Reggie McNeal interview.

Reggie McNeal's book, Missional Renaissance, has been out for some time, but it's still gaining attention in various quarters.   Harold Fickett notes at the beginning of an interview with McNeal that he calls for a "new alignment of evangelical Protestantism with Christ's mission to restore creation. McNeal writes about how local churches should reorient toward having an impact on society. He praises the recent phenomenon of "missional communities"—small groups with a dedicated purpose—springing up to address particular social ills. He claims that what's happening today in the church may change the institution as much as the Reformation."

You can read the whole of the interview here; it appeared online in 'High Calling.'   The interview is valuable in giving an overview of McNeal's thinking about mission, and also an overview of the book.

[Harold Fickett writes full-time. He is the author of The Living Christ, Dancing With the Divine, and a forthcoming biography of Albert Schweitzer. He is also a contributing editor of www.godspy.com, where he contributes columns on world Christianity and spirituality. Harold lives in Nacogdoches where, as a latter-day facsimile of a Southern gentleman, he takes care of his mother, his children, and a dog named Roxie and a cat name Gracie. (His wife, Karen, actually takes care of everybody but allows her husband his illusions.) Harold is a member of the Chrysostom Society.]

What the church is...

I posted these two quotes in the Daily Writer blog but I think they're worth repeating here too, since they relate so much to our mission.

Christ summons the Church, as she goes her pilgrim way, to that continual reformation of which she always had need.

Coming forth from the eternal Father's love, founded in time by Christ the Redeemer, and made one in the Holy Spirit, the Church has a saving and an eschatological purpose which can be fully attained only in the future world. But she is already present in this world, and is composed of men [and women], that is, members of the earthly city who have a call to form the family of God's children during the present history of the human race, and to keep increasing it until the Lord returns.
This she does most of all by her healing and elevating impact on the dignity of the person, by the way in which she strengthens the seams of human society and imbues the everyday activities of men [and women] with a deeper meaning and importance. Thus, through her individual members and her whole community, the Church believes she can contribute greatly toward making the family of man and its history more human.

The two quotes above come from the documents of the Vatican II Council. They're quoted on page 72 of Robert Warren's [photo] On the Anvil.

ROBERT WARREN was Team Rector of one of the largest and fastest growing churches in England, St Thomas', Crookes in Sheffield. He succeeded John Finney as the Church of England's National Officer for Evangelism and then was a full-time member of the Springboard Team for five years. He retired in 2004. His popular publication The Healthy Churches' Handbook underlines the vital role in a healthy church of people being helped both on the journey to faith and on the subsequent lifetime journey of faith.

New Mission

“The Anabaptist writer and practitioner, Stuart Murray Williams, has been the most trenchant critic of the tendency of older church plants to copy the outward forms and style of their sending church, without asking whether the new mission context was different. This can result in failure to let the shape and form of the new church be determined by the mission context for which it was intended. The call for new kinds of churches can become subverted into the production of MORE churches.”
Pg 20, The Mission Shaped Church (various authors)

Similarly:
In The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin said: “the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decision about the mobilizing and allocating of “resources” [rather] the significant advances have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge.”
(both quotes courtesy of the Next Reformation blog)

Missional Church

Len Hjalmarson, who runs the Next Reformation blog (and writes for various other places, such as Allelon and Next Wave online magazine) beings his latest post, Missional Church, in this way:

Over the past two years, two convictions have been growing for me. First, that apart from a Trinitarian mooring, our attempt to rebuild a whole gospel and a foundation for mission will go astray. Second, the church is an alternative (kingdom) culture, founded on a new covenant. Frankly, these points have become so critical in my understanding of God’s kingdom purpose as storied in the Old and New Testaments that I can’t imagine a new reformation unless we take them seriously.

I admit that “Trinity” is not an easy theological concept, and also that the particular formulation rising from Chalcedon in 451 needs reinterpretation — but Triune is the nature of God and is reflected in our humanity. A right vision of God roots a right vision of humanity, and apart from that right vision we won’t get mission right either. The heart of God’s mission is in creating a new humanity.