Presenter: Lane Fusilier
What does it mean to be a church shaped by mission? How does this fit into what is happening among congregations involved in TrueCity?
Purpose:
- To become more aware of what/why changes are currently happening in our city and culture
- To become more aware of how God can use us to model missional change
- To improve congregational awareness of God’s activity
- To improve our own self-awareness
Definition of Missional:
Roxburgh/Romanuk: God is about a big purpose in and for the whole of creation. The church has been called into life to be both the means of this mission and a foretaste of where God is inviting all creation to go. Just as its Lord is a mission-shaped God, so the community of God’s people exists, not for themselves but for the sake of the work. Mission is not therefore a program or project some people in the church do from time to time (as in “mission trip,” “mission budget,” and so on); the church’s very nature is to be God’s
missionary people. We use the word missional to mark this big difference. Mission is not about a project or a budget, or a one-off event somewhere; it’s not even about sending missionaries. A missional church is a community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstratin of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.
