emerging mosaic

emergent, new monastic, emerging, organic, ancient future, missional church. I haven’t been completely comfortable with any of these current labels for evolving ways of being the church. As I have been re-imagining what it means to be a follower of Jesus in my current cultural context  (urban,racially and socio-economically diverse) I’ve moved beyond emergent but had not named what that beyond was.

I was recently been asked to teach a class at a local seminary on the missional church. As I’ve been preparing for that I find myself growing increasingly more comfortable with identifying what I’m doing as missional. To be sure the missional label is not perfect and I can’t say I agree with every expression of missional but here are some things that appeal to my post emergent sensibility.

My developing view of the missional church is

• Cross cultural in its efforts
• intentional indigenous - culturally engaged but not culturally absorbed
• connecting with God who is already at work in our world
• incarnational proclamation of the gospel
• realigning or re-imagining all aspects of church life around God’s purposes
• culturally engaged but scripturally orthodox
• transforming community
• church planting reproduction
• creative and culturally relevant but connected to the historically church

Some language derived from  Friends of missional

So as I move toward the missional future I’ve taken the huge leap of posting a friend of missional button in my side bar. A  first of any kind of identifying button for emerging mosaic.

Share your ideas or thoughts on the missional church

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Technorati Tags: ancient_future, cross_cultural, emergent, emerging church, missional, missional_church, my life, post_emergence, post_emergenct, urban_church

David Fitch has a great post on his blog about the expectation folks should not have of a missional church. here his intro check

Having planted a missional church from 10 people, and having gone through much pain and joy, I have wondered what if you could warn people up front what this all would mean for their lives and expectations before they started gathering together? What expectations would you warn those first gathering people against? And if you did deliver such a warning list , would there be anyone left to gather.

As a missional church planter I really appreciate his thoughts on this. They are both affirmation and challenge. They hold a kingdom view of church planting and the missional church out before me.

Check out the whole post thanks to John Smolo for the lead

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Technorati Tags: church planting, david_fitch, emerging church, missional_church

Alex Mcmanus of Mosaic Church in LA has an interesting observation and reflection on the emerging church and Mosaic’s link to things emerging into the mystic… » Is Mosaic a part of the Emerging Church?

Here’s the interesting observation by someone outside the church

Recently a Los Angeles Times reporter was given the assignment to write an article on the “Emerging Church.” In doing her research she called me to talk about Mosaic. After she did her research and wrote the article, I spoke to her about why she chose not to include Mosaic. She had concluded from her research that Mosaic was not an emerging church because emerging churches tended to be “small, white and inward looking.” 

And the reflection from Alex on emerging church 

Mosaic is different from the “Emerging Church” not just in terms of ambition, ethnicity, and mission, but also in attitude and thinking. Many of those who take on the mantle of the Emerging Church seem to me to be burned out Church leaders who needed to bail on a Christianity that offered pat but empty answers. I consider this a good move. But, in contrast, Mosaic is more like a convert who is full of enthusiasm, joy and hope. The new convert moves with speed and intentionality toward Jesus, towards the scriptures, towards Christ following community, and towards the world in service and mission.

Everything Alex says and Mosaic LA  does is not gospel or perfect they don’t pretend that it is. But I think many who are embracing the emerging church mantle in the U.S. would do well to pay attention to the increasing perception of the make up and approach of the emerging/emergent church that seems to be more about disenchanted Christian than connecting people to God.

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Technorati Tags: Alex-Mcmanus, diversity, emergent_church, emerging church, emerging_church, missional_church, mosaic, Mosaic-LA, spiritual-practice

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Well this is the first chance I’ve had to blog from our mission trip to Jamaica. We have 19 people (14 adults and 5 kids from 5-17) staying at hte Immaculate Conception  Convent. Hostel. It has been about 86-95 degrees here every day. At least that’s what it feels like and they use celcius so I haven’t been good with the conversion. But we have a pool we can use in the evening to cool off.

So far wehave had four busy days. Scapring and painting the local primary school, day care and vocational traingin center connected with my homechurch North Street United. We also have spent ime wih the kids at the day school running recesss on Mon. They were thrilled with the soccer balls and other sports goods we brought for them.

Seeing hte burn out shell of the building for \the first time was really hard. It will never be the same again. But sometimes change is good even whenit comes through hardship. The people here are as commetted as ever and they are in the middle of a week of crusade (outdoor revival style wworship aimed at connecting with the neighborhood. Their new pastor is a good guy and had a great message on Sunday about the woman at the well. "Come see a man"

Our group has worked hard but they have also connected with the people here and this will definately not be the last time we come to serve. There are many glocal connections being made. Everyone has been very open to trying new foods and new experiences. Some of hte folks had an eye opening experience at the open air food market today. Yesterday we went to the craft market in Kingston Harbour and bought souvenirs.  Tues night we ate at an outdoor  resturant in the historic village of  Port Royal ( think Pirates of the Caribbean). No injuries so far and the hardest part for me was the drive from Montego Bay to Kingston partiall at night over some hairy roads, though today I think I awas dehydrated.. I have to make the trip again Saturday when we return to MoBay for a couple days R+R before we fly home.

Now that I have found the computer with internet at the convent I will post again tomorrow and try to post form MoBay when we get there.

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Technorati Tags: glocal, Jamaica, kingston_harbour, missional_church, spiritual-practice

I noticed that sometimes these two words representing movements of change the church can get used interchangably. I wonder how much synergy there is between the two. Some people are in both conversations

This article speaks to some of the connecting pont beween the two. http://www.urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=993

I really appreciate the defining of the characteristics of a missional church using this wrong/tough question format.

The collapse of the church culture.

a) Wrong question: How do we do church better?
b) Tough question: How do we reconvert from “churchianity” to Christianity?

 The shift from church growth to kingdom growth.

a) Wrong question: How do we grow this church?
b) Tough question: How do we transform our community?

A new reformation: Releasing God’s people.

a) Wrong question: How do we turn members into ministers?
b) Tough question: How do we turn members into missionaries?

The return to spiritual formation.

a) Wrong question: How do we develop church members?
b) Tough question: How do we develop followers of Jesus?

The shift from planning to preparation.

a) Wrong question: How do we plan for the future?
b) Tough question: How do we prepare for the future?

The rise of apostolic leadership.

a) Wrong question: How do we develop leaders for church work?
b) Tough question: How do we develop leaders for the Christian movement?

I feel a great resonance with the tough questions. I think these are the kinds of questions I ask or need to ask as I do ministry and live  out my call. It feels much more organic that the moden church and less laissez faire then emergent stuff. For instance promoting the rise of apostolic leaders rather than eschewing any strong leadership outside of a flat leaderhsip model.

Compare and contrast with these core practices of an emerging church cited in ch 2 of Gibbs and Bolgers book Emerging Churches which I am reading right now.

1. Identifying with Jesus
2. tranforming secular space
3. living as community

 I think these three things are reflective of the mission of the faith community Iead Mosaic Life.

To live in faith - identifying with jesus and living out his patterns in our lives and faith,
be known by love - living as community drawn together and connected to each other by God’s love
and be and instrument of hope - transforming secualr space by engaging the "secular and point to God’s hope

Maybe missional + emergent/emerging church = integral church

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Technorati Tags: apostolic_leadership, emerging church, missional_church, spiritual-practice, spiritual_formation

Mark Driscoll has issued a public apology for the pretty ugly comments he made about Brian Mclaren and Doug Pagitt on leadership journal blog. Here’s a clip of the apology

I have come to see that my comments were sinful and in poor taste. Therefore, I am publicly asking for forgiveness from both Brian and Doug because I was wrong for attacking them personally and I was wrong for the way in which I confronted positions with which I still disagree. I also ask forgiveness from those who were justifiably offended at the way I chose to address the disagreement. I pray that you will accept this posting as a genuine act of repentance for my sin.

On the one hand this is very courageous of him. ON the other hand he seems to have done it in response to some self interest. (He does have a new book coming out)

He kindly said that my reputation was growing as a guy with good theology, a bad temper, and a foul mouth. This is not what I want to be known for. And after listening to the concerns of the board members of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network

Read the rant, then head over to his blog and read the apology then decide for yourself.

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Technorati Tags: Brian_McLaren, emerging church, emerging_church, leadership_journal, mark_driscoll, missional_church

I had an interesting conversation with another urban church planter yesterday. He shared that he was rethinking how being a missional church (along the lines of the The Shaping of Things to Come) would fit into his ministry with people of diversity in an urban church context. The forced choice between being attractional and missional seemed well forced.

I’ve felt this tension often the past few months and I’ve wondered why it is that the response of some many who critique the modern church for its imbalances seem to set up their own imbalances by going to the opposite extreme. Does it have to be either missional or attractional? Shouldn’t our strategy (oops bad word the modern church uses it) for engaging people in a post modern world be a both/and/also not just and either/or? Doesn’t Jesus attract people and scripture suggest that we we should as well?

Why does it seem that the emerging church is experiencing this same drift to extremes theology or praxis, black or white, missional or attractional) as other iterations of the church? Are we as post modern as we think? Or maybe we are just in a hyper modern transitional on our way to what the church is becoming. A community of theology& praxis, attractional and missional, with people, form all races. Is that the glimpse of the kingdom we ought to be?

How do we get there? More to come. for now sound off

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