August 30-31 - Seminar on the "Missional" Church

We had a two-day, 8:30-4:30 seminar on the missional church. A missional church is the lastest buzz word for churches that are passionatly missional in their nature: that is they are full-bore evangelistic and dedicated to serving the poor in resources and poor in spirit in their community. I was able to learn quite a bit from this seminar, however, there were some issues that brought me up short. I will let fellow blogger and Beeson pastor Rev. Aaron Wymer discuss this:

"Wednesday and Thursday were filled with lectures from Carol Childress and Carol Davis. They are with an agency that exists to help connect churches to resources and information. Carol Childress considers herself a "Missionary of Information" for the aid of the world missions. The website for her group is : www.worldconnex.org

I found some of her information useful, to one degree or another. Here is a sample of some of the things she said:

• "The church is a spiritual organism but also a social organization. The thinking that got us where we are today will not take us where need to be
  tomorrow."
• "We tend to eternalize the culture and the tools. We make the assumption that if something worked before it always will."
• "Effective ministry now and in the future will be done from a missional mindset. The culture today is much more like the first century than it is like
  the past 1000 years."

Below is Carol Davis. She has an interesting story as well. She is a consultant with churches. Her specialty is to help churches strategize in terms of coming up with specifics to attach to their vision statements. I am hoping some of the things she said will be relevant to the dissertation that I'm planning on doing (more on that in a later blog).

The two days have been okay. . . but we students are in a haze as a result of a week and half of sitting in this room for 8 hours a day listening to lectures (okay,
I'm whining). Actually, I had some theological issues with some of the things that were said, too.In particular, I didn't like what was said about the time of orientation that follows change. Claiming to use the Israelites and the Exodus as her model, she said that the time of wandering in the desert was time God was sing to "get Egypt out of them." I suspect the opposite is the case. I think God was using that time to get the experience of slavery (and being freed from slavery) into them. The reason it is important is that we are being told that we are entering a time of discontinuous change. It is accompanied by the idea that the church can use very little of the past if she is to move forward faithfully. I'm dubious about that.

Grace and peace,

Trav Wilson