emergent, new monastic, emerging, organic, ancient future, missional church. I haven’t been completely comfortable with any of these current labels for evolving ways of being the church. As I have been re-imagining what it means to be a follower of Jesus in my current cultural context (urban,racially and socio-economically diverse) I’ve moved beyond emergent but had not named what that beyond was.
I was recently been asked to teach a class at a local seminary on the missional church. As I’ve been preparing for that I find myself growing increasingly more comfortable with identifying what I’m doing as missional. To be sure the missional label is not perfect and I can’t say I agree with every expression of missional but here are some things that appeal to my post emergent sensibility.
My developing view of the missional church is
- Cross cultural in its efforts
- intentional indigenous – culturally engaged but not culturally absorbed
- connecting with God who is already at work in our world
- incarnational proclamation of the gospel
- realigning or re-imagining all aspects of church life around God’s purposes
- culturally engaged but scripturally orthodox
- transforming community
- church planting reproduction
- creative and culturally relevant but connected to the historically church
Some language derived from Friends of missional
So as I move toward the missional future I’ve taken the huge leap of posting a friend of missional button in my side bar. A first of any kind of identifying button for emerging mosaic.
Share your ideas or thoughts on the missional church
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I haven’t been able to feel totally comfortable wih the emerging labels because of how ambiguous Emergent leaders are in relation to basic doctrines of the church. However, I feel fully comfortable being identified with the missional moniker because it deals so much with context, the heart of Christ, and community while affirming an orthodix Christianity.
you’ll be in my prayers as you teach
Jerry,
Thanks for the prayers it the first time teaching this kind of class so I am starting from scratch. I downloaded some of the stuff you have on your blog. I’d like to email you to take some more about your work in this area.
Travis,
The breadth of the ambiguity is what really pushed me to reach for something more. There are just too many things that are up for grabs with no real rhyme or reason except that it is new (see my post on neophilia) or a reaction to the problems of the modern church. Also the lack of clarity, intentionality, attention to issues like racial reconciliation leave me yearning for a more holistic (ironic considering the emergent roots) way of approaching this.
Andre, That is a familiar sounding story. I’m glad I discovered your blog and look forward to tracking your thoughts.
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