Missional Communities by Reggie McNeal

The fastest growing religious affiliation is “non-affiliated”.  In surveys 25% young adults aged 18-29 (in US) tick non-affiliated religion.  Half of this number believe in God and the Bible (p8)... 

"People aren’t seeing [traditional] church as the way they want to pursue their spiritual journey."

Missional Communities are about church outside the routines and rhythms of the congregational model.  Typically missional communities (MCs) have no buildings to maintain and many cases no clergy to support.

A post-congregational model requires a strategy of engaging people right where they already live and work...It’s incarnational.

Mike Breen (St Thomas Sheffield & now in South Carolina) says MCs work best when they are;

·         -group 20-50 w/ shared vision & values to gel

·         -lay led (with accountability huddles of invited leaders)

·         -focus on local relational mission

·         - have a "up in out" ministry balance

·         -includes non Christians

·         -worship, prayer, scripture at its core

·        - reproduce missional communities

·         -partner with pre-evangelistic Spirit led work through the "person of peace" gatekeeper

-Breen also argues MCs work better for the different spaces human beings like to occupy (intimate, personal, social and public distances known as Proxemics click here). 

Reggie McNeal enthuses that MCs can fit almost any church context and writes about rhythms of community in Soma MCs Tacoma p65, a University Campus MC in Austin, Texas p85 and MCs as a large church strategy.  

My reflection:
So should all churches be aiming to launch MCs?
As Young Adult Missioner, part of my job is pioneering MCs with teams of volunteers drawn from local churches and new evangelism.   We must increase this economy of church to reach out more effectively.  But there are challenges... 

Attractional churches take a lot of resources to keep their show on the road, creating an "invisible bungee rope" that pulls people back.  Sometimes they're also just an easier option for families with kids. 

These two economies of church are different animals and there are various ways to describe them:  The Starfish and the Spider click here analogy is one way to describe the tension.  New Power vs Old Power click here is another aspect of the tension worth digging into. The tension is probably pronounced at the moment because we're at a bridge between one culture which finds change hard and a new culture that is more comfortable with it.  Understanding this difference will help...