I was talking to a friend of mine. He was a missionary for many years and is still semi-active in that role. However, upon returning to the US, he looked into the possibility of serving as a Missions Pastor. That was something I had thought about at least on a couple of occasions. What he …
Tag: missional church
“Three Als” Quote (Mission-Al, Attraction-Al, Incarnation-Al)
"(Michael) Frost and (Alan) Hirsch who are great proponents of the missional church, make a clear distinction between incarnational and attractional churches. They see incarnational churches as the opposite of attractional churches. The attractional church, as they see it, does everything possible within the church to get more people flocking to the church, often ignoring …
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Church and Missions Relationship
How one sees the relationship between the church and missions has ramifications on how one sees missions. Consider three perspectives as shown above. First let's consider OPTION A. With this perspective, the church consists of local churches only. Missions occurs only to the extent that local churches directly carry out missions. There are two groups …
Missional and Missionary Churches
One of my students is writing about the Missional Church movement as part of her dissertation. I will not steal her thunder. I will just make a couple of comments on the topic here. She noted that the term "missional church" has often been seen as another term for "missionary church." Over time, however, the …
Missionaries to 3 Churches and the “Can Do” Church
There has been a growing trend to raise up the importance of short-term missionaries. Nothing wrong with that, except that it has often been tied to a de-emphasis of long-term missionaries. Related to short-term missionaries has been the church's move toward short-term thinking. This has seen itself in the increase of "project missions." In this, …
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Missional “Surface Area”. Part 2
I like to take the idea of church impact as related to what I think of as “surface area”. In chemical reactions and heat transfer (to name two things) the rate is proportional to surface area of the relevant bodies (warm versus cold bodies, or reacting chemicals). This goes back to the organic idea. If …
Missional “Surface Area”, Part 1
<I wrote this something like 8 years ago. I think I still agree with it. But I also now see the challenge of maintaining it. The greater the distance the harder it is to maintain connections. Even though we live in a "wired" age, most of us don't think that way... we don't feel close …
Three Views of Missions
I love teaching Missions. As a missions professor, I don't have to be an expert in Biblical Studies. I don't have to be an expert in Theology. That's a shame since Missions should have strong Biblical and Theological underpinnings. Still, it is a bit freeing that expectations of others is low in these areas. Additionally, …
The Church on Mission
Acts 13:1-3 1Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, "Now separate to Me Barnabas …
Don’t Get Out of the Pool
The church can be involved in missions on several levels. Here are three. 1. Pooling Pooling is pretty obvious. Churches pool their resources, particularly their money... giving them to an outside body, such as a denominational organization or non-denominational mission agency. The involvement of the church in missions is extremely limited. Relationship with missionaries/ministry sites: …