Leading a Missional Community

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Mar 18, 2008 in Church, Church Planting, Leadership, Ministry Design, Triperspectivalism | 8 comments

MISSIONAL COMMUNITIES DEFINED

A Missional Community (MC) is a committed core of believers who live out the mission of God together in a specific area or to a particular people group by demonstrating the gospel in tangible forms and declaring the gospel to others – both those who believe it and those who are being exposed to it.

To Clarify…A Missional Community is not PRIMARILY:

1. A Small Group
2. A Bible Study
3. A Support Group
4. A Social Activist Group
5. A Weekly Meeting

Download: Leading a Missional Community (pdf)

Document Includes:

How to establish a Missional Communities Direction including the 'mission' of the community, how the community should be led, MC responsibilities, activities and more.  Created from a gospel-centered, triperspectival angle.  

Credits: Soma Communities, edited for Kaleo by David Fairchild. 

Church Planting & Movement Training

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Aug 17, 2007 in Church, Church Planting, Leadership, Ministry Design, Triperspectivalism | 2 comments

We believe it is important to provide potential church planters a new kind of missional training through the Tentmaker Group and discussions with the Porterbrook Network (created by the authors of Total Church and the pastors of the Crowded House.  They have put together a great 2-year program to equip a person to plant.  Porterbrook Curriculum pdf).  Our goals would be the following:

Planting a different kind of church

We want to create a different kind of church – one which is gospel-focused in every area of church life and at the same time emphasizes the centrality of the Christian community as the context for Christian life and mission. (source: Total Church Conference documents)

Equipping a different kind of leader

We want to equip missional leaders (eg see: Missional Movements, Plurality of Leadership) who are triperspectival.   This means we are equipping them NORMATIVE with gospel applied theology (not just theory/systematics), EXISTENTIAL we are applying the gospel to their lives to bring gospel transformation and SITUATIONAL we are working along side them as they do this in a real church planting context.

Sending for a different type of model

Through the Tentmaker connection, we want planters to leave with 3-5 years of their salary covered and with money to plant.  The model we want to send people with isn't to plant a church, but to start city movements that seek to address every area of life with the gospel. 

We are excited that so far 7 cities are represented in our Tentmaker Group launch, which is a key component in the plan.  The goal is the have this training in every city interested…

Triperspectival Benedictions

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Aug 6, 2007 in Church, Sermon, Triperspectivalism | 4 comments

Each week I (or an elder @ Kaleo) end our worship service with a benediction.  I used to do these benedictions based on verses in the bible.  In the last 6-months I have transitioned to Triperspectival Benedictions that follow the sermon.  The three elements of the benediction are:

Normative/Information: What was the passage, topic or emphasis we examined from the Bible.

Existential/Transformation: How, as Christians, are we changed by God in this area?  What is God's grace doing in our lives?

Situational/Sending: What is our call to now live in response to this new reality.  How are we a sent people to be on mission and proclaim/live this reality?

This was today's benediction based on a sermon in Acts chapter 9 that dealt with Paul's conversion and his radical life of faith through the gospel.

Kaleo, may you grow in faith in the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

May you see yourself as the children of God.  That you are forgiven, that you are more loved, accepted and approved than you dare imagine.

May you go and live as the children of God, rejoicing and telling everyone the good news of what God has done.

Go in peace. 

Just another crazy triperspectival idea from the Kaleo guys. 

The Dangers of Triperspectivalism

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jul 3, 2007 in Church, Ministry Design, Triperspectivalism | 14 comments

As more churches & leaders begin to use triperspectivalism as a philosophy of ministry, there are a few dangers I wanted to warn against (these came up in an elder meeting at Kaleo):

Personality Test  – One of the dangers of triperspectivalism is using it as a personality test.  eg. "Oh, you are emotional, you must be a Priest."  This type of stereotyping is not only limiting, but also harmful.  As Christians we must hold to a 'already/not yet' tension in our understanding of self.  While, because we are not perfect, so that certainly there are areas we will tend to be weak in, it is crucial for people to know that Jesus Christ was the PERFECT Prophet, Priest & King on our behalf and has given us that identity.  If we have an area of weakness we can look to him, who is perfect in our weakness.  This also means that we cannot 'work' to grow in areas without it being done in a gospel/grace renewal by God.  

Reductionism - A second danger is defeating the very triperspectival emphasis by not seeing all three elements as co-existing.  I have seen people emphasize one area in such a way to eliminate the other two perspectives.  All three must be held together at all times.  For example, a counselor isn't just be a Priestly function, it must be grounded in God's Word (Prophet) and the counsel needs to be applied to a person's life (King).  

A word of caution is to know your audience when using triperpectivalism.  It may be something you reserve for people in leadership who won't be confused or prone to slip into one of the above errors because they understand the broader context of it's usage.  

View previous articles on triperspectivalism. 

Missional – Missio Dei, Missionary or Mission

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jul 1, 2007 in Church, Triperspectivalism | 7 comments

At the Acts 29 conference Ed Stetzer spoke on the history of the word missional which traces it's origins from three streams of thoughts: missio dei, missionary & mission.  He presents why we may all use the same word, yet it means radically different things for emerging churches, evangelical camps and the reformed community.  So when Tim Keller speaks about being missional it is not the same thing as when it used by John Franke or Alan Roxburgh.  He plans to publish a paper on this soon which will be extremely helpful for the missional conversation.   I thought I'd share a few thoughts from his presentation framing missional from a triperspectival view:

Missio Dei (Normative) – The Mission of God is the reality of why the church is on mission.  It is bigger than the mission of the church, yet the church is central to this mission.  Why is this important?  One danger of the emerging church is that they can reject the Biblical call of the church as the central place of mission (situational) and therefore see their call to be missional only from the Missio Dei perspective.  This error is no different than a Calvinist who rejects a call of proclaiming the gospel (existential/situational) to the lost because the doctrine of election (normative).  Stetzer provided one example where a missionary group helped fund the over-throw of a government as part of their missio dei understanding of being missional.  The clearest picture of the missio dei that we have is from the Bible.

Missionary (Existential) – As part of God's mission, he changes the heart and identity of people.  This conversion includes becoming a person who is sent on mission. Our identity also changes into being citizens of the Kingdom of God, which is both already & not yet.  A sense of Missional that stems from missionary can lead to para-church ministries and 'lone-wolf' evangelism that doesn't truly reflect the unity of the church as the family of God or the bride of Christ.

Mission (Situational) – The church exists for God and for others.  At the center of our identity is being a people on mission to the world around us.  This mission includes evangelism, mercy ministries and other tangible signs pointing to the Kingdom of God.  It is in this situation we see being missional as an outflow of our lives in all situations to reflect the glory of God.

We must see all three working together so that being 'missional' means that we are participating in God's mission as He intends as a collective group of missionaries on mission to this world.  Any reductionism of this can and may lead to errors which include uniperspectival churches (great post by David you need to read) and people with limited views of the church as God's agent of mission. 

Leading Gospel-Centered Church Meetings

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jun 18, 2007 in Church, Leadership, Ministry Design, Triperspectivalism | 2 comments

Do you have a structure of how to lead meetings at your church?  In our monthy church planting meetings with Harbor, they patterned a structure of meeting we have adopted at Kaleo.  It includes:

1. Grace Renewal Stories [Existential] – The meeting begins with people sharing how the gospel (grace) at work.  In this time people share stories of changed lives of those they lead or their own.  There is something remarkable to hearing how the gospel is at work, it gives God the glory for what is happening.  We can only accomplish the work of the ministry when God's grace intrudes into ours and other's lives.  In addition, it is a time of celebration that brings us to a place of shared vision and spirit as we seek to see the gospel transform San Diego.

2. Vision [Normative] – After grace renewal stories are shared, we spend some time casting vision for the church.  We try to limit it to one main item that we want to ensure the leaders are thinking through and sharing with those in their ministries. 

3. Just-in-time Coaching [All] – Next, we open the floor for ministry leaders to ask the group for coaching.  People bring up the biggest challenge they currently face.  This includes practical things such as communication/planning, coaching on how to counsel someone or even theological questions.  There is great value hearing Godly wisdom from a variety of perspectives to deal with ministry challenges.

4. Kingdom Prayer [Situational] – We close the meeting with Kingdom prayer.  As we seek to see the Kingdom expanded through our ministries we submit our requests to God.  Only ongoing, dependent prayer will keep our ministries and our own hearts alive, effective, and saturated in the grace of God.