This week @ Community of Hope
Aug 17th - Train On your own - Contemplative Practice
As we continue to journey as a church we are doing our best to continue to think missional. Its not going on mission, its living a mission.
Missional is a Shift in Thinking
But first a necessary word of caution for those who wish to explore and understand what it means to be a missional church or people. Alan Hirsch rightly states that "the word 'missional' over the years has tended to become very fluid and as it was quickly co-opted by those wishing to find new and trendy tags for what they themselves were doing, be they missional or not. It is often used as a substitute it for seeker-sensitive, cell-group church, or other church growth concepts, thus obscuring its original meaning." As a result, missional is often looked upon as just another phase or program. But we error when we do so for missional is more than just another movement, it is a full expression of who the ekklesia of Christ is and what it is called to be and do. At its core, missional is a shift in thinking. This shift in thinking is expressed by Ed Stetzer and David Putman in their book, "Breaking the Missional Code" (Broadman & Holman, 2006) like this:
- From programs to processes
- From demographics to discernment
- From models to missions
- From attractional to incarnational
- From uniformity to diversity
- From professional to passionate
- From seating to sending
- From decisions to disciples
- From additional to exponential
- From monuments to movements
You can read more of what it looks like to live missionaly at http://www.friendofmissional.org/