Ekklesia, Transition, Leadership and Formation
It happens too often. You are speaking to somebody and trying to explain the paradigm shift required to move from church to kingdom, from ecclesiology at the center to the missio Dei. It seems like you connect partially on some things, but you leave with a sense of discomfort — that what you said could [...]
Anabaptist scholar Stuart Murray writes that the protest movements grew out of a rediscovery of Jesus and the Gospels, long neglected in a Christendom which needed Jesus for salvation, but was afraid of the ethical and political implications. Other principles, apart from the centrality of Jesus, characterized these protest movements:
* their conviction that untrained Christians [...]
It struck me yesterday that there is nothing comparable to this Calgary gathering occurring in the United States. Seven hundred people from across the denominational spectrum and from rural, urban, and suburban settings across Canada coming together for a single missional agenda – to impact our country for Christ by seeding missional communities. And it [...]
We ran the first session of AXIOM for the local FORGE hub here last night. Including Anthony, Cam and myself I think we had about 18 people.
Quite a diversity: YWAM, Salvation Army, MB, Pentecostal .. Ages from about 27 to 60.
This was an introduction to missional ecclesiology as well as a look at the first [...]
Steve Addison. Missional Press, 2009. 142 pages. (Available in Australia from Koorong Books)Â Study Guide available free.
The Forgotten Ways surveyed church history, systems theory, and the practices of adaptive leadership in the context of recovering a missional ecclesiology and missional practice. Movements That Change the World eschews the systems perspective for a social-historical survey of [...]
Last week I noted that Alan closes The Forgotten Ways with a plea that we rely more on the power of the Holy Spirit in mission. I found this intriguing, because as he begins to works out mDNA through the book (in particular the diagram on page 25), he places Jesus is Lord at the [...]
The debate on organization vs organism wasn’t all that helpful (if you follow this blog you know that the debate resurfaces every year or two), in part because what we mean by “institution” and even “organization” varies by our education and experience. Hmm.. shades of “church” and “Christian” ..
Anyway, I think I have come out [...]
Bill Kinnon sent me links to some videos he and Imbi have recently produced. These are great interviews: Ed Stetzer with David Fitch in three parts: a missional conversation. The first video is on missional ecclesiology. The second part is around the question, “Can mega-churches be missional?”
The other series is Bishop Graham Cray talking about [...]
The local FORGE hub is a spiritual community, and will become part of a missional order. The intention is to assist and equip leaders and communities in transition from inward to outward, from people to programs, and from asking church questions to asking kingdom questions. This is about forming leaders for on and for mission, [...]
In Catch the Wind (1994) Australian theologian Charles Ringma offered this description:
“The missional church vision is not a programmatic response to the crisis of relevance, purpose and identity that the church in the Western World is facing, but a recapturing of biblical views of the Church all too frequently abandoned, ignored, or obscured through long [...]
