed Under missional | 3 Comments

Here are two short video clips worth checking out. The first is from Alan Roxburgh and Allelon from the Euro Church Conference in Lisbon last month. The clip is about 10 minutes long and deals primarily with questions concerning church, mission and the gospel in the European context. In my opinion the best part of the clip is the last couple of minutes as Roxburgh discusses the need to consider the “long journey” rather than short-term solutions.

The second a very short (2 minutes) clip of Scot McKnight at Willow’s Shift Conference as he shares how Jesus was “other oriented” and that we in turn need to see ourselves as “the presence of Jesus in this world.”

For a handful of other clips discussing missional issues click on the video tap at the top of this page.

Missional Bible Study Questions

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under missional, scripture | No Comments

In light of yesterday’s post on “Hearing the Bible Missionally” here is another good link from Tyndale University College and Seminary where they present five key questions (taken from the work of the GOCN) that will assist those studying the Bible to shift to a missionally-oriented approach to a specific text.