Cultivating The Missional Church

Written from a post-Christendom/emergent worldview, this books was born of a singular question asked in hundreds of ways: "What do we do to be faithful in this changed and changing reality?" Whether shaped by anxiety, a foretaste of coming changes, excitement, or energy at the prospects of witness and service the future holds, the question remains the same and the answers elusive. Part one addresses church functions under categories of governance, modeling, collaboration, champion, catalyst, mission, covenant, disciple, change and leadership. Part two offers further explication of the functions, including books recommended for in-depth study, application ideas, and further exploration of themes.

"Cultivating sent communities reimagines spiritual formation through the lens of mission, covering such topics as the role of Scripture, congregational discernment, and short-term missions and drawing on case studies from diverse contexts including Ethiopia, England, Leipzig, and San Francisco."--Back cover.

Missiologist and church planter JR Woodward offers a blueprint for the missional church--not small adjustments around the periphery of the infrastructure but a radical revisioning of how a church ought to look that entails changing how we think about leadership and what we expect out of discipleship.

What would a theology of the Church look like that took seriously the fact that North America is now itself a mission field? This question lies at the foundation of this volume written by an ecumenical team of six noted missiologists—Lois Barrett, Inagrace T. Dietterich, Darrell L. Guder, George R. Hunsberger, Alan J. Roxburgh, and Craig Van Gelder. The result of a three-year research project undertaken by The Gospel and Our Culture Network, this book issues a firm challenge for the church to recover its missional call right here in North America, while also offering the tools to help it do so. The authors examine North America s secular culture and the church s loss of dominance in today s society. They then present a biblically based theology that takes seriously the church s missional vocation and draw out the consequences of this theology for the structure and institutions of the church.

Cultivating missional change reflects extensively on developments in the broad missional movement since the publication of the seminal book Missional church (1998). Purposely looking backwards, it endeavours to discern the way forward for missional theology and missional churches. This publication is the outcome of a conference on the future of missional theology and missional churches, held in 2015 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Noted missional theologians such as Darrell Guder, Patrick Keifert, Stefan Paas, Graham Cray and Coenie Burger are amongst the contributors. The book is much more than conference papers. Important themes concerning the future of being missional surfaced during the conference. The collection, therefore, includes ten chapters written afterwards, serving as an indispensable roadmap for the continuing conversation on central missional themes. Although critical of the way in which some missional views and practices developed, Cultivating missional change is convinced the term "missional" is just too important, too central and too meaningful for the Christian tradition to be abandoned. Cultivating missional change offers a clear understanding of being missional, and promotes a more biblical and well-defined grasp of the Christian church as a missional church.

Planting Missional Churches is an instruction book for planting biblically faithful and culturally relevant churches. It addresses the “how-to” and “why” issues of church planting by providing practical guidance through all the phases of a church plant while taking a missional look at existing and emerging cultures.

Springing from the life of Kingsfield, a multiplying movement of churches in southwestern Ontario, Kingdom Culture: Growing the Missional Church seeks to bring "missional" to street level. Four practical declarations, "No one gets left behind," "Our leaders lead," "I am a disciple of Jesus and I contribute to his kingdom," and "We exist for the world our Lord came to save" are the foundational declarations that identify and shape the transformational practices of churches on mission in a postmodern and post-Christian context. The combination of story, teaching, discussion questions, and practical tools makes Kingdom Culture an accessible and excellent resource for church leaders, study groups, and individuals who keep praying for the Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

All mission is local—the people of God joining the work of God in a particular place. In Starting Missional Churches Mark Lau Branson and Nicholas Warnes introduce us to seven missional churches and identify best practices while examining common challenges regarding their genesis.

Small groups are a great place to connect with other churchgoers, but many wonder, is this all there is? Is sitting in a living room, talking about a book or watching a video the extent of what we can do together? Isn't being a Christian community about something more than this? Pastor and author Scott Boren thinks so. In this latest release from missional thinktank Allelon, Boren gives leaders and members of small groups the tools they need to make an impact on their communities. Beginning with a gentle critique of current small group models, Boren goes on to show how a uniquely Christian paradigm can set groups free to transform their communities. The final section of the book offers over twenty practices that groups can do to become more missional. Ultimately Missional Small Groups is about helping groups follow Jesus by equipping them to bring his message and healing to a hurting world.

In this volume the third book in the Missional Church series eminent missional church expert Craig Van Gelder continues to track and contribute to the expanding missional church conversation, inviting today s brightest minds in the field to speak to key questions concerning church leadership.