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Neil Cole: What is a missional community? | PRINTABLE

Over the coming weeks, we will be asking some of the leading thinkers and practitioners to answer 7 of the most frequently asked questions about missional communities. All of the folks we’ll be hearing from are featured speakers at Exponential 2011: On The Verge. For more information about Exponential 2011, visit www.exponentialconference.org. Also, make sure to use and follow the Twitter hashtag #7questions to keep up with the conversation!

Question #1: What is a missional community?

You can download a PDF of this post here: PDF

Neil Cole is the founder and executive director of Church Multiplication Associates, which has helped start hundreds of churches in thirty-five states and thirty nations. He is seen by many to be one of the key founders of what is known as the organic- or simple-church movement. Twitter: @neil_cole.

Question #1: What is a missional community?

Neil Cole:

The church is not sent on a mission by God, rather God is on a mission and the church is called to join him. This is an important distinction, as much of what the church is about is trying to do stuff for God instead of letting Him do stuff through us. The mission is not the church’s—it is the Missio Dei, or “mission of God” that we are called to be part of. From Gen to Rev God is seen clearly on a pursuit to redeem humankind from the bondage of sin and death. The pursuit of this mission must take us beyond the walls of our church buildings out into the places where people live and work.

Missional activist Alan Hirsch says, “A missional theology is not content with mission being a church-based work. Rather, it applies to the whole of life of every believer. Every disciple is to be an agent of the kingdom of God, and every disciple is to carry the mission of God into every sphere of life. We are all missionaries sent into a non-Christian culture.”

A missional community is a spiritual family (community) with the Spirit of Christ in their midst, called out to join Him on His mission to the ends of the earth. When people encounter Jesus, alive and present as King, they get a taste of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. One cannot have the God of the Scriptures and not have His mission. Because a missional community is a spiritual family, by necessity it must be a smaller group.

A missional community is the spiritual family that has the Missio Dei in its DNA. This community may have formed for the mission with church members or, better yet, as a result of the gospel transforming the loves of people outside of the church. It is usually found in a place where life happens—a home, a place of business, a dormitory or a cell block. It is a community made up of followers in pursuit of Jesus and His mission.

A missional community does not exist for a task or simply for one another, but for Jesus—the Head. All community and all mission flows out from that connection with Jesus. A small group that meets together simply to fulfill a task will be short lived, one-sided and not holistic. A small group that meets simply to have community life is just as out of balance. Christ is the glue and the source of direction and energy for all life change and movement.

The DNA of a missional community is:

1. Divine Truth—the presence of the Spirit of Jesus and His Word
2. Nurturing Relationships—the many one anothers found in the NT
3. Apostolic Mission—being sent ones, individually and as a community.

All three elements must be at the core of every agent of God’s kingdom. Remove a single leg from this three-legged stool and it all collapses. When the community comes together each one carrying the same DNA then the community as a whole has a healthy DNA in every part. It is vitally important that the missional community begin with the right DNA.

What do you think about Neil’s definition of missional community? What other questions does this leave you with? Join the conversation in the comment section below…

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http://www.2ndmanunited.com 2nd man united

Why are they called “missional” communities if they need all 3 legs to stand on and not just leg #3? Isn’t this kind of misleading? Why aren’t they called “truth” communities or “relationship” communities? Maybe it’s the lack of focus on mission. But then again, there’s a lack of focus on all 3.

I know some people that are calling their community “missional” and they have proceeded to break everyone up into groups based upon their interests and focus solely on those people. So, you have an art group, a music group, an actor’s group, etc. that is designed to reach those types of groups. So, what they aren’t seeing is that you don’t develop nurturing relationships by forming cliques. This kind of imbalance would be my concern with the name.

Maybe we could just call them Christ communities (since He is all as you mentioned) and redefine what that is by allowing Him to carry out all three legs through us (as you also mention).

Thank you for spreading this message.

Thinklink92

Rather than getting into semantics, I think that rather than defining the term “missional community” Cole is defining the community itself. The type of community described in the article was given a title “missional community.” A missional community, then, as defined by the article is not a group that someone has called “missional”; rather, it is as Cole writes, “a spiritual family (community) with the Spirit of Christ in their midst,
called out to join Him on His mission to the ends of the earth.” A group whose primary interest is Jesus Christ looks much different that a group whose primary interest is art or music.

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Stacey Frith-Smith

I also wonder about the issue of size in intentional and missional communities. Can we be effective if we are not permeable and open? Limited size may be a logistical necessity for finite humans managing or living out relationships and mandates, but we need to accept that although we can only interact with a limited number of people at any given time, we have to allow the “roster” of people in our focus to “scroll”. Otherwise we are locked into the personalities and concerns of a small group, perhaps to the exclusion of real impact. Of course, this thinking is subject to revision on my part, but it’s my best take for the moment, ha!
jesusfreak

Hey Stacey.
First off. I didn’t know missional communities existed outside of my fantasy-world until 25 minutes ago. (i’ve been chewing over something similar to this for the last 3 weeks. I’m currently nerding out that somebodies already tried this. So, what you’re reading is a fragmented smoothie of my kink-flattening, and what i’ve learned since 9:50 this evening (it’s 10:15 now).
But, what if Missional Communities are something that a small group of 3 or 4 creates. And then loves God togethor like crazy, and goes out and loves people like crazy togethor..in a tight community. and then, as people seek to join the tight knitted community, we train them how to start there own missional community, and have them go out in there own little nucleotides.. little groups. little communities. Faith Families… like real families. Like, after my parents made me they started training me how to be a family member. and now one day I’ll go make my own family.

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