"missional living"

In his new book They Like Jesus But Not The Church, Dan Kimball writes: “[W]e need to be missionaries to speak of [God’s] love and salvation through Jesus. We’ve got to realize that in our emerging culture, we are now in a different culture and we need to view it and the people in it as a missionary would. Christians are now the foreigners in a post-Christian culture, and we have got to wake up to this reality if we haven’t.” (pp 30)

How, though, are Christians to be missionaries? “Missional Living”, Kimball says, is the key. “Missional Living” is a recently new phrase, which Dan Kimball sums up as thus in seven points (pp 20):

1. “Being missional means that the church sees itself as being missionaries, rather than having a missions department, and that we see ourselves as missionaries right where we live.”

2. “Being missional means that we see ourselves as representatives of Jesus ‘sent’ into our communities, and that the church aligns everything it does with the missio dei (the mission of God).

3. “Being missional means we see the church not as a place we go only on Sunday, but as something we are throughout the week.”

4. “Being missional means that we understand we don’t ‘bring Jesus’ to people but that we realize that Jesus is active in culture and we join him in what he is doing.”

5. “Being missional means we are very much in the world and engaged in culture but not conforming to the world.”

6. “Being missional means we serve our communities, and that we build relationships with the people in them, rather than seeing them as evangelistic targets.”

7. “Being missional means being all the more dependent on Jesus and the Spirit through prayer, the Scriptures, and each other in community.”

Kimball speaks a lot of the “emerging culture.” A post is coming that talks about what this “emerging culture” actually is and what it means to Christianity here-and-now.