From The Missional Canuck

A church where the mission is not the first organizing principle of the church’s life will eventually cease to be the church. As Barth has often been quoted “The church’s mission is not secondary to its being; the church exists in being sent and in building itself for its mission.” The missional church is not primarily about having a mission or doing mission, it is about how the church is constituted. All that the church does must be able to point back to it’s relevance to the mission of God.

Scripture is a crosscultural book. It was written in cross-cultural contexts. Its full of cross-cultural encounters. It assumes cross-cultural movements. It ends with cross-cultural worship.

(Via Chris Woznicki)

Liminality

Leonard Hjalmarson has a book project, Broken Futres, and he posted a couple of pages of it over at his website, Next Reformation. In it he talks about one of my (fairly new) favorite concepts — LIMINALITY. His point is that the changing of our culture, where Christianity is moving from a place of cultural prominence …

Healthy Churches

Health is not measured in terms of size or numbers, but witness and faithfulness. Healthy churches are measured on their faithfulness to God. They focus on making disciples, local missionaries who understand they are to be fishers of people. Healthy churches see an increase in witness, a growth in local missionaries and have developed a …

Church on the Periphery Can Be a Good Thing

We have been led to believe, my most of the church, that the loss of cultural relevance of the church is a bad thing…that the shift from Christendom of modernism to to the church on the periphery of post-modernism is a bad thing. And, I can see why. The loss of political and cultural pull …

One More From Bill Easum — On Kingdom Orientation and Church Planting

One more quote from Bill Easum as I just rediscovered him again. This is what he says about having a Kingdom Orientation when thinking of Church Planting: A Kingdom orientation is the number one thing I hear over and over. A kingdom orientation allows pastors to: Care more about how many people they give away …

Discipleship, The Jesus Way

This is a video of LIFE-ON-LIFE MISSIONAL DISCIPLESHIP and is well worth watching a couple of times. In particular, note the issues with a church that relies on proclamation. Explaining Life-on-Life Missional Discipleship from Life On Life Ministries on Vimeo.