Description of the Missional Church

• The missional church is a collection of missional believers acting in concert together in fulfillment of the missio dei.
• The missional church is one where people are exploring and rediscovering what it means to be Jesus' sent people as their identity and vocation.
• The missional church is faith communities willing and ready to be Christ's people in their own situation and place.
• The missional church knows that they must be a cross-cultural missionary (contextual) people and adopt a missionary stance in relation to their community.
• The missional church will be engaged with the culture (in the world) without being absorbed by the culture (not of the world). They will become intentionally indigenous.
• The missional church understands that God is already present in the culture where it finds itself. Therefore, the missional church doesn't view its purpose as bringing God into the culture or taking individuals out of the culture to a sacred space.
• The missional church is about more than just being contextual, it is also about the nature of the church and how it relates to God.
• The missional church is about being -- being conformed to the image of God.
• The missional church will seek to plant all types of missional communities.
• The missional church is evangelistic and faithfully proclaims the gospel through word and deed. Words alone are not sufficient; how the gospel is embodied in our community and service is as important as what we say.
• The missional church understands the power of the gospel and does not lose confidence in it.
• The missional church recognizes that it does not hold a place of honor in its host community and that its missional imperative compels it to move out from itself into that host community as salt and light.
• The missional church will align all their activities around the "missio dei"-- the mission of God.
• The missional church seeks to put the good of their neighbor over their own.
• The missional church will give integrity, morality, good character and conduct, compassion, love and a resurrection life filled with hope preeminence to give credence to their reasoned verbal witness.
• The missional church practices hospitality by welcoming the stranger into the midst of the community.
• The missional church will see themselves as representatives of Jesus and will do nothing to dishonor his name.
• The missional church will be totally reliant on God in all it does. It will move beyond superficial faith to a life of supernatural living.
• The missional church will be desperately dependent on prayer.
• The missional church gathered will be for the purpose of worship, encouragement, supplemental teaching, training, and to seek God's presence and to be realigned with God's missionary purpose.
• The missional church is orthodox in its view of the gospel and scripture, but culturally relevant in its methods and practice so that it can engage the world view of the hearers.
• The missional church will feed deeply on the scriptures throughout the week.
• The missional church will be a community where all members are involved in learning "the way of Jesus." Spiritual development is an expectation.
• The missional church will help people discover and develop their spiritual gifts and will rely on gifted people for ministry instead of talented people.
• The missional church is a healing community where people carry each other's burdens and help restore gently.
• The missional church will require that its leaders be missiologists.

Exert from - "The Missional Tribe" - http://www.friendofmissional.org/

What the Missional Church Looks Like

JR Woodward at "Dream Awakener" has a perspective on success that really helps my understanding of missional. His post A Working Definition of Success provides a working definition of what missional might look like. Here it is:

• Not simply how many people come to our church services, but how many people our church serves.
• Not simply how many people attend our ministry, but how many people have we equipped for ministry.
• Not simply how many people minister inside the church, but how many minister outside the church.
• Not simply helping people become more whole themselves, but helping people bring more wholeness to their world. (i.e. justice, healing, relief)
• Not simply how many ministries we start, but how many ministries we help.
• Not simply how many unbelievers we bring into the community of faith, but how many ‘believers' we help experience healthy community.
• Not simply working through our past hurts, but working alongside the Spirit toward wholeness.
• Not simply counting the resources that God gives us to steward, but counting how many good stewards are we developing for the sake of the world.
• Not simply how we are connecting with our culture but how we are engaging our culture.
• Not simply how much peace we bring to individuals, but how much peace we bring to our world.
• Not simply how effective we are with our mission, but how faithful we are to our God.
• Not simply how unified our local church is, but how unified is "the church" in our neighborhood, city and world?
• Not simply how much we immerse ourselves in the text, but how faithfully we live in the story of God.
• Not simply being concerned about how our country is doing, but being concern for the welfare of other countries.
• Not simply how many people we bring into the kingdom, but how much of the kingdom we bring to the earth.

The Missional Tribe - http://www.friendofmissional.org/

Updates

Thanks to Reggie Thames’s team from South Carolina and Michael McRae’s team from the Alpha Conference the Guaymi Indians in Guayabal, Panama can now worship in a their new church building and not worry about getting wet during the rainy season. The makeshift shack they were worshipping in was made of bamboo slats and a dirt floor.
We had a lot of challenges while constructing this church. There were muddy roads that were barely passable and the high cost to transport construction materials into this remote mountain village in Panama. When we started the foundation for the construction project, we soon discovered the men of the village are migrant workers and they were gone to harvest coffee in another country. However, the women of the church and their daughters came to the rescue. They were in the trenches digging the footers and carrying block in order to see the project completed. Reggie Thames team completed half of the work project and did a tremendous job in a very primitive environment. The Alpha Conference sent the A-team to complete the project in March. Both of these teams had to sleep in tents, prepare their meals on a camp stove and bath with water from five gallon buckets. The days were very warm with high humidity but the team pulled together and completed the walls and the roof. We had a dedication service for the church with a small lantern casting light into the church building. The Guaymi Indians faces were beaming with joy as they sang and praised God for the new church building that HE provided for them.
In April, Jane and I returned to the United States for furlough. We are visiting churches to express our appreciation for their faithful support and to raise additional funds. We apologize that in these few months it will not be possible to visit all of our supporting churches. However, please be assured that your financial support and your prayers are very much appreciated. We do need additional support in order to return to the field and would ask you to consider giving extra each month to make up the deficit we are experiencing in our budget. Thank you for making it possible for us to fulfill God’s call on our lives to serve Him as missionaries to Central America.

Please pray for:

• Our English speaking church plant in San Jose, Costa Rica.
• That God will bring peace during this time of political unrest in the country of Honduras.