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I am working my way through the new book by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church (Hendrickson, 2008). It is an excellent book in which Frost and Hirsch continue to describe more specifically their understanding of missional church in light of the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There essential argument is that a rediscovery of or fresh encounter with the Jesus of the Scriptures will mold our understanding of God, ecclesiology, and the world.

Part of chapter One includes these penetrating descriptions of the Church as a missional community:

“Therefore to be reJesused is to come to the recognition that the church as the New Testament defines it is not a religious institution but rather a dynamic community of believers who participate in the way of Jesus and his work in this world”

Quoting from Bosch’s Transforming Mission (p. 519):
Mission takes place where the church, in its total involvement with the world, bears its testimony in the form of a servant, with reference to unbelief, exploitation, discrimination and violence, but also with reference to salvation, healing, liberation, reconciliation and righteousness…Looked at from this perspective mission is, quite simply, the participation of Christians in the liberating mission of Jesus, wagering on a future that verifiable experience seems to belie. It is the good news of God’s love, incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world.”

Robert McAfee Brown:
“our task to create foretastes of [kingdom of God] on this planet–living glimpses of what life is meant to be, which include art and music and poetry and shared laughter and picnics and politics and moral outrage and special privileges for children only and wonder and humor and endless.” Quoted in “The Meaning of Life”: http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/life/905W-000-037.html

All of these quotations occur on p. 29 of ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

How do these quotations help to (re)imagine missional communities as we seek to advance the Gospel in our day?

Tags: Biblical Studies, Community, Gospels, Mission, church, communication, culture, ecclesiology, emerging church, ethos, evangelism, humanity, incarnation, kingdom of heaven, missional church, missionary, resurrection, risk, world mission, world religion //