A missional community of faith

Een interessante gedachtegang over missionair zijn en zeggen te zijn...

what does it mean to be a 'missional community of faith?' i hear the word tossed around all the time and in every possible direction; every 'church' or gathering is claiming that they are missional, so what's the big deal? it seems to me to be the 'new buzz word' that identifies a community of faith as a postmodern/emerging community of faith. but using the word to describe who you are, and actually being it are two very different things. one church i know insisted that it was missional because it supported 'missions' in countries of the two-thirds world; it does nothing on a local level and has zero from the church doing anything except writing checks. now, before i go on i need to say this; this is where most people say something like 'there is nothing wrong with giving money' - well, i am not going to say that because i believe a great many churches and christians use that as a cop-out to actually being missional. if everyone stopped giving money to organizations, and started to actually do something i think we would be a whole lot better off - i am not looking for people to 'fund' a mission trip, i am looking for people to have fun on a mission trip; we are a datebook faith, not a checkbook faith. in my heart of hearts i truly believe we make it easy for people to 'write a check' for missions and not move off the pews to actually serve. while, to them, their definition may be valid, to me it is limiting at best. it seems to me that they do not fully catch the possibilities of being a 'missional community of faith' and they ignore the nuances of those possibilities.

let me share with you what i think it means to be 'missional;' a missional community of faith is a living breathing transparent community of faith willing to get messy while reach out to, and bringing in, those outside the current community. now, what i would like to do is explore some of the nuances of that 'definition' and go a bit deeper."

posted by Peter Wierenga @ 7:04 p.m.