Introducing the Missional Church (Allelon Missional Series) , livre ebook

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92 pages

English

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Many pastors and church leaders have heard the term "missional" but have only a vague idea of what it means, let alone why it might be important to them. But what does it actually mean? What does a missional church look like and how does it function? Two leading voices in the missional movement here provide an accessible introduction, showing readers how the movement developed, why it's important, and how churches can become more missional. Introducing the Missional Church demonstrates that ours is a post-Christian culture, making it necessary for church leaders to think like missionaries right here at home. Focusing on a process that allows a church to discern its unique way of being missional, it guides readers on a journey that will lead them to implement a new set of missional practices in their churches. The authors demonstrate that living missionally is about discerning and joining God's work in the world in order to be a witness to God's kingdom on earth.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 novembre 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441207913
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0576€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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INTRODUCING THE MISSIONAL CHURCH
WHAT IT IS, WHY IT MATTERS, HOW TO BECOME ONE

ALAN J. ROXBURGH AND M. SCOTT BOREN GENERAL EDITOR: MARK PRIDDY
2009 by Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren
Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording- without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roxburgh, Alan J. Introducing the missional church : what it is, why it matters, how to become one / Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren ; general editor, Mark Priddy. p. cm. - (Allelon missional series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8010-7212-3 (pbk.) 1. Mission of the church. 2. Missions-Theory. I. Boren, M. Scott. II. Priddy, Mark. III. Title. BV601.8.R688 2009 262 .7-dc22
2009028579
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked Message is taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
Scripture marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
09 10 11 12 13 14 15 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is more than the work of two authors, it has been written over a decade through interaction with ordinary men and women in local churches around the world. We dedicate this book to them- people in the United States, UK, Australia, Europe, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa. We are indebted to their passion for God and desire to see the church re-engage neighborhoods and communities with the imagination of the Spirit.
Contents
Series Preface
Introduction
Part 1: One Missional River
1. Not All Who Wander Are Lost: Stories of a Church In Between
2. Just Give Me a Definition: Why Missional Church Is So Hard to Define
3. Does Missional Fit? Can My Church Be Missional?
Part 2: Three Missional Conversations
4. What s Behind the Wardrobe? The Center of the Missional Church
5. We re Not in Kansas Anymore: Missionaries in Our Own Land
6. Why Do We Need Theology? Missional Is about God, Not the Church
7. God s Dream for the World: What Is a Contrast Society?
Part 3: Countless Missional Journeys
8. The Journey Ahead: Following the Winds of the Spirit
9. Starting from Here: Where Is Your Church Now?
10. The Missional Change Model: Getting There from Here
11. The Awareness Stage: Staring Reality in the Face
12. The Understanding Stage: Can We Really Talk about These Things?
13. The Evaluation Stage: A Snapshot of the Church
14. The Work of the Church Board: How Do Innovators and Traditionalists Work Together?
15. The Experiment Stage: Little Steps toward Something Big
Conclusion: Commitment
Notes
Series Preface
Allelon is a network of missional church leaders, schools, and parachurch organizations that envisions, inspires, engages, resources, trains, and educates leaders for the church and its mission in our culture. Said simply, together we are a movement of missional leaders.
We have a particular burden for people involved in new forms of missional communities (sometimes called emerging ), people starting new congregations within denominational systems, and people in existing congregations who are working toward missional identity and engagement. Our desire is to encourage, support, coach, and offer companionship for missional leaders as they discern new models of church capable of sustaining a living and faithful witness to the gospel in our contemporary world.
The word allelon is a common but overlooked Greek word that is reciprocal in nature. In the New Testament it is most often translated one another. Christian faith is not an individual matter. Everything in the life of the church is done allelon for the sake of the world. A Christian community is defined by the allelon sayings in Scripture, a few of which include: love one another, pursue one another s good, and build up one another.
The overarching mission of Allelon is to educate and encourage the church, while learning from one another , so that we might become a people among whom God lives as sign, symbol, and foretaste of his redeeming love in neighborhoods and the whole of society. We seek to facilitate this reality within ordinary women and men who endeavor to participate in God s mission to reclaim and restore the whole of creation and to bear witness to the world of a new way of being human.
To accomplish this goal, Allelon has partnered with Baker Books and Baker Academic to produce resources that equip the church with the best thinking and practices on missional life. After years of interaction around the missional conversation, we continually get asked, What is a missional church? and then the follow-up question, How do we become one? This is the reason why we feel this book is especially important on this leg of the church s journey. Alan and Scott are trusted friends and colleagues who have poured their lives into this message that is based on both experience and research. You will find these words challenging and even somewhat unique. In fact, you may find their insights surprising; however, these are words you can trust to lead us forward as God s people into a new future.
Mark Priddy CEO, Allelon International Eagle, Idaho www.allelon.org
Introduction
In 1974 a missionary returned home to his native England after more than thirty years in India. Seeing his own country after so many years away, he viewed it as an outsider with insider eyes and was shocked by what he observed. The Christian England he had left was gone; the depth of hopelessness he saw among the young was alarming. He realized that the West (the United Kingdom, Europe, and increasing portions of North America) was now itself a mission field. The once mission-sending nations of the West were in need of radical re-missionizing. This shock, with its awareness of the challenge to be addressed, became the focus of his work and writing for the next twenty-five years. The basic question he asked was about the nature of a missionary encounter with the modern West.
The man was Lesslie Newbigin. His work inspired the development of what came to be designated the Gospel and Our Culture Network that sprang up in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and North America. The New Zealand group came to an end in the 1990s, and the movement in the United Kingdom has remained a relatively small, academic conversation. The North American Gospel and Our Culture Network had a somewhat different story.
In the late 1980s a group of church leaders and thinkers formed the Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America to ask basic questions about why and how churches had become so captive to individualism and consumerism. They wondered why churches had lost touch with the way the biblical texts spoke of God s mission in and for the world and why the central biblical theme of the kingdom of God had just about disappeared from the preaching and teaching of the churches.
Out of these conversations a team of authors collaborated to produce the book Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America . 1 It touched a deep chord across North America so that by the beginning of the new millennium the missional conversation was the primary way church leaders talked about the challenges facing the church. While the book reframed the questions about being the church in North America at the end of the twentieth century, many local church leaders found it too abstract with too many concepts veiled in technical and academic language. Most of those who wrote Missional Church were academics teaching as theologians and missiologists in seminaries. Alan Roxburgh, one of the authors of that book as well as this one, remembers a conversation with a denominational leader about a year after the book s publication. His comments were telling: I love the book. Its argument and ideas are the right ones. But few of my leaders will have any clue what it is about because the book is too technical and academic. If one of my pastors came into this office to ask for help in making his or her church a place that could engage its world, I couldn t give the pastor this book. There s nothing practical in it. He then turned to another section of his bookshelf and pulled down a thick workbook on how to make the church healthy. I can give the pastor this because it tells how to do something. But your book just talks academic ideas. It was tough criticism to hear, but Alan understood what he meant.
Although part of the writing team, Alan had shifted from teaching in a seminary to pastoring a local church, so he had some sympathy with the denominational leader s plea for help. Many in Alan s church felt the missional conversation was a new program brought in by the new pastor, and they were his guinea pigs. Others were excited about the ideas but wondered what it all meant for existing programs and their identity as a church. Getting from the book s academic ideas to the down-to-earth practicalities of missional life looked like a big, big challenge.
When Alan was part of the team writing Missional Church , Scott Boren served on the staff of the church where Alan was pastor. Alan shared the concepts with the pastoral staff, and we discussed the implications for the way our church functioned. We had many of these conversations, which gave us an opportunity that few others at the time had to