Verge Network 1 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 7: What are some stories of hope and struggle you've encountered with Missional Communities?
Stew interviews Jo Saxton about stories of hope and struggles that are common to Missional Communities.
Verge Network 3 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 7: What are some stories of struggle and success that are common to Missional Communities?
First, I think we have to fight as much as we can against what we would view as success because at the end of the day...
Verge Network 3 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 7: What are some stories of hope and struggle that are common to Missional Community?
The biggest struggle for us has been the whole process of helping our people completely rethink church. We've been on that for probably...
Verge Network 3 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 6: What do Missional Communities do?
Missional communities will vary across contexts, but they must be rooted in gospel; identity first, then methods and theory. What we've found is that if Christians love the gospel, they'll be willing to do incredible things for the sake of making Jesus known to those around them. At The Austin Stone...
Verge Network 2 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 6: What Do Missional Communities Do?
That's a really good question. Sometimes, people are trying to make it look more intense than it is. All it really means is that you have some friends that you live fairly close to, sharing spontaneous life together. In our environment, we try to coach three aspects...
Verge Network 2 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 6: What do Missional Communities do?
If you look at what is happening in the church in the West, in terms of cultural proximity, best estimates say that we are within cultural proximity to 40 percent of the population. In other words...
Verge Network 4 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
The way we've come at this was, first, through missional communities in India. We've been a part of an indigenous church-planting movement there for about 10 years, and it's not the typical approach...
Verge Network 3 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
In training leaders of missional communities our approach is to go easy on the leader-speak while concentrating on the “followerâ€-posture of being a good news or, gospel person. We want to help potential leaders carve their doing out of their being. This eliminates undo pressure and distraction on...
Verge Network 2 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
The first line of training is to actually model the behavior. So, within our church here and, what we help other churches do is to identify some existing leaders you have in your church that tend to...
Verge Network 2 min read
-7 Questions-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
The single biggest theme in training is apprenticing so that people do it, and then they learn from it. In some cases, they're actually assigned coaches who are very serious and...
Verge Network 1 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
We've changed how we're training and discipling our leaders. We've taught them, and we're teaching them, to be self-feeders versus consumers only. We're teaching them how to be self-feeders versus consumers because today in most churches, if you're a typical American Christian...
Verge Network 3 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
I think this is a huge and really, really important question right now. First, I think we have to understand that part of being missional is thinking movemental. If we miss that, we’ll be on mission but we won't...
Verge Network 4 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
Start with a commitment to consistently live the ways of Jesus together while you converse around four bottom-line questions for the purpose of drawing some...
Verge Network 3 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 5: How do you train missional community leaders?
Developing and training leaders for missional communities begins with cultivating a discipleship ethos. We need to look at discipleship holistically, beginning with those who have yet to self-identify as Christians, and then all the way across the continuum...
Verge Network 1 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 4: How do you transition your small group to missional community?
Hugh Halter answers our question and looks at calling people to mission from the start. Listen to the interview and join the conversation!
Verge Network 5 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 4: How do you transition your small group to missional community?
Dave Ferguson explains how his church took on the daunting task of changing more than the name of their groups.
Verge Network 2 min read
-7 Questions Series-
Question 4: How do you transition your small group to Missional Community?
Matt Smay joins us for Question 4, and discusses discipleship in the context of community. Join the conversation!
Verge Network 1 min read
7 Questions Series:
Question 3: How do you transition your group to be more missional?
Hugh Halter answers our question and looks at tithing your people rather than taking everyone with you.
Verge Network 5 min read
Matt Carter answers the question: What's the Difference between a Missional Community and a Bible Study? This is the second question of our 7 Questions Series leading up to the Exponential Conference. Hear what Matt has to say about challenging our people and releasing them to go on mission.