It starts with God's mission
So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. (2 Cor 5:17-19).
The mission of the church is to discern, celebrate, and participate in God’s redemptive activity in the world. The greatest challenge facing churches today is to live missionally – to develop missionary sensitivities, vision, and practices for engaging in God’s mission. The many efforts churches are making to “keep up” or “survive” are futile if this fundamental challenge is not addressed. This missional reorientation represents a profound learning curve for most churches in North America. The Journey of God’s People has been created to be a resource for this missional reorientation. The Journey is fundamentally a learning journey of spiritual depth and significance for congregations and their leaders together to discern and embody God’s mission anew.
Your church is invited to this journey – to consider its life and ministry inside-and-out in the light of God’s mission. What would the calling to live missionally mean for your congregation within its current situation and as it looks to the future? On the Journey you will be invited to examine how your church defines success, to explore and re-claim “why are we the church anyway?” This will be an opportunity to become open to the Holy Spirit, to hear the Gospel as though for the first time, and allowing it to examine and convert you into Gospel-like habits and attitudes. The Journey of missional renewal involves engaging hearts and minds with the gift and call of the Gospel for God’s mission in these times. The journey is not so much about developing new programs and activities for your church to do as it is to re-discover and cultivate the church’s core and life-giving practices. It will be an opportunity to discover the motivation and energy for being God’s “sent” community in very concrete ways in your world.
On this journey you will discover what God is doing among you. You will discern (sort through and decide together) what God is calling you to become as a church on God's mission. You will embark upon a more faithful and more fruitful path of congregational life and witness that will clearly demonstrate how God is sending you into the world today.
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Journey of the people of God is...
- Participatory. The process involves our entire congregation in a variety of ways and times, in gatherings large and small, in study, prayer, conversation, discernment, planning, and action.
- Missional. The process is not based on marketing surveys or focus groups. Rather, members and leaders engage one another in discovering God's calling, taking seriously the current cultural context, and discovering life together as a community formed by the Holy Spirit.
- Strategic. Our congregation will make direction-setting decisions from the missional perspective that has been formed. These are decisions that will have long term effects, impacting every aspect and segment of life in our congregation.
- Engaging, exciting, and enriching. We will find this journey to be a learning journey of spiritual depth for us personally and as a congregation. We will experiment with and experience Christian community in new and fruitful ways. We will learn more of what it means to be the church for these times. We will have opportunity to share our faith in ways we haven't before. We will have opportunity to learn to live as committed disciples. We anticipate a new sense of purpose, direction, and excitement as a result of shared focus.
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Training and consulting support
Journey of the People of God is not a canned program. It requires careful design and ongoing stewardship by a coordinating team from your church selected for this purpose. To assure quality results, the coordinating team receives training coupled with consulting support from the Center for Parish Development. A consultant from the Center will assist you through each phase of the process and all of its activities, as needed.
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Some benefits you can expect
- Church leaders more highly skilled in visionary leadership.
- Church members along with leaders more committed to discovering and living out God's vision for their church.
- Renewed spiritual life - leaders and members re-discovering and using the language of faith with meaning.
- Leaders and members developing new capacities for engaging their "world" with the Gospel.
- Greater clarity of purpose as a congregation.
- Increased sense of unity, pulling together.
- More resources available as people become more satisfied and excited about the church with its clear sense of purpose and direction.
- Increased excitement about their Christian faith.
- Learning to live as committed disciples.
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There is a difference between "having mission programs" and "becoming a missional church."
Now that you’ve asked about…
MISSIONAL CHURCH ...frequently asked questions
Many churches have mission programs alongside the other activities of the church - Christian education, worship, acts of service, and other programs.
- A missional church focuses all of its activities around its main focus - discovering and participating in God's mission in their concrete circumstances.
A church with a mission program sends others to witness and serve on its behalf.
- A missional church understands that it - the congregation itself - is sent by God to be a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of the reign of God. Just as God sent Jesus, Jesus sends the church. (John 20:21).
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