Milfred Minatrea - Shaped by Gods Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Minatrea, Milfred.

Shaped by Gods heart: the passion and practices of missional churches / Milfred Minatrea.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-7879-7111-1 (alk. paper)

1. Mission of the church. I. Title.

BV601.8.M57 2004

253dc22

2004006648

CONTENTS

PREFACE: A PERSONAL LETTER TO THE READER

After more than twenty years of serving Christ, I know that the church can also be a dynamic experience of personal transformation, where individuals connect with God in profoundly intimate and personal ways, and in a powerful corporate connection as a whole body. Together, members exhibit the power of God at work in their lives, making the church winsome to outsiders and influential in communities. This church is optimistic: it believes itself to be the dwelling of God, uniquely empowered by His Spirit, living the transformational reality of His Kingdom in contemporary society.

Yet for many His church has become not a place of relationship but merely a place where people gather for religious ceremonies. Members belong to the church just as they may belong to the Lions or Rotary Club. They go to church, but often they do not see themselves as the church. Even parishioners speak of the facilities where they meet as the church. What was intended by God as a living Body has been reduced to bricks and mortar, a building made with hands.

What has happened?

Many churches are vestiges of a former community that long ago underwent significant change. Parishioners became part of a church when they first moved into a growing community. In church, they established enduring relationships with people who held similar values. Their children were confirmed, baptized, and married in those sacred places. As the community changed across the years, members sold their homes and moved away. Yet they continued to drive back each week to enjoy the web of relationships that was their church, their dearest friends. They continued to worship but lost touch with the community around them. Increasingly, church became isolated from the world rather than engaged with the world.

As missionthe purpose of inviting and equipping individuals to be authentic disciples of Christgave way to maintenance of the status quo, people have grown weary of going through the motions of religious trappings without experiencing personal intimacy with God. Our world is filled with individuals whose lives manifest their deep hunger for something more than the nominal religious experiences they have observed thus far. They know something more exists; they just do not know how to get there. They search for a different type of churchand that church does exist today.

This church is not limited by geography or denomination. It is found across the globe in an increasing number of places where leaders have been willing to lose everything to gain something that was almost lost. They have caught a glimpse of God and are unwilling to settle for anything less than intimate relationship with Him. In this pursuit, they are rediscovering the authentic relationship that develops among fellow pilgrims on that path, members together in the Body of Christ. Those churches are preparing members, and holding each other accountable, to live as representatives for God in their individual spheres of influence, in their world. These are missional churches, reproducing communities of authentic disciples, being equipped as missionaries sent by God, to live and proclaim His Kingdom in their world.

One might say this is a new kind of church, but I would say that it is some two thousand years old. It is reclaiming the intent for which Christ established His church. In many ways, contemporary society is very close to the first-century experience. It is pluralistic, profoundly spiritual, but not necessarily Christian. Major ethical issues challenge social structures. Global distribution of wealth favors a privileged few whose responsibility to exercise compassionate concern for those in poverty is often lost to a me-first mentality.

Yet the missional church is not a first-century church; it is a twenty-first-century church committed to use every means available to accomplish Gods missional purpose in the earth. Such churches are connecting members intimately with God and involving them in His mission around the world. They use global communication and transportation systems to gain information and extend influence. They are not content simply to provide financial resources so that a few select individuals can be involved in global missions. They are on mission as individuals and as communities of faith.