A Letter from Pastor Mark - January



Dear Friends,
This month we are continuing our quest to learn how the church can become a missional movement. I have repeated the definition for a missional movement each month, and I am going to do so again this month.  A missional movement is when the people of the church are so excited about Jesus that they live his ways and his message goes viral, passed on from person to person.
A missional movement must have missional DNA or mDNA.  The six elements of mDNA are the following:
· Jesus is Lord
· Disciple-making
· Missional-incarnational impulse
· Apostolic Environment
· Organic systems
· Communitas
This month we are going to look at the element of organic systems.  This refers to how missional movements are organized.  When the disciples of a church become excited about and focused on Jesus, they won’t need much organization.  Why? They won’t need much organization because the grassroots (the people) of the church will be activated, and they will   hunger and thirst to get into the world to touch the lives of people who haven’t received the good news of Jesus.
The only organization a missional movement needs is just enough structure to help people receive the training and resources they need to do the ministry out in the world that Christ is calling them to do.   This minimal organic organization will help hold those in ministry accountable to the ways of Jesus.   So the organization and the activity of the church will become organic.  It will spring forth from the people instead of being imposed through hierarchial levels.  In many ways a missional movement is self-organizing and self-monitoring.
However, for that to work all disciples must, in spiritual humility, be willing to take spiritual direction and spiritual correction from one another.  If every disciple considers their ideas and desires to be the final word and they don’t listen to the counsel that is offered from others, then the intended missional movement will degenerate into uncontrolled anarchy; everyone insisting their way is the only way.
True missional movements have organic systems that foster cooperation and collegiality instead of one-upmanship based on the need for control.
Next month we will finish with taking a look at the final mDNA element, communitas.
In Christ’s Abundant Love,
Pastor Mark



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