transitioning to missional
- Filed under: Bible, Christianity, church, community, discipleship, incarnational, Jesus, leadership, mission, missional, missional church, missional living, social justice, theology
- Date: Feb 10,2010
Brent Thomas, lead pastor of Church of the Cross in Phoenix, has posted on some of his reflections on Verge, a conference that focused in on gospel-centered missional community.
Thomas says in his post, “Missional Communites Are Great And All, But Now What?! Transitioning to Missional”:
One of the take-aways for me from this conference was that there is a tremendous outpouring of frustration with the American church and its consumeristic mindset and business-like models. There is also a growing consensus that missional community rather than programs might be one of the answers to this growing frustration.
But Thomas knows that transitioning to missional will be extremely difficult for many pastors:
While much of this is refreshing and even exciting, it may in fact be frustrating for a good many pastors. I spoke with several pastors who attended the conference who actually left the conference quite frustrated because the churches to which they were returning were so far away from this model. The obvious, overwhelming and unclear question here for many pastors is how to get from here to there: how do you transition a traditional, American program-driven church to missional?
Thomas gives us 8 things to consider when transitioning to “missional”:
1. Go slow
2. Be theological/scriptural
3. Clearly define your terms
4. Lead by example
5. Don’t neglect community
6. Center each community around a tangible mission with the clear end-goal of making disciples
7. Celebrate successes/share stories
8. Focus on Jesus
Read Thomas’ entire post here to see how he fleshes out these points.
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