“seeding” missional communities
- Filed under: church, church planting, community, culture, Gospel, incarnational, leadership, ministry, missional, missional church, missional living, post-Christendom, sent
- Date: Feb 7,2010
David Fitch, author of The Great Giveaway, a pastor of Life on the Vine, and the Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary, recently put his twist on what church planting should/could look like in the post-Christendom culture.
Fitch:
We recognize then that when we get over a certain size, all we end up doing is making the goods and services of being a Christian more accessible and convenient for already existing Christians. We have no other option then, when we get too big, to ask fifteen or twenty people to leave and go be missionaries to dechurched places in post Christendom. This used to be called church planting. We often now call it “seeding missional communities.”
On discerning where to “seed” these missional communities, he says:
…we like to think in terms of “sending” groups of people as “missional orders” into a community – bands of people who can take time, and sink in and learn that culture and be among the place in which God has called them to minister Christ. When we discern places for such a missionary endeavor, we ask are these places “under-churched” and “affordable for us as we seek to live missionally and beneath our means?”
He goes on to share 5 issues to be discerned in “seeding” a new missional community:
1. Discern the 3 (or 4 or 5) leaders
2. Land in the community over launching in the community
3. Exegete the community over market surveys
4. Teach missional rhythms over attractional events
5. Prepare for a sustainable way of life over a long period of time over projected growth and financial sustainability after three years
I think Fitch’s instincts here are on the right trajectory. Read the entire post here and how he would flesh out the “seeding” process.
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