THE QUICK SUMMARY
Public gatherings are vital for movement, but too often in our approach to planting churches, we haven’t paid enough attention to the difficult grassroots work of movement: discipleship, community formation, and mission. This book will help you start missional-incarnational communities in a way that reflects the viral movement of the early New Testament church. JR Woodward (author of Creating a Missional Culture) and Dan White Jr. (author of Subterranean) have trained church planters all over North America to create movemental churches that are rooted in the neighborhood, based on eight necessary competencies.
The book features an interactive format with tools, exercises, and reflection questions and activities. It’s ideal for church planting teams or discipleship groups to use together. It’s not enough to understand why the church needs more missional and incarnational congregations. The Church as Movement will also show you how to make disciples that make disciples. This is the engine that drives the church as movement, so that everyday Christians can be present in the world to join God’s mission in the way of Jesus.
A SIMPLE SOLUTION
According to authors JR Woodward and Dan White, the church is not formed around a stage but around a table. Cultivating a shared table in personal space creates availability in the wilderness of fragmented American life.
The “shared table” referenced above is just one of the ways that the church can build community outside the walls. The common way churches move forward with this “outside the walls” thought is to create a program to meet the need.
However, an orientation that moves outside the walls is more organic, more fluid, and more long-lasting than any program can be. Building this type of community isn’t a given, it’s a goal, a task to be accomplished through mutual commitment, patience, and love.
It’s learning to create new environments.
One of the most overlooked elements to making mission-shaped disciples is recognizing the environments that shape the culture of our missional community. We need to move from being programmers to environmentalists, learning to shape different environments in our mission communities, for those environments will in turn shape us.
We need to nourish environments in our missional communities that will enable us to catch the wind of the Holy Spirit and move us into the neighborhood. Specific environments expose us to new realities and stretch us in new ways of being the body of Christ.
Learning environment. A learning environment allows people to inhabit the sacred text. Learning is more than the transformation of information, although it does include that. A learning environment is cultivated as we allow God’s future to reshape how we live in the present.
Healing environment. A healing environment allows people to work through their past hurts and move toward a sense of wholeness and holiness in the context of community. This happens when people sense an atmosphere of acceptance and understand that others are for them, no matter what they do.
Welcoming environment. A welcoming environment reflects a welcoming God. We cultivate a welcoming environment by following Christ in extending table fellowship and love to those society has marginalized. When we practice the art of hospitality, we give God room to work in people’s hearts.
Liberating environment. A liberating environment helps the missional community experience liberation from personal and social sins by forming Spirit-transforming communities. A liberating environment encourages people to overcome addictions, grow in personal holiness, and speak truth to power by living in the power of the Spirit.
Thriving environment. A thriving environment encourages the group to step into new territory for the sake of the gospel. It requires developing a strong discipleship ethos that contributes to people stepping out in new ways, seeking to multiply disciples in intimate and personal spaces. We also multiply social spaces through reaching people in the neighborhood.
JR Woodard and Dan White Jr., The Church as Movement: Starting and Sustaining Missional-Incarnational Communities
A NEXT STEP
Authors JR Woodard and Dan White have provided questions for your reflection on each of the environments listed above. Use these samples as starters toward a deeper understanding of the five environments.
Learning environment
- How do the Scriptures shape the community you serve?
- Are people listening to God through the Scriptures and practicing what they are learning in their every day lives?
Healing environment
- How well do people know each other and share life with one another?
- Are there regular times for people to be genuine with each other – with no masks?
Welcoming environment
- How many people are genuinely welcoming to others?
- How many people are willing to associate with people who are different than them?
Liberating environment
- How many people are actively using their spiritual gifts to build the body and serve the neighborhood?
- How is the community speaking to the power and subverting systems the perpetuate injustice in the neighborhood and city?
Thriving environment
- How many people are stepping out into new territory, discovering their sense of call and living it out with great passion?
- How many people see their work as a sacred vocation by which they are able to serve their neighbor and bring glory to God?
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