Missional Religion

This book calls the church to rethink and modify its practices, by providing a middle path between the emerging church and the conservative that aims to benefit all. There are major shift happening in the Western Church that has people talking. The problem is that churches fail to follow a mission-centered approach. Chester and Timmis have found that in order to refocus the churches

I had the privilege of interviewing Brian Bagwell for this project. He is, in my opinion, one of most humble, wisest man we have at Church of the Highlands. Once you get through a joke or two, the fruits of the spirit radiate from his personality. A man that I have the privilege to call my mentor and teacher. He is currently serving on staff at the Church of the Highlands as a Dream Team Coordinator. His shares the vision of the church which is passed down from our senior pastor, Chris Hodges. Evangelism is the definition of the church so to speak, Church of the Highlands stands behind the final authority of God’s word which is the bible. It is often said among the staff “we do not argue the essentials, but we can disagree the non essentials.” The church believes and acts in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, and helping people move through four steps our God has outlined in the Great Commission. Our Church exists to see people saved, delivered, redeemed, and fulfilled. This is accomplished with four systems that allow the people to move through the four steps. The first is weekend services to allow them to know God (saved), small groups to find freedom (delivered), growth track to discover purpose (redeemed), and dream team to be fulfilled and make a difference (fulfilled). This vision is how the church evangelizes (Bagwell). This vision is clear to all members of the church who call Church of the Highlands home, and even clear to people

Galindo analyzes that the fundamental “mission” of a congregation is the same as any other congregation that exists in any part of the world. He argues that though every congregation has a mission and a vision, at the same time, it shares a basic common mission. (43) This reminds me of my home church The First Church of Evanston and my Field Site, The Evanston Vineyard Church. Both churches have a common mission of welcoming people to the church, irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, racial, and economic and, gender backgrounds. The mission is to help people be received in the house of God with due and deserved Christian love so that they feel loved and welcomed. Both these churches encourage church attendees to attend the service and receive the Eucharist.

Simple Church, by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger, is a call to arms for the modern day pastor. Rainer and Geiger craft this book with a goal of aiding pastors in an attempt to build more effective ministries within their local churches. Providing concise statements such as, “Simple is in. Simple works. People respond to simple. (Pg. 6)” Rainer and Geiger attempt to increase the effectiveness of local church ministries by additionally supplying case studies of church across the nations, leading the authors to offer the conclusion that when a church ministry is simplistic in its nature, it tends to have both a higher rate of success and effectiveness.

Subsequently, the church has a mission which is to go into all the nations making disciples, baptizing them, and to teach them to observe the ways of Christ as noted in Matthew 28:19-20. When looking at the differences between the missional model and the attractional model is the missional goes out to win the lost, and the attractional seeks to bring the lost in not focusing the cultural boundaries. Stetzer and Hirsch state, “Missional represents a significant shift in the way we understand the church. As the people of a missionary God, we are entrusted to participate in the world the same way He does—by committing to be His ambassadors.” In retrospect, Hirsch cites that, “The attractional model, which has dominated the church in the West, seeks to reach out to the culture and draw people into the church—what I call outreach and in-grab. But this model only works where no significant cultural shift is required when moving from outside to inside the church.” Both have their uniqueness, however, they are designed to seek and make disciples.

The calling of a pastor for the Lord is a very high calling as well as position. God has granted the ability of the pastor to lead sheep and teach truth to people. A pastor also has certain convictions that he or she must live up to. These certain convictions keep him or her accountable to God, upholding the stature of being light and salt of this world. Through the content of this paper, every conviction a pastor must have will be discussed, why these convictions are important, and who compromised their convictions.

Dana Roberts, in her book, Christian Mission; How Christianity Became A World Religion, makes a multitude of statements and provides very useful insight into how mission, specifically Christian mission, has historically been engaged through politically charged issues. Throughout this paper, I will use several of her examples to explain how Christianity has wiggled its way into the form of mission throughout the world. Examples will be show as to how some mission is indeed, following the statement that Jeremy Besset made in his class, COS Mission 423 in the spring of 2016 that the goal of God’s mission is the restoration of creation to the shape in which God originally made it. The paper will also address areas where mission is not necessarily

There are many challenges to ministry in today’s world and having a vital and relevant ministry is even harder. Churches across all denominations face drastic declines in both attendees and financial giving. With this as the background, it is imperative that vital ministries seek out opportunities to grow and engage groups and communities that have previously been overlooked, missed or not involved for other reasons including some theological reasons. With this idea and goal in mind, this essay sets out to examine and design a process by which the Churches of Cherokee, Oklahoma can successfully connect with and minster to the new Hispanic community in Cherokee. Using the pastoral cycle method, a process will be designed in this essay to

As missional leader, my task is to help my congregation, synod, and church wide to understand the need for adaptive leadership if we are to be vital and thriving hubs for missional outreach in the world. Additionally, I must motivate parishioners and lay leaders to be agents of change; not to be agents of status quo. Additionally, my goal allow the Spirit to transform my congregations from an inward focus of maintenance to an outward focus of mission and to invite my congregation to be agents of adaptive leadership and transformation beyond their comfort zones of homogeneity in their current community context. In other words, my assignment is to help my congregation to understand that the task of the church is to be the church. I must show them the importance of evangelism and outreach, but our doing is important must be married with our being the church. I must help my

Whereas, in understanding the nature of mission as given to us in the New and Old Testament, it's reveal the that God is the author of mission is by laying much emphasis on what God rather than man does this reveal in the term Missio Dei, God's mission. This in term let it be known that it is insufficient to proclaim that the Church of God has a mission in the world. Rather, the God of mission has a Church in the world. In reading Introducing World Missions, one would come to understand that " mission theology must be at the core of theology - within the character and action of God Himself." This being a part of God show the need of God to be a part of His creation with Him being the source by which the characterizing of the worlds is seen in Him. When we look at the work of Jesus then we see the root cause of mission and the mean by which on

The missional journey is communal, and it starts from cultivating a culture of participation, continues through bringing our awareness of God meeting people where they are, and advances through practicing the way forward. Engaging with spiritual seekers from surrounding culture requires both hearing from God and listening to our neighbors. I believe that my missional community in Los Angeles is positioned well to embrace new mental models, while it seeks to be both missional and invitational community. We as a church are to join the ministry of Jesus Christ in bringing spiritual transformation to its neighbors. The question that we have to keep asking ourselves is "Do we love church life more than we love our neighbors?" (2014, 68). Even though

Referring again to the Latin term Missio Dei, translates to “a sending God” or “God’s mission” that everything originates in God, including missions. We must realize that His character and attributes are who He is, and God’s mission everything He does to establish His kingdom on earth.9 The nature of God seem to be centered around 1) His law and righteousness and 2) His mercy and salvation through Jesus. His desire is to see people from every race and nation come to Him; this is where the church is challenged to help make this happen through missions.

A mission conference held in Edinburg in 1910 became an historical marker in current evangelical mission development. The theme of the conference was “the evangelization of the world in this generation.” This conference presented the missionary task primarily as bringing people to Christ and gathering them into churches. As it was a time of positive momentum in world history, social justice issues arising from the world’s problems were seemingly being solved by science and technology on many fronts: in health, industry, economics, and education. In this climate of momentum, the church projected its primary task as evangelizing the whole world.

The reason this chapter calls for individualized research is that Christian mission efforts have been done with a variety of structures and systems. The sending and supporting structures of various organizations have been diverse with all of them having positive features and all having their drawbacks. Many mission organizations have developed because of the slowness or reluctance of official church structures to respond to global mission challenges and opportunities. Two things contributed to William Carey being called the father of modern missions. One was his prolific letter and pamphlet writing in support of world mission outreach. The second was his development of a functional and reproducible structure for missionary deployment and support by believers. Ralph Winter has noted that specific mission-focused organizations like Carey’s have been present when the Church did its most aggressive global outreach. Winter gave the name sodality to such task-oriented groups of committed people focused on evangelizing the world. Two missionary orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, came into being in the 1200s. The Jesuits, who have been among the most determined

Furthermore, it is vitally crucial for the church leadership to clearly articulate its missional vision, which is to be embraced by the rest of the church’s community. The process of spiritual transformation starts from the invitation and continues through engagement and discipleship. This transformational process embodies the missional vision and the language for 'right now ' and 'here '. Surely, the church’s vision ought to be aligned with the missional attributes of the gospel itself, which are 'the good news is for everyone ' and 'belonging before believing '. Our witness should take place amidst relationship and listening. One principle that I consider to be exceptionally useful in my community is St. Patrick’s idea of Celtic Evangelism: establish community, engage in conversation, and invite commitment (2009, 101).