Shifting To A Missional Culture

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Shifting To A Missional Culture

• From Maintenance to Mission

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Author- Milfred Minatrea

• Director for the Missional Church for the Baptist
  General Convention of Texas
• Book Shaped by Gods HeartThe Passion and
  Practices of Missional Churches
• Identifies 9 practicesof a missional church
  culture with a passion for Gods mission

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Organizational Key

• (A) How our culture is changing
• (B) How traditional churches respond
• (C) How missional churches respond

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(A) How our culture is changing

• Change from a churched culture
• Hunter home court advantage
• Church at the societal center of culture-shaping
• Church with a role in public sphere
• Change to a unchurched culture
• Society secularized, technologized, globalized,
  pluralized, and relatived
• Church marginalized and privatized
• Increasingly, church became isolated from the
  world rather than engaged with the world.

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(B) How traditional churches respond

• Relationship to Culture
• Left Behind and Out-of-Touch
• Result--Maintenance mentality
• Retreat into the church
• Focus on survivalreach enough to survive by
  orienting its program to seeking consumers
• Focus on living for its members
• Inward orientation

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Response in the Reformed Community

• Embrace Tradition faithfulness
• Focus on doctrinal T-Truth
• Survival by being confessional/formal
• Danger Irrelevance
• Embrace Pragmatism relevance
• Focus on church growth
• Successful by being contemporary, informal,
  consumer-oriented, technology and technique
• Danger Capitulation

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(C) How missional churches respond

• Kingdom-Gospel Focus Be Faithful and Be Relevant
• Disengage from culture in order to re-engage
  culture with gospel
• Existing separate from and for the sake of the
  world
• Focus inward (gospel in) in order to focus
  outward (gospel out) into the world
• Focus on Gods missionary heart (identity) for
  the world to be transformed in heart (identity)
  to participate in His mission to the world

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(C) How missional churches respond

• Bosch Mission is derived from the very nature
  of GodFather, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the
  church into the worlda movement from God to the
  world.There is a church because there is a
  mission, not vise-versa.
• Definition of missional church a reproducing
  community of authentic disciples, being equipped
  as missionaries sent by God, to live and proclaim
  His Kingdom in their world.

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Missional Church Culture

• A change agent adept at change
• A church sent into an ever-changing environment
  must be fluid in its capacity to adapt while
  maintaining a clear commitment to the unchanging
  purpose and truth of God.
• Jesus assigned His mission to a Body with
  adaptive ability, not a rigid organization.
• Churches must continuously retool themselves for
  effectiveness in communicating the message of the
  gospel in the rapids of changing culture.

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Mission-Minded or Missional?

• Sending Supporting
• Representative
• Mission as one expression of its ministry

• Being Doing
• Participative
• Mission as the essence of its existence

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How Missional Churches Live Their Passion
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The Measure of the Church

• The measure of a missional church is the
  transformational impact of its members lives in
  their world. Their influence results in new
  followers of Christ, new communities of faith
  developing. They are reproducing
  communitiesfollowers resulting from others
  following Christ, leaders producing leaders,
  cells expanding to new cells, and churches
  starting new churches. It is impossible to
  separate the individual focus from the corporate
  endeavor. The church is what the members are.