Ok - I'm going to temporatily break from my looking backward theme to write about some things that I have been thinking about more recently. Included in our missional stepping stones are Gospel communities and Missional Teams. One of the many things that I have been pondering while I've been home in Indiana is "what is the difference between a Gospel Community and a missional team?".
{If you read the entries about our new direction or our structure, you may have already seen the words "missional teams" or "Gospel communities", and you might be thinking "what is he talking about?", or "why these new terms? Wouldn't it be easier to just say outreach groups and bible studies?" Well, I think that there are some key differences between our traditional ministry approaches, and how we are approaching it now. These two concepts (Missional teams and Gospel Communities) have been foundational for us as we have begun to reshape our ministry in this last year. I hope that this post will give better definition to these groups.}
I can't remember who I was talking with about this recently, probably my good friend Rex, but the key difference between the two that stuck out to me was the element of intentionality. As I have been pondering it more, here are some of my thoughts:
We as missional teams, want to see Gospel communities emerge naturally where we are intentionally living out and speaking a credible witness of the life transforming power of the Gospel to a pre-existing relationship network. These new Gospel communities can and should be a place where informal interaction begins to happen over Gospel content, life-change stories, the Scriptures, who Jesus really is, and how His reality impacts our life. Not much planning, or organizing is needed once the seeds have been planted. We go (missional) and model this interaction (incarnational) in a group. If the seed takes root, then it begins to bear fruit and reproduce. To use a different analogy, in a Gospel community the Gospel spreads like a virus infecting a network of people.
Once a virus is released into a susceptible population, the virus itself does all the work of spreading, taking advantage of the interconnectedness of the group. When someone catches a cold they (hopefully) don't go around trying to infect others. However, the cold spreads on it's own, and pretty soon anyone inside an infected network is feeling it's effects. In the same way when the Gospel message enters into a group and "infects" a few members of that group, little intentionality is needed before the network is exposed to the epidemic. So launching a Gospel community is all about releasing the true Gospel into a people network through an intentional and credible witness, and letting it spread naturally. We know that a Gospel community has been launched when we see signs of fruit popping up where we on the missional team have not sown seed.
We have definitely seen this happen in Rome with friends of friends approaching us and saying something along the lines of "are you the ones that talk about Jesus. My friends have been telling me about this and I want to talk to you about it. They say that it has really changed their life."
I think that this helps define what a Gospel community is, an outbreak of the Gospel message.
As encouraging as this is, a Gospel community is not all that we are hoping to see. Far from it. In order to see a true outbreak of the kingdom where lives are transformed and the world is changed, we must see these new Gospel communities embrace discipleship, embrace the implications of the Gospel, and begin to follow Jesus with their whole lives. Yes individually, but equally importantly as a group. We must see new missional teams launched.
I was re-reading a couple of chapters in Alan Hirsch's book "The Forgotten Ways". One quote from the introduction to section 2 gave me some insight into the depth of intentionality that is really required of a missional team.
"So a working definition of missional church is a community of God's people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God's mission to the world... The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus." {emphasis mine}
When a group begins to intentionally engage another group as agents of restoration, it is making the transition. However, I think that Hirsh rightly sets the bar quite a bit higher. For a gospel community to really become a missional team, Jesus needs to become the center. The group must take on a Christ-like call to God's mission of redemption and restoration that re-defines their identity and re-directs their life.
I believe that we have seen tons of growth in knowing how to launch Gospel communities, but how we will see Gospel communities transition to being missional teams? We certainly have a lot to learn in this area, but I believe that the power of the Gospel can and will transform any true Gospel community, bringing the inevitable result of life transformation, movement launching, and world change.
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