The Church as a Gospel Centered Community

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Build the Church on “Core time” not Leisure time

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Stetzer: The Dangerous Church 2010

Ed Stetzer’s address “The Dangerous Church” at Innovation3 is a must read. He engages in some “prognosticating,” outlining Cautions, Cultural Perspectives, and Church Perspectives that will need to be heeded and changed by 2010.

Toward A Missional Hermeneutic

The Gospel and Our Culture Network recently convened the 7th annual meeting. Papers were presented, responded to, and the status of a missional hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture reassessed. George Hunsberger offers summary reflections from that meeting noting: “The time is ripe for a rigorous and robust missional hermeneutic!” To that end, Hunsberger identifies four streams of hermeneutical thought:

1. The missional direction of the story.

The framework for biblical interpretation is the story it tells of the mission of God and the formation of a community sent to participate in it.

2. The missional purpose of the writings

The aim of biblical interpretation is to fulfill the equipping purpose of the biblical writings.

3. The missional locatedness of the readers

The approach required for a faithful reading of the Bible is from the missional location of the Christian community.

4. The missional engagement with cultures.

The gospel functions as the interpretive matrix within which the received biblical tradition is brought into critical conversation with a particular human context.

These papers, reflections, and hermeneutical directions will prove important in shaping an honest, faithful, and missional reading of the Bible that promotes a gospel-focused, narrative-couched, missional theology for practitioners and the church alike. No doubt these streams of thought will influence many in the books and articles to come on Missional Church and Theology. Read the whole article here.

The emerging four questions are questions that should shape our churches for decades to come:

1. What is the story of the biblical narrative and how does it implicate us? (missio Dei)

2. What is the purpose of the biblical writings in the life of its hearers? (equipping witness)

3. How shall the church read the Bible faithfully today? (located questions)

4. What guides our use of the received tradition in the context before us? (gospel matrix)

Get Better Missiology: Read the Missional Redwoods

Okay, here are my thoughts on the so-called Missional Tree (I surprised no one has commented on this). The idea of a missional tree is pretty cool and potentially helpful; however, this tree is an incomplete, second generation tree. I realize that these books are practitioner oriented, with the exception of Guder, but there’s not one biblical theology of mission listed. What about Chris Wright’s landmark The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative or Stetzer and Hesselgrave’s forthcoming Mission: God’s Initiative in the World?

All the books listed here were published within the past ten years (and we need fresh publications like these). Missional theology has been in existence much longer. Look no further than Ed Stetzer’s fine historical work on the Meanings of Missional to uncover some of the missional greats. But before there was Stetzer and Guder there was Bosch, Walls, Hiebert, Kraft, Van Engen, etc. These missional redwoods tower over many of the books features in the missional tree, both in history and content. Consider this rich description of the missional church from Andrew Walls first published 20 years ago:

Christian faith is missionary both in its essence and in its history. At the heart of the Christian fiath lie assumptions about the Lord and the Ground of the uinverse and the common nature of humanity and affirmations about Jesus Christ that forbid its appropriation to any person, group or community as a private possession. The conviction that Jesus is Lord and the testimony that Christ is risen cannot mean that much unless they are to be shared. But both the faith of Christians and the nature of the church are missionary in a much deeper sense, more closely related to the “sending” idea from which the word “missionary” came…The mission of the church is not simply to add to itself but to bear witness that by his cross and resurrection Christ brought back the whole creation and defeated the powers that spoil it. In this sense all Christian life is missionary, as is the work of Christians and their commerce and habits of life, their art and music and every activity that demands choice.

If that isn’t deep and wide missiology, then I don’t know what is! Walls has influenced many missiologists. His first-hand experience in Africa outpaces the missional wisdom of many popular missional authors. We do well to get under the shade of such missional redwoods, to think their thoughts after them, and plant churches that sink strong missional roots into the soil of our cities, towns, and churches.

The Missional Tree

Leadership Journal put together a missional tree of books that have played a formative role in shpaing the missional church in North America. Ironically, some of the more profound influencers haven’t written books on missional church. How accurate do you think the tree is? Which books have helped you grow missional disciples/churches most and why?

HT: Alan Hirsch

Intro Class Follow Up

Here are five helpful tips I got from some of my Acts 29 buddies regarding Intro Classes:

1. Have a doable next step
2. Fill out a card on the spot
3. Do it monthly
4. Be accessible post-class
5. Get some members involved

Gospel Intentionality

By Tim Chester here.

What to Cover in a Church “Intro” Class

This past Sunday we did our first “Intro” 30 minute class for visitors and people new to our church. The aim of the class is to introduce people to our vision, values, doctrine, and mission. We explained it was like skipping rocks across all of these things, but wanted them to have a clear idea of who we are and what we are about so that they can evaluate if this is the community for them. If they choose to partner with us, we offer a Partners Class that goes into greater detail. The intro class was very successful. We had first time visitors, regular attenders, believers, non-believers, etc.

We gave summary explanation of the following and allowed for Q&A throughout. In all of this we continually reinforced that church is not an event to attend but a community on mission in the Gospel of Jesus. Naturally, this allowed us to communicate a central part of our philosophy of ministry—gospel-centered missional communities (City Groups). Afterward, a visitor shared a story he had read about life being like an old dilapidated castle that was going nowhere, and that it was eventually turned into a rocket launchpad. He compared our City Group focused church to the launchpad, not the dilapidated castle. I think he caught the vision. Pretty cool. Here’s what we covered:

• Welcome, names, how you found us, etc.
• Vision
• Governance
• Doctrine
• Community
• Mission

Here is my question: What do you cover for your Intro class? What have things have you done during the class that people found really helpful?

Books List Updated

Here