Tag: Missional Church
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Gospel Clarity for Missional Calling
The article below by World Harvest Mission‘s Josiah Bancroft is a tremendously insightful and clear explanation of the relationship of the gospel to culture. Not only is this an important understanding for the mission field overseas, but Josiah explains why it is essential even within the local church in North America. The video above is…
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Lessons from The Externally Focused Church
Although everyone outside the Church is a potential ministry focus, the Externally Focused Church moves intentionally toward two groups: Those on the margins The City – from Externally Focused Church These are important points to remember when designing an outreach strategy for the local church. The first, people on the margins of society, probably…
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Total Church
I have recently been listening to Tim Chester and Steve Timmis speak about Total Church. I appreciate their emphasis that two key principles should shape church life: gospel and community. As Tim Chester writes: Christians are called to a dual fidelity: fidelity to the core content of the gospel and fidelity to the primary context…
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Moving Toward Missional
Some questions I have wrestled with over time: Can someone live missionally without a conscious embracing of missionalism? I suspect “No”. It is possible to engage in activities, but without a conscious approach there is no “mission”. Such a life is more frenetic, aimless, and haphazard. Mission requires intentionally carrying out a preconceived plan and/or…
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Missional Shift
In his book The Present Future, Reggie McNeal reveals and contrasts different ways leaders can think about the church and its ministry. McNeal reflects upon the different paradigms that pastors can have as they lead and conduct ministry in the church. Being missional is a shift in thinking about the nature of the church. Once…
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No Need to Reinvent the Church
Let me just say it straight, up front: I see no need to reinvent the church. What I do see is the need for God’s People to act more faithfully as Christ’s Church. I like what Kevin DeYoung has to say in the Introduction to his book, The Good News We Almost Forgot: No doubt the church…
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Every Church Missional
Every church is called to be a “missional church”. The fact that we have turned the word mission into an adjective testifies to the American church’s frayed ecclesiology. A non-missional church is not a church in the first place, but in a culture largely devoid of theological vocabulary, this language has become necessary to remind…
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The Calling of the Church
The calling of the church in every culture is to be mission. That is, the work of the church is not to be an agent or servant of the culture. The churches’ business is not to maintain freedom or to promote wealth or to help a political party or to serve as the moral guide…
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To Be Or Not To Be Missional
Dave Harvey is an expert church planter and an astute observer of trends in church leadership. At the Spring 2007 Leadership Conference of Sovereign Grace Ministries Harvey assessed the strengths and weakness of the missional movement in an address titled Watch Your Mission: To Be or Not to Be Missional. One observation Harvey offers is that…
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Community is Identity
From Tim Chester: The church is not a building you enter. Nor is it a meeting your attend. It is not what you do on a Sunday. To be a Christian is to be part of God’s people and to express that in your life through belonging to a local Christian community. Our Belonging We…
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Externally Focused Quest
Most churches have a subtle, perhaps even unspoken, objective. It is driven by the question: “How can we be the best church in our community?” How a church answers that question determines the approach to membership, staffing, budget, etc. In a book I am now reading, Externally Focused Quest, authors Eric Swanson & Rick Rusaw ask…
