The church often gets stuck in planting one type of ecclesial structure that is Sunday and event focused. This course is designed to equip those who have a creative imagination for church, seeking new contextual forms of ministry. This course will challenge the imagination to design a new fresh expression strategy to engage a particular community.
This course guides students in a creative process for reimagining church community and mission in their context. Students are informed from the present contributions of various innovative micro-church methods, including Fresh Expressions (U.S. and U.K.), Underground (Tampa), KC Underground, The Pando Collective, and others. Students compare and contrast emerging church contributions such as missional communities, micro-paraministries, missional businesses, and organic church strategies.
Christ followers have the opportunity in today’s culture to use their creativity and imagination to design Gospel communities that are uniquely born to address their context. This course challenges the student to incarnate the Gospel through a ‘receptor oriented’ missional strategy (learning one's context), creating their own fresh expression of church, meeting the culture on the street where it lives.
This course focuses on Paul’s teaching in I Corinthians 9 to ‘become all things to all men’ as well as surveys the giftings of Ephesians 4 (APEST) in establishing a team to contextualize a fresh expression of church.
Church leaders are sent into a specific context in order to embody the Missio Dei there. Students become learners of their culture, as they respond to their missional context.
Students are guided to engage in cultural analysis through observation, interview and research.
Students are guided toward a strategy of being the church that their context needs, sent into culture as opposed to invitational to a predesigned church methodology.
This course is designed for the student to research and create their own fresh expression that applies to their unique context.
Students are encouraged to engage their local community context through participation, observation and personal interview, leading to the design of a fresh expression of church that can be mobilized and implemented.
