My friend Greg shared this blog posting with me.
It comes from a blog called "Thinking in Progress", and speaks to some of the issues I am currently struggling with, regarding certain aspects of the "missional"/"incarnational" movement in the church today. I posted some of my thoughts a few weeks ago and a pretty good conversation followed in the comment section.
I'm not familiar with the "Thinking in Progress" blog or its author, but I certainly appreciate this specific post. He does a great job articulating the ideals of the missional church and clarifying some of the misconceptions that have emerged.
Thanks for the link Greg.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
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6 comments:
Thank you for sharing the link to my post.
You seem like a cool dude by the posts I've read and the title of your blog (Piper-esque).
Checking out your music on myspace now- sounds great so far.
God's best,
what is your specific struggle? Is it how you should view 'doing church' or how you think others should 'do church'?
For one guy to wrap up and definitively define "missional church" seems hazardous. On certain of his points, I know house churches that consider themselves missional but lack a lot in some things he spoke of. If my friends read his post they might be hurt that some people don't consider them missional.
I know I'm beating the same drum from weeks ago, but it seems safe to say that as long as the mandated biblical core values are in place, then not every church of the same genre will look alike but be on the same mission.
When halter was writing, he didn't say every church should be like his. Those quotes were about his own church and how they work out their faith in a missional way. If you say tomato and he says toomado, is that ok?
this is the inherent problem with broad labels. Obviously contemporary and traditional are not sufficient terms to describe every kind of church and yet, almost all churches are crammed into one of these 2 categories.
So it is for missional and attractional... both words that mean something but the more we talk about them, the less they will mean. You end up having to describe where you are in between them...
For example, I would say that crossings is a missional church that leans attractional. The services are creative, a lot goes into Sunday morning, people want to be there because it is quality.
Where I am at Powell, we are an attractional church with a growing heart to become more missional... we're much more missional than we were 2 years ago... it's been a good journey.
But you can see where this is going... 2 years from now, these words will be almost meaningless and we'll have to come up with some new descriptors to set us apart.
jeph, my struggle is not with the ideals or philosophy of the mission church.
my struggle is with one apparent practice of SOME (not all) specific churches that loudly wear the "missional" banner. and the practice i am struggling with is the devaluing of corporate worship gatherings. i realize that that is not universal among missional churches. i also realize that that may not even be the intent of those specific churches. but that is the message i am picking up. and i don't like it. i may just be misunderstanding them, and i hope that i am. that is why i used the word "struggle".
Interesting discussion.
To ragamuffinminister I would add that I mentioned in my post that I don't speak for every missional leader, so please don't take my words definitive of everyone. I'm not that smart.
It seems to me that missional churches take on multiple expressions but the purpose is similar- to go and make disciples... It isn't about how we structure our churches but is how we ARE the church.
All I really care about is being the church Jesus had in mind. I don't care what it's labeled, all I really care is that we're biblical.
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