From Institution to Mission
Missional Church article -from Urbana.org
Sunday, June 25, 2006
The Planter writes: "I picked up this article from www.//exagorazo.blogspot.com"
The article sites some great characteristics of missional churches:
Minfred Minatrea studied a number of missional churches. He defined missional churches as "Reproducing communities of authentic disciples, being equipped as missionaries sent by God, to live and proclaim His kingdom in their world." He noted nine practices that they have in common (with explanatory phrases in parentheses by exagorazo in his blogsite.):
1. Having a high threshold for membership
(high expectations for believers)
2. Being real, not real religious
(being transparent, authentic, with one foot in "the world.")
3. Teaching to obey rather than to know
(a practical faith)
4. Rewriting worship every week
(Creative, participatory Sunday morning services)
5. Living apostolically
(each believer as a missionary)
6. Expecting to change the world
(aggressively engaged in transforming communities)
7. Ordering actions according to purpose.
(Ruthless aligning of resources with mission)
8. Measuring growth by capacity to release rather than retain.
(Not megachurches but multiplying churches)
9. Placing kingdom concerns first
(in contrast to denomination first. Thus, cooperation with other churches)
posted by Bob Carder @ 2:42 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Bob, Do you know what causes "old wineskins" to burst? Fermentation: living activity. To cause something to ferment, one must have something that agitates the product that is in the wineskin: like yeast (or you or I: see Webester's Dictionary). The one time Jesus used yeast as a positive example is in Matt. 13:33, where He spoke of building the Kingdom. Interesting. Preach on brother.
Don- You always stir my thinking into depths of creativity. I'm praying for you.
Together with others we are stirring and agitating the grape juice (or the church in America) into fermentation or (living activity).
As you know, a clear majority of believers in America do not believe or receive this. They call activity -stuff they do for their own family inside the four walls of a building they call the church and they cannot even see that they are and we are the church. Jesus grieves more than we.
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