. . . Every day they continued to meet together…They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
(Acts 2:46-47)
We don’t just go to church. We are the church. Practically, this means that whether we meet at a coffee shop, bar, home, or in a large building we are God’s Church wherever we go. As God’s Church he has called us to be committed to each other and those who have not come to faith in Christ. In short, he has called us to community and mission.
Functionally, missional communities are the primary way we connect with others in the body of faith and live our lives on mission. These smaller groups of people (10-20) provide an opportunity to know others and be known within Redeemer Church. Through these relationships, we mutually challenge and encourage one another to truly believe our Identity in Christ and live life in Rhythms that show the world who God truly is.
Each missional community identifies their unique mission within the larger community and meets regularly to eat, learn, pray and be together on mission, living out the Gospel in real and tangible expressions.
We are both Missional and Communal because those are the things that define what it means to be a Christian and dictate our actions as Christians. Essentially our identity and pattern of living should be defined by mission (proclamation of the Gospel message) and community (the corporate expression of the Gospel life.) We are mission centered and community centered because we are Gospel centered.
While it is important that we see mission and community as things that we do, it is far more important to see them as an identity that we are called to BE in Christ. If they are truly our identity, then we will do them naturally instead of trying to add them to a list of other responsibilities or commitments.
What Missional Community is not:
Sometimes it is helpful in trying to explain what something is, to start by explaining what it is not. Missional Communities are not what most people think about when they consider:
- Bible Studies
- Prayer Groups
- Recovery Groups
- Home Fellowships or Community Groups
Missional Communities are primarily about helping each other to live out our identity as Gospel Bearers in Gospel Community. That means that while we are primarily not a Bible Study, we will study the Bible in order to find the answers that we need to do mission. While we are not primarily a prayer group, we will regularly find ourselves praying together to find strength and wisdom for mission and find encouragement in community. While we are not a recovery group, we will share life deeply and meaningfully so that we can sharpen each other for God’s mission. While we are not a traditional community group that is primarily internally focused for the edification of believers, we will live as family meeting regularly, loving each other, helping each other, doing mission together, building relationships together with people far from God so that together we are Gospel bearers. Being a missional community means that we are doing the mission together as a community. Gospel sharing shapes our community and community shapes the way we share the Gospel. The community is formed by mission and for mission.
What Missional Community Is:
Missional Community is not a program. It’s who we are – it’s what we do. It is fundamental in the way we view who we are in Christ and how we express that in the way that we live.
IDENTITY: WHO WE ARE. The prevailing view of life today is that of an individual standing on his or her own, heroically juggling various responsibilities (family, friends, career, leisure, chores, decisions, money and political, social or religious activities). In most cases, all that we want to do is eventually trumped by what we actually have the time to do, and so some of what we are juggling is inevitably dropped. Since the community of faith and the mission of the Gospel do not seem as pressing as some of our other responsibilities, they are too often the first thing to go when the juggling balls begin to fall.
The alternative model is to view our various activities as the spokes of a wheel. The center of the wheel is not me as an individual but as a Gospel bearer who is part of a Gospel community. Community is not another ball to be juggled any more than being a Gospel bearer is a ball to be juggled. Instead it is what defines who I am and gives Christ-like shape to my life. In this model of living, community is not dropped during times of pressure – it is the community that assists, encourages, prays for and walks through those times of pressure to help you make it.
Mission and community are not activities to be squeezed into our busy schedules. They are identities and intentions that we carry with us throughout our days. Mission and community are wedded to our lives like they are wedded to each other: The Gospel creates and nourishes the community, while the community proclaims and embodies the Gospel.
We are missionaries sent by God to restore all things to himself. God is on a mission. God sent his son, Jesus, to Earth to take on human form and live within the culture. He worked, ate and interacted among the people; living in such a way that those around him could see and experience what God was truly like. Jesus came so that all people, places and things could be restored to a right relationship with God. In the same way, we believe we are missionaries, on God’s Mission, sent into our culture to restore all things to God through Jesus. (John 1:14; 20:21; Colossians 1:19; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
You cannot be committed to the Gospel without being committed to proclaiming the Gospel. Few Christians are going to object to being gospel-centered in theory or in message, but most experience a gap when it comes to the practice of proclamation. We will never reach our city until we create open, authentic Gospel learning, praying and practicing communities that are focused on making whole-life disciples who live and share the Gospel wherever they are in daily life. This means that our daily routines and interactions in our workplace, neighborhood and homes become the context of our missional living.
We are children of God who live and care for each other as a Family. God has always desired a people –that is, an earthly family – who would live in such a way that the world would know what he is like. Jesus said that those who live in his ways and obey his Father are truly his family. Through Jesus we believe we are children of God and brothers and sisters with each other. As family we see it as our obligation to personally care for the needs of one another – both physically and spiritually. We disciple, nurture and hold each other accountable to this Covenant life together. We do this through regular celebration gatherings and consistent involvement in a group. (Genesis 12:1-3; John 1:12-13; Romans 12:10-16)
Just as the Gospel is to be at the heart of church life, so the church should be at the heart of the Gospel life and mission. As image bearers of the triune God, we are, like He is, defined by relationship. Further, the Gospel is an invitation to reconcile and restore a broken relationship with our relational God through His son Jesus. We speak a message of relational reconciliation and unity into a pervasively individualistic culture. That reconciliation ceases to be abstract and becomes tangible when we flesh it out in front of people by living reconciled relationships with each other.
The community of faith has been described as “the hermeneutic of the gospel” – that is, it is the way in which the Gospel is understood by those outside the faith. Most people are attracted to the Gospel community before they are attracted to the Gospel message. And that is how Jesus intended it to be. It is why Jesus said “by this will all men know you are my disciples – by your love for one another.”
People reject the Gospel message in part because they have never been exposed to credible Gospel community. In fact, much evangelistic effort is an attempt to answer questions that people are not asking. Instead of focusing the bulk of our effort on apologetics, we choose to let people experience the life of the Gospel in our community. They find what we know theologically: that corporately that we are the house in which God dwells by his Spirit (Eph 2:22).
RHYTHMS: HOW WE LIVE. Because we are missionaries constantly living in the context of our mission field:
- We celebrate everyday life as the context in which the Gospel is proclaimed – which means that conversations about God happen as part of normal everyday living instead of as forced “one-off” monologues.
- We run fewer evangelistic events so that we can spend more time sharing our lives with those who are not in relationship with Jesus
- We are less concerned with Bible teaching and more concerned with Bible learning and biblical living
- We understand that all that we do should be done as a means of redeeming and restoring the world. So we are intentionally others-focused instead of self-focused – because the Gospel is the Good News that God is others-focused.
- We ruthlessly weed out any structure or program that exists as an end-to-itself, and focus our attention and efforts on those things that are redemptive in nature.
- We reject passive evangelistic modeling that is done without proclaiming. Acts of kindness or service done without the message of the Gospel being proclaimed are like sign posts pointing nowhere, or worse pointing to our own self-righteousness. Instead we embrace the Gospel as a message to be lived as a platform for the message to be spoken.
- We build bridges by serving others. Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves…” All those who follow Jesus are called to serve in the same humility. (Matthew 20:25-28; 25:31-46; John 13:1-17; Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Peter 2:16)
- We believe that most Gospel ministry involves every day people doing every day things – with Gospel intentionality.
Because we are a Family, we express our identity in the way that healthy, godly families live out who they are:
- We don’t view our time together as a program or a meeting. Rather we are sharing life with each other. We are caring for each other, learning together, serving together and reaching out and inviting in our friends who are outside of our Gospel family.
- We spend time with each other regularly authentically embracing the messy stuff in each other’s lives instead of separating ourselves from each other or pretending with each other that we have no faults.
- Families eat together, play together and celebrate all that God is doing around them. The Gospel family should be no different. We regularly take time to rest, play, create and restore beauty in ways that reflect what God is like to our community. (Genesis 1-2:3; Deuteronomy 5:12; Mark 2:23-28; Hebrews 4)
- We choose to love each other so much that we find delight in not just sharing the Gospel of God, but our lives as well (1 Thess 2).
- We consult each other as we make life decisions because we understand that our decisions not only effect us but also those in our Gospel family.
- We look for ways to bless others. God desires that all people would be blessed through Jesus. So we intentionally seek God’s direction for who he would have us tangibly bless each week. (Genesis 12:1-3; Ephesians 1:22-23; 2:8-10; 1 Peter 2:12)