In a recent post, Scott McKnight sketched an outline of a lecture he gave on the Mission of God. I appreciated his attention to missional identity being rooted in the Trinity and in God’s sending. It’s a good foundation for understanding the grounding of our inclusion in God’s mission. From this foundation, Scott transitions to consider how to identify a missional Christian. It’s to these reflections on what it looks like to be a missional Christian that I have been reflecting this week. In all fairness to Scott, I have not heard the lecture nor is this post the only thing he has every written on being missional. Yet, what struck me about Scott’s sketch of God’s mission was what appears to be left out of his caricature of a missional Christian. Continue reading
Tag Archives: new monasticism
Monastic Discipleship for a Missional Church?
Last fall, Mike Breen offered a course-corrective 2 part blog post called “Why the Missional Church will Fail.” The post provoked a fair bit of conversation within missional church circles about the tendency to overlook discipleship in our enthusiasm for engaging with our neighbors. Mike writes:
While the ‘missional’ conversation is imbued with the energy and vitality that comes with kingdom work, it seems to be missing some of the hallmark reality that those of us who have lived it over time have come to expect: Mission is messy. It’s humbling. There’s often no glory in it. It’s for the long haul. And it’s completely unsustainable without discipleship.
Discipleship, as Mike goes on to describe it, involves an ongoing process of growing into the character and competency of Jesus Christ. In discipleship we become progressively more and more like Jesus, integrating more fully who we are with how we live so that we live as Jesus would if he were us.
The question that follows from this emphasis is “how do we cultivate discipleship?” Continue reading
Filed under missional church
Muddied Prayers 