In the Coracle

What we should be up to

August 5th, 2008, 1 Comment

The New Testament witnesses assume the possibility of a community who, in the face of the tribulations they encounter, keep their eyes steadfastly on the reign of God by praying for its coming, by being its disciples, by proclaiming its presence, by working for peace and justice in the midst of hatred and opposition, and [...]

Intro to the Missional Church class notes

July 14th, 2008, No Comments

For those of you who are interested in missional church, and especially those of you who lead such things and want to speak your church about them, go over to Todd Hiestand’s blog today and download the PDF file of the class he did with his church, The Well.
It’s really, really, really good!

Creating the Future, One Mustard Seed at a Time (The New Conspirators)

July 13th, 2008, 1 Comment

“The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine)
I’ve just finished reading Tom Sine’s newest book, “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine). It’s one that I’ve meant to read for a few months. However, having now finished it, I highly recommend it [...]

Bosch on the God who Acts, and impact on Scripture

July 12th, 2008, No Comments

A few thoughts from “Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission” (David Bosch):

In Israel, history is the arena of God’s activity. The focus is on what God has done, is doing and is yet to do according to his declared intentions. God is… the God who acts. [...] It may therefore be more accurate [...]

The Missional Church is…

July 5th, 2008, No Comments

Brother Maynard over at Subversive Influence has been doing a series of recaps of last week’s missional synchroblog. This is the final recap before Bro M himself writes a summary, and at the end of the post there is a very helpful list of characteristics of what we hope missional churches are and will be.
If [...]

Missionary Model: St. Aidan of Lindisfarne (Late on the Missional Synchroblog bandwagon)

June 23rd, 2008, 7 Comments

St. Aidan and Pat on Lindisfarne
Originally uploaded by patl

Today, Monday June 23 is a “What Is Missional?” Syncroblog event. I didn’t get signed up in time to be on the official roll call list, but that doesn’t stop me from tagging along at the end anyway :-)
I’ve written a [...]

Featured on Next-Wave

June 20th, 2008, No Comments

Very fun news – Bob and Charlie and the crew at Next Wave.magazine picked up the article that I wrote here titled “Things They Tell Church Planters That Are Simply Wrong” and which has been generating a good deal of traffic and comments.
The article is in the current issue (June 2008, #114), and a direct [...]

Ministries in a Missional Church

June 12th, 2008, No Comments

Yesterday I ran across the website of a church in my town. They’re a great group, I love the pastor, and they’ve been in our community for long years.
It was odd for me to notice, though, that the “Ministries” section of their website listed all of their inward facing work. Ministries were things like Sunday [...]

Measuring Success in a Missional Church

June 12th, 2008, 1 Comment

I found a link to this post this morning in which W. David Phillips offers some suggestions about ways we can measure success in a missional church.
Here are a few of the many ideas on that topic:

# The number of cigarette buts in the church parking lot.
# The number of adoptions people in the church [...]

Rose Madrid-Swetman over at Jesus Creed

May 12th, 2008, No Comments

My friend and mentor Rose write today on JesusCreed.org’s ongoing series of pastoral wisdom about “if you could begin all over again, what would you do differently?”
Rose co-pastors a church that I highly respect, and her post is well worth reading.
An excerpt:

Scot: If you could begin all over again, what one thing would you have [...]