This course equips those who are discerning a call to start or lead a network of missional communities. Topics include entrepreneurial leadership issues, church planting fundamentals, community engagement and the relevant principles of missional communities. Students are guided to analyze their community and build a projected plan for networking missional expressions of the Kingdom.
Students are exposed to the lexicon of terms for missional communities in contrast to the church planting vocabulary of modern strategies. This course surveys several current missional networks to expose students to contextual methods of expanding the Kingdom through missional expressions. Students are exposed to current missional network leaders to learn from their experiences of mobilizing missional networks.
Missional community networks are strategically designed as an antidote to the problems of postmodernism and consumerism in today’s ministry context. Networks provide relational and resourcing strength for Kingdom innovators and entrepreneurs, as well as support to those that have left traditional forms of church structure in search of an active faith in the community. This course equips students with the tools and leadership mindset to thrive in planting missional communities and networking existing communities together.
Missional identity begins with Jesus’ sending of his disciples in John 20:21. From there a survey of Acts 2 provides a spirit of church planting and networking with others for the sake of the Kingdom.
By definition, missional communities are ‘sent’ communities, locating church in the relevant spaces of the greater culture and not behind walls.
Missional communities are designed to be very specific to their local context, students are challenged to identify that context and summarize its barriers and opportunities, as well as identify current Kingdom movements that are present.
The networking of missional communities allows contextually relevant ministries to focus on their specific calling while creating a Kingdom participation that crosses cultural and social boundaries.
The student is guided to see church and mission outside the structures of traditional ecclesiology, reimagining tangible ways the Kingdom can become present in their context.
Students are challenged to examine their own leadership callings and context for a potential missional community planting. Students are exposed to leaders of other missional networks to learn from their experiences of network planting.
