Mission Alive

From the beginning of Mission Alive we have struggled with the nature of missional church planting.  How does God shape us so that we reflect his compassion, holiness, and faithfulness?  How are we formed by the calling and sending of God?  How do we reflect the redemptive reign of God in Christ?  How do we become a holy people, reflecting a holy God, and thus led by God to plant holy churches?  How can we overcome our inclinations to merely focus on human ingenuity?  How can we develop spiritually-formed men and women who incarnate the qualities of God within communities of faith?  How do transformed church planters plant transformative churches? 

We have witnessed God's mighty acts in transforming church planters as they journey with Him in church planting.  Chris and Rachel Smith came into Mission Alive with the goal of becoming suburban church planters but in the midst of the Church Planting Strategy Lab realized that God had uniquely equipped them to reach the young intellectuals of downtown Austin.  By God's providence Chris was hired by BookPeople, a bookstore in downtown Austin which describes itself as a "community bound by books" (www.bookpeople.com).  Chris, renamed Kester by BookPeople (There were too many Chris's around.), has become the spiritual counselor to dozens of searchers within this community.  These searchers organized a discussion time at 11:00 p.m. every Tuesday evening, called "Kester Tuesdays."  In these fellowships people gather to discuss life and religion with Chris.  Rachel, who works part-time as a speech pathologist to help support their family, met a young mother at a BookPeople story hour who asked, "I don't know much about the Bible.  Would you study it with me?"  The result is a community of mothers (and their babies) who discuss spiritual things.  Rachel says, "We are feeling invigorated and blessed by God."  Chris concurs, "The opportunities to share the love of Jesus are endless, and the desire for community is ever present."  During the last two weeks, a team of like-minded Christian leaders have gathered around them who will form the core of the church planting team.  Chris and Rachel are amazed at God's workings, His surprises.  "Everything we have planned has fallen through," they say, "but God has opened doors that we never could have imagined."  Chris and Rachel have sacrificed much:  They have sacrificed the security of a full-time salary in an existing church and replaced it with the uncertainty of moving to a new place to plant a church with equipping from a new missional ministry.  But they are feeling the joy of working according to God's leading as they begin reaping God's harvest in an area thought to be traditionally resistant to the Gospel.  Their story sounds oddly like the book of Acts.

Chris and Rachel illustrate that . . . . 

• Missional church planting is incarnational:  Church planters must personally enter the culture in which God has called them.
• Missional church planting begins in the trenches by ministering with unbelievers.  Many of the first Christians are gathered into the flock from the world.   "New churches minister best to unbelievers," Stan Granberg says. "Existing churches minister best to current members."  Thus Chris Chappotin told me yesterday, "I have met more people with addictions in the past six months than I personally witnessed during the four years that I worked with inner-city ministry in Abilene."
• Missional church planting begins with spiritual formation:  Members and searchers pursue passionate devotion to Christ so that they reflect the love, holiness, and faithfulness of God. 
• Missional churches grow like light in darkness:  Missional churches do not primarily ask the question "How do we grow?" but "What is the gospel?" (And related questions like "How is the gospel formed within us?  How does gospel connect to culture?").  They grow naturally because they represent a godly alternative in an ego-directed culture (1 Peter 2:12). 

Our insignia is the clay lamp.  We minister with humility recognizing ourselves as fragile "jars of clay" who finitely seek to enter into what God is already doing in his world.