What is Missional?

By Pastor Brandon in Deep Thoughts on 9/5/08

I was eating dinner with a friend the other day and he asked me about our church. I mentioned that we desire to be a missional community and he immediately asked me what I meant by missional. After stumbling to explain it in a simple concise way, I gave up and told him the long boring answer. After he quickly changed the subject I realized I should probably do a better job of explaining it. That being said, here are some ways to think about this term that might help you explain it better than me.

-Being missional means that the church sees itself as being missionaries right where we live.
-Being missional means we see the church not as a place we go only on Sunday, but as something we are throughout the week.
-Being missional means that we understand we don’t “bring Jesus” to people but that we realize Jesus is active in culture and we join him in what he is doing.
-Being missional means we are very much in the world and engaged in culture but are not conforming to the world.
-Being missional means we serve our communities, and that we build relationships with the people in them, rather than seeing them as evangelistic targets.
-Being missional means being all the more dependent on Jesus and the Spirit through prayer, the Scripture, and each other in community.
(Borrowed from They Like Jesus but Not the Church by Dan Kimball)

I started an official blog site if you would like to read more and see more pictures. http://www.brandonbeals.com

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