The following video was sent to me by a friend. It’s an attempt to explain the missional church in two minutes and it does a good job explaining the church, missional or not.
http://jrwoodward.net/2010/03/the-missional-church-simple/
However, I have a problem with all the words being battered around today to describe the church like organic, emergent, missional, incarnational, etc because none of them are necessary- the church is either the church or its not. There aren’t shades of gray. The church is always a “sending church” or it isnt the church. The church always lives to transform the world or its not the church. The church always is a witness to Jesus in Jerusalem, judea, samaria, and the ends of the earth or its not the church.
A church doesn’t have members; it has missionaries. A church doesn’t have an evangelism committee; it is evangelism. The church doesn’t not a missions committee; the church is missions.
Period. All other forms of church are hospices and hospitals. Period.
Now that’s making it simple.
March 17th, 2010 on 11:14 am
Bill,
I love your thoughts here and Karl Barth would agree. I like it when he said, “A church which is not on mission is either not yet or no longer the church, or only a dead church – itself in need of renewal.” Maybe we should talk about churches as dead or alive. I’m feeling what you are saying, but at the same time I really like the video and posted it because we live in a world where people commonly use these various terms you have mentioned to describe the church (and probably always will), so people need to understand how these terms are being used today. That’s my two cents. Thanks for your rich thoughts here. Love it.
April 29th, 2010 on 5:08 pm
Brilliant report,I recently subscribed to your rss feed.