This is "Part 2" in a multi-part post. The other parts can be found here:
Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

One of the hardest things about leading any church community is forming the missional, "called-out" community [missional prophet]. This group of individuals and families who have taken seriously the words and life of Jesus and the call to missional, incarnational living is the primary pastoral responsibility of any missional leader. There are various ways in which we attempt to form this community at The Freeway.

Our weekly worship gatherings are specifically designed to enable these missional followers into an authentic encounter with God. We tend to plan a month's worth of gatherings at a time ensuring that the "big picture" is to call our community into missional living in the culture/context/community we find ourselves in.

Narrative teaching, community interaction, the arts, ancient rituals and practices, and the songs that really move us are the elements we have found necessary in our worship gatherings. We have a "bend" for deep community [as opposed to individualism], justice [not just mercy, but justice], and incarnation [and a call away from consumerism and "me, me, me" - to something other than ourselves]... and we likely "beat a dead horse" about these three all the time... in fact, we hardly talk about, explore, learn much else. This is mostly due to the fact that we haven't gotten these down yet, but also because we think these three form the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

We are attempting to develop a committed community of missional Jesus-followers who understand their place as agents of Spirit-guided transformation. We are also attempting to not be sidetracked by "all the goods things" or the "semi-useless" we could be doing.

Mentoring, coaching, and guiding relationships are key for the prophetic imagination. We have been modeling and initiating these spiritual friendships for a while now. We really don't "do small groups", but instead call people to be in committed, supporting, accountable, authentic, organic relationships with each other. We have a few inititiatives where we are trying to encourage people to intentionally invest in each other:

• Through mentoring - connecting people with others who can help them attain wholeness, and growth in Christ.
• Through hospitality - sharing space and food and beverage and life. this cannot be underestimated. I often half-joke that "hospitality is the new preaching".
  
• Through spiritual retreats - at least three times a year we host retreats away from the "grind" and build into people a missional perspective.
  

And there are others.

Basically, I think what I am learning is that in order to form a "called-out" community, a missional leader needs to:

• Form a community of missionally-committed individuals and families.
• Give shape to the community's worship environment.
• Model, apprentice and multiply wholistic change-agents/disciples.
• Model and multiply support and accountability relationships.

Look for part three, "being an apostle", later this week.

Labels: leadership, the freeway, writing