Interesting post

Incarnational Practices
By Mark Van S

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You are church before you do church. This is one of the fueling insights of the missional church movement. This isn’t a new idea…but it is pretty provocative, especially when one considers its implications. If we take Jesus at his word when he says (as recorded in John 20:21) “as the Father has sent me, I am sending you,” then we realize that our being sent is the basis of our “doing” church. In other words, missiology precedes ecclesiology.

If this is true, then why does modern church planting amount to “service starting?” This is putting the cart before the horse, ecclesiology before missiology. We decide how we are going to “do” church before we have built missional relationships. Putting missiology first changes how we think of ourselves as the church. (If you find this stuff confusing, I encourage you to check out this article on Andrew “Hamo” Hamilton's blog, Backyard Missionaries).

Just to prime the pump on how we might move forward to engage our neighborhoods missionally, I’d like to suggest to you 6 incarnational practices. These are the sort of things that a group of Christians can do out of their existing church, but I think it is better for a group of Christian friends to practice these sorts of things BEFORE a church is established. As they engage in these practices, they'll begin to meet people and know people and as those people need to be discipled and grow in their faith, an ecclesiology for that context should begin to emerge.

For more follow here.

The Planter says, give me your thoughts on this article.