Introducing the Missional Church 1

In their new book Introducing the Missional Church, Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren offer a guide to apply the ideas from the groundbreaking book Missional Church. Roxburgh points out that over the last decade many pastors and church leaders have told him that Missional Church was too abstract to be easily applied. What was needed was a "part two" that offered a pathway for living into Missional Church. Introducing the Missional Church does just that.

The first thing Roxburgh and Boren do in the book is clarify the meaning of missional. A church that is evangelistic is not missional, although missional churches are evangelistic. A church that serves the poor is not missional, although missional churches will serve the poor. A church that is externally focused is not missional, although a missional church will be externally focused. A missional church is a church that grasps that mission is not first a category of church life but a category of God. God does not have a church that has a mission; God is missionary who has a church. A missional chuch exists to participate in God's mission to redeem all things in Jesus Christ. Mission is NOT a part of church; church is a part of mission.