Co-Missional Church

Available to purchase or as a free download from lulu.com.

Summary

This booklet is designed to be an easy-to-read, non-academic book for those who, like me, struggle, think and reflect about church and mission.  Hopefully, it will be food for thought, inspire, encourage and open up a wealth of possibilities.  It is not an instruction manual for a tried and tested off-the-shelf product, rather it is more like the blueprint for an experimental plane (I am the sort of person who would rather try and build and fly the experimental plane rather than buy an off-the-shelf clone).

Abstract

In this booklet, I will argue that God has a mission to reach every single person in our communities – that, as Archbishop Rowan Williams puts it - every person should encounter Jesus and be sustained in that encounter.  Yet the model, in terms of both structure and mission strategy, we have for being church is not fit for purpose, and if we are to seriously engage with the mission of God then a radical shake-up of the way we be church needs to take place.  I argue that it is reasonable to assume that God has gone ahead of us and that it is by looking at the dysfunctionality in, what should be a functional church, that we might detect signs of God’s plan to fulfil his mission.  I then use this information to imagine what church might be like in the future.

Preface

This booklet came about after a good friend of mine asked me, quite rightly, “Can you identify what God is doing in your community and join in?”  Apart from being a bit of a Christian cliché, this was profoundly the most important question I could have been asked.  After all, is it not my calling as a Christian, as Paul writes, to do God’s “good and perfect will”?  And is God not active, alive and at work in the neighbourhood in which I live, work, play and minister?  And is not God living in me by his Holy Spirit?  Therefore, it is entirely logical that I should be able to discern, without too much difficulty, that which ‘God is doing in my community’.  Oh, how I wish that that were true!  In fact, on the face of it, I find it quite difficult to discern what God is doing in my community.  Yes, I can see the small sparks of light of God’s work in the lives of those around me, but these sparks seem disconnected from each other and I can’t help feel there is a bigger picture or plan that I am missing.  I think that this is because I am so embroiled in life that it is very difficult for me to see the wood from the trees.  My view is obscured by the pressing and often desperate needs of individuals and families, engagements that need to be kept, talks to plan, projects to initiate, projects to keep alive, a wife to be a good husband to, children to be a good father to, a dog to mow, a lawn to walk, and so on and so on.  I am not saying that it is impossible to discern God’s will in the midst of a life fully lived – but in order to see the wood from the trees, one sometimes needs to ascend up the hill to a quiet mountain top.  Only then can you see the valley laid out before you and identify certain landmarks and features.  This booklet is an attempt to do just that.  I hope, that through writing, ideas and patterns will come into view and that I will, as my friend asked, be able to identify what God is doing in my community.

Let me also add that I like to throw a lot of mud at walls and see what sticks.  In this booklet, I will raise lots of ideas and questions.  Some of them might be fantasy, some might be daft, but perhaps some of them might just be of God.  I whole-heartedly expect the reader to weigh-up these ideas, challenge them and discuss them.  This booklet is a starter for dialogue and not the final word.