We need to pray for individual and corporate HEALING, PROTECTION and and GUIDANCE. I will be writing more about this needed prayer but I invite everyone to start the new year by joining me in a strong pursuit of God this year through prayer!

God has a great journey ahead of us, let's make sure we are geared up for this journey!

“a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society.”

I find the above definition to be a great one for community. But I find it much harder to communicate the concept of true and authentic Biblical Missional Community.  I have felt more frustration in my inability to clearly define and describe this concept to people than almost any other concept.

Despite my frustration, I find it an important enough teaching of Christ that I will continue to try and present the idea, and present it with greater clarity.  To do so I plan on using the monthly newsletter for the next few months, as well as many other venues to continually elaborate on the topic of missional community. 

I also will be taking advantage of strategic partnerships with some very well versed friends and trusted ministry organizations to help us as a family to more fully understand and embrace the idea of missional community. 

The toughest hurdle in helping people to differentiate between missional community and a Bible study as we have traditionally known it.

Here is a quote from Jeff Vanderstelt a friend of mine who is a Church Planter who leads Soma Communities, a body of church planting churches in the South Puget Sound are of Washington: 

“The goal of most Bible studies is to study the Bible. We believe the goal of a missional community is to make disciples who make disciples. We clarify that the mission of making disciples with our missional communities will require studying the bible, but often bible studies don’t require that you make disciples.

In fact, our discovery has been that many people have studied the Bible for years and have never led anyone to faith in Jesus, equipped people for ministry and sent out more to do the same. It’s as if we have come to believe that knowing the Bible equals faith in and obedience to God.

Often when I speak to leaders and people who wish we did more bible studies at Soma, I ask them what was the last book of the Bible they studied. Let’s say they’ve respond with “James”.

I then say something like, “That’s great! I’m sure you’re now caring for widows and orphans, visiting the sick, caring for the poor, etc…!” To which I generally hear, “Well no…not really!?” Then, I say, “But I thought you studied James?” “Well, yes, but I’m not necessarily doing that.”

I go on to explain that the intent Jesus has for studying his word is that we would hear it and do it, not just hear it and know it. The next thing I say is: “So how about getting involved in a missional community and doing what you have studied and know for now? In fact, maybe you should practice obeying what you know with some others for a while before you add more biblical knowledge that you will be accountable to obey.”

The missional community is the best environment to study the Bible because it is only in the context of community that you learn to obey what it teaches and it is while on the mission of making disciples that you come to see how powerful God’s word is for bringing about transformation.

So for us at Soma, we call people to obey the mission of Jesus to make disciples; obey what the Bible teaches; grow as effective ministers of the gospel; get on mission with other believers to reach the lost and build up those who know and believe in Jesus. All of this requires that our people go back to the Scriptures over and over again to inform and equip them for all of this.

Doing mission together pushes our people to study the Bible more intently together. In fact, I have found believers’ hunger for and engagement with the Bible only increases the more they exercise obedience to what it says and also need it to teach others to know, love and obey Jesus.” 

I hope these words will be beneficial for all of us in better understanding God’s plan of multiplication through authentic community. 

If you are interested in learning more about Missional Communities then plan on attending the The Well Informational Meeting on Tuesday, December 13^th.

I am in the Winnipeg Airport waiting to fly home after 3 amazing days at the Church Planting Congress hosted by Church Planting Canada.  It has been an amazing time of challenges and growth.  It has also been a great time of connecting with old friends and making new friends.  

There were many great moments and yet one of the hidden gems was God's calrifying for me the meaning of Kenosis as it applies to those of us called to serve the missionary God here on earth.  I will write more later once I flesh this out.

For now all I can say is that I am excited to go home and take the next steps in my personal journey and the next steps with my LFC community.

I have, for the last litte while, been wrestling with a frustrating thought concerning the Church.  The thought has arisen around a number of requests over the last few years for me to "make friends" for the people in our community.  It stems around the idea that if the church does not program relationships for people then they seem to not know how to form relationships for themselves.

I see this in acouple of different ways.  The first way is that we, the Church, has done such a good job of removing people from the world that they do not remember how to make friends for themselves, whether in the Church or in the world.  While in my past I have felt that I did not know how to make friends in the world, I never felt as if I could not make friends in the community of faith that I was a part of.

The second way that this issue manifests itself is in people who have no problem making friends in the world, but once they walk in the doors of a church they lose that ability and seem to develop paralisis of the friend making portion of their being.  While I can understand the first scenario, this one makes me scratch my head.  

Yesterday I was at a seminar on changing consumers into missionaries.  I was struck through this time that we, as the Church, have created such a sense of comsumerism amongst our communities that we have rendered them unable, or at least unwilling, to even make connections with others of the same faith without receiving friendship as a cosumer good that is downloaded program.

This frustration has manifest itself in me struggling to know how to, or wanting to connect people in community groups.  I don't mind promoting healthier and more missional/incarnational community, it is the need to have programs to create community that I am struggling with.

While expressing this frustration to a friend, his response was, "We do not need to create friendship and connection for people, we are connected by our love for and identity in Christ."  Well in a perfect world we could live by this thought for now we struggle in the tension.  

10 Simple Ways To Be Missional …without adding anything to your schedule   by Tim Chester  

1. Eat with other people We all eat 3 meals a day. That’s 21 opportunities for church and mission each week without adding anything new to your schedule. And meals are a powerful expression of welcome and community.  

2. Work in public places Hold meetings, prepare talks, read in public spaces like cafes, pubs and parks. It will naturally help you engage with the culture as work or plan. For example, whose questions do you want to address in your Bible studies – those of professional exegetes or those of the culture?  

3. Be a regular Adopt a local café, pub, park and shops so you regularly visit and become known as a local. Imagine if everyone in your gospel community did this!  

4. Join in with what’s going on Churches often start their own thing like a coffee shop or homeless program. Instead, join existing initiatives – you don’t have the burden of running it and you get opportunities with co-workers.  

5. Leave the house in the evenings It’s so easy after a long day on a dark evening to slump in front of the television or surf the internet. Get out! Visit a friend. Take a cake to a neighbor. Attend a local group. Go to the cinema. Hang out in a café. Go for a walk with a friend. It doesn’t matter where as long as you go with gospel intentionality.  

6. Serve your neighbors Weed a neighbor’s garden. Help someone move. Put up a shelf. Volunteer with a local group. It could be one evening a week or one day a month. Try to do it with other members of your gospel community so it becomes a common project. Then people will see your love for one another and it will be easier to talk about Jesus.  

7. Share your passion What do you enjoy? Find a local group that shares your passion. Be missional and have fun at the same time!  

8. Hang out with your work colleagues Spend your lunch break with colleagues. Go for a drink after work. Share the journey to work.  

9. Walk Walking enables you to engage with your neighborhood at street level. You notice things you don’t in a car. You are seen and known in the neighborhood.  

10. Prayer walk Walk around your neighborhood using what you see as fuel for prayer. Pray for people, homes, businesses, community groups and community needs. Ask God to open your eyes to where He is at work and to fill your heart with love for your neighborhood.  

From Blog Post on Vergenetwork.com

It was a great pleasure to spend an evening eating food at a resteraunt in Kansas City and hear a number of the great minds and voices of the Missional/Incarnational conversation share their thoughts  I was invited by virtue of who I know, not what I know.  These voices included Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch, Mike Breen, Hugh Halter, Kim Hammond and Canada's own Cam Roxburgh.  It was a thrill to hear the discussion and to try and evaluarte  the validity of each thought through the lens of our Leduc context.  This was easier to do with some than with others.  

I was doing some follow up reading of some of these great thinkers and was intrigued by the following thought from Alan Hirsch:

The language in our best theology is that a church exists as a “sign, symbol, and foretaste, of the Kingdom of God."  It’s a scratch-and-smell experience for the people around. When people rub up against the church, a Kingdom aroma should waft from it; they should catch a glimpse of life as God intended it to be lived in the first place. And just so we don’t forget, the reach of the Kingdom of God is not just local; it is regional, universal, in fact it is cosmic in scope. It’s a big purpose and thinking about it in this way changes the game.

I love the picture of the scratch and smell experience for the people around us.  I would love to know what the general thought is for people who have rubbed up against some of our LFC community.  I guess that would be determined by who they rub up against.  I am very excited by the growth that I see in many of our community, and yet I have to scratch my head sometimes when I run up against some who hold a deeply engrained "old-Church" model of how they think people in our community need to be addressed and dealt with.  

I pray that those who are starting to taste the beauty of God's plan for incarnational life will rub off on the rest.  I know that this is something that I, personally, think I am just starting to scratch the surface of.  But the aroma is attractive and adictive. 

Eugene Peterson defines discipleship as "a long obedience in the same direction.". I have always loved that simple word-picture definition. It has long been my personal mission to be about the work of discipleship. I may not talk at this often, and some would say that I speak more of mission than discipleship, but at the root of all I stove for is to make more and more deeply commuted disciples of Jesus.

Mike Breen A gentleman who I have come to appreciate, and recently met for the first time, defines a disciple in this way:

"A disciple is someone who, with increased intentionality and passing time, has a life and ministry that looks more and more like the life and ministry of Jesus. They increasingly have his heart and character and are able to do the types of things we see Jesus doing. We don’t have to look far in the New Testament to see this happening. Just look at the life of the disciples/ apostles and the communities they led…over time, they looked more and more like Jesus!"

Mike Breen in a blog post from www.thevergenetwork.com

It is my intention to journal, through this Blog, my personal intentionality in returning to a disciple making lifestyle.

The above title could get me in a lot of trouble with a lot of people.  Of course I believe in studying the Word of God and understand that it is important.  It is important to study the Word, but it seems as, if not more important to put the Word into action.  

This is why it is important to me as a leader and a shepherd to help people transition from the mindset of a small group to the Kingdom actions of a Missional Community.  

Below is a portion of a blog post by an old friend of mine, Jeff Vanderstelt, Pastor of Soma Communities in the South Puget Sound area of Washington State:

In fact, our discovery has been that many people have studied the Bible for years and have never led anyone to faith in Jesus, equipped people for ministry and sent out more to do the same. It’s as if we have come to believe that knowing the Bible equals faith in and obedience to God.

Often when I speak to leaders and people who wish we did more bible studies at Soma, I ask them what was the last book of the Bible they studied. Let’s say they’ve respond with “James”.

I then say something like, “That’s great! I’m sure you’re now caring for widows and orphans, visiting the sick, caring for the poor, etc…!” To which I generally hear, “Well no…not really!?” Then, I say, “But I thought you studied James?” “Well, yes, but I’m not necessarily doing that.”

I go on to explain that the intent Jesus has for studying his word is that we would hear it and do it, not just hear it and know it. The next thing I say is: “So how about getting involved in a missional community and doing what you have studied and know for now? In fact, maybe you should practice obeying what you know with some others for a while before you add more biblical knowledge that you will be accountable to obey.”

The missional community is the best environment to study the Bible because it is only in the context of community that you learn to obey what it teaches and it is while on the mission of making disciples that you come to see how powerful God’s word is for bringing about transformation.

So for us at Soma, we call people to obey the mission of Jesus to make disciples; obey what the Bible teaches; grow as effective ministers of the gospel; get on mission with other believers to reach the lost and build up those who know and believe in Jesus. All of this requires that our people go back to the Scriptures over and over again to inform and equip them for all of this.

Doing mission together pushes our people to study the Bible more intently together. In fact, I have found believers’ hunger for and engagement with the Bible only increases the more they exercise obedience to what it says and also need it to teach others to know, love and obey Jesus.

As we enter the ministry year of 2011/12 at Fellowship I am excited for what the Lord has instore for us.  I know that it is going to be a year of growing deeper so we can grow much wider in our Kingdom impact.

As I shared on Sunday, I believe the first task at hand for us is to fall more and more in love with Jesus...again.  I am excited to see how the Lord is going to guide us in that this year.  I know that it will take much prayer and seeking the face and favor of God.

If you are a part of our Fellowship community I would ask that you join me in praying for a depth of intimate with God that we have never seen before.  

I want us to focus on our personal walk, our discipleship, this year.   What I don't want is for us to become so inwardly focused that we forget that we are mission with and for God!

"If you make disciples, you will always get the church.  If you make a church, you rarely get disciples."
Mike Breen and Steve Cockram--Building a Discipling Culture