Church in everyday life

1. Church in everyday life

3. The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few, therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.

4. The nature of the church • 2. Discipleship

5. ‘How can we seek to re-imagine what it means to be the Church and create new communities if we lack the language and ability to talk and reflect about what it means to be the Church in dialogue with Scripture and our tradition.’ Steven Croft, Mapping Ecclesiology for a mixed economy in Mission Shaped Questions.

6. Church as four sets of relationships. up of out in ‘ Moynagh, Church for Every Context p 106.

7. “ The missionary church will not aim to spread its own form. It is not a subsidiary of the old one. It is a ‘new church’ of the same apostolate. It preserves its unity when it fulfils Christ’s apostolic mission to its own historical situation.”

8. “And so from the start , where Jesus is, there is the church, the church is the assembly of those who are finding their relationships, their lives transformed by the presence of Jesus.”

9. ‘…do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, beautiful as that place may seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have been before.’ Vincent Donovan

10. ‘not leaving the tradition but driving to it’s heart’ Gerald Arbuckle, Refounding the Church

11. The nature of the church • Discipleship

12.   Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the veryend of the age.

13. ‘a disciple is simply someone who decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to become capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is.’ The Divine Conspiracy, p309.

14. How to combine faith with obedience is the essential task of the church. Dallas Willard

15. How we see God • How we see ourselves and others • How we see our community • How we see creation and society

16. What kind of people are we called to be? What kind of community is capable of raising people like that?

17. We have done everything right and it hasn’t worked!

19. What way are • we facing and why?

20. Visible

21. Communal

22. Purposeful

23. Prayer Love Relate Create Prayer

24. Reproducible

25. Learn from the spider

26. Find a suitable starting point

27. Bridge the gap

28. Stephen Bevans & Roger Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue ‘how did the Spirit lead them to respond creatively & continually in new and surprising situations as they preached the gospel.’

29. Create an anchor point

30. The nature of the church • 2. Discipleship

31. Church as four sets of relationships. up of out in ‘ Moynagh, Church for Every Context p 106.

32. Basic questions of church • Who? • What? • Why? Maybe we should ask Where from? Where to ?

33. “ the theological doctrine of the church cannot be simply expressed in abstract terms about the churches timeless nature. It will have to provide points of departure for reforming the church, for giving it a more authentic form. Faithfulness and the fresh start are not antitheses in the history of the Spirit.”

34. Two models of mission • Mission station model-gathered and static • People movement- organic, indigenous & • spontaneous “But the truth not often seen or stressed is that Christianity, like electricity flows best where there is good contact.”

35. The nature of the church • Discipleship • Withdrawl • Engaged

36. What might this mean for leadership development and training? 2. What might be gained and what lost?