Missional-Life

John Piper at his best!

I’m spending today writing some notes for the Small Group Training Conference that I’m speaking at on Saturday. I have two sessions:

1. Growing a healthy small group
2. Leading from first principles

Here’s a succinct definition of missional church:

“To be missional means that the individual members and the body as a whole understand and follow their calling from God to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ fervently to as many people as the Holy Spirit would lead. It means that we are engaged in personal relationships with the lost on purpose in order to show them the love of Christ and how He sacrificed His Son to die for our sins so that we could escape the condemnation already placed upon us as a sinner by birth.” Scott Thomas

As you may be aware the family and I are in the process of moving to Nene Family Church (Peterborough). As a way of keeping people up to date with of our news and prayer requests Lorna and I have set up a facebook group. You can join the group by clicking here…

Over recent months a guy from my church has been developing a new website for the church. I would really welcome any feedback on our first beta version of the site.

please visit: http://ccc.attleborough-alive.co.uk

Please note that the following areas still need development:

1. The middle section of the home page where there is currently the facebook and podcasting icons DON”T work

2. The ‘Team’ page is still only partly constructed

3. The ‘Youth’ page still needs populating

4. The ‘Church’ page still needs populating

We would really value any comments, ideas, or ways we can improve the site.

From the 10th August I will be on holiday for two weeks. As a result there will be no posts on missional-life.com

Happy Holidays!

I’m currently writing a 5-week discipleship course for folk within our children work. Here are the titles for each session:

DELIGHT. Finding true delight in a world of cheap imitations

GLORY. Finger painting for the glory of God

CROSS. The cross-shaped life

IDENTITY. Who am I?

SERVANTHOOD. The upside down kingdom

As part of my research I’ve just reread Bill Hybels book ‘The Volunteer Revolution’. What a suburb book! It is short and easly accessible, but filled with some great truths about team, servanthood all firmly rooted in the mission of the local church. Here are just a few of quotes:

“I have never done a single thing of value without the assistance of others.” (p. 9)

“We love, serve, and care for others because that us normal behavior for people who are filled with God’s Spirit. We are Christians. Christ was the ultimate servant. We can’t help but serve because the Spirit of the Servant has filled our hearts. When we serve we are just being who we naturally are.” – Steve Sjogren (p. 35)

“Jesus, our Lord and Teacher, took the very nature of a servant. Here Paul challenges us to a new perspective. He calls us not just to momentary emotional hype, but to a crisp, intellectual understanding of what Jesus models for us. He asks us to allow the Holy Spirit to renew our minds so that our reflex reaction at home, work, at church, and in our community is humble service to God and people.” (p. 42)

“A room without books is like a body without a soul”

- Cicero

Welcome to Missional-life.com.

As many of you will be aware my previous weblog had a catastrophic failure a couple of weeks ago with the loss of all data (including backup files!). As result I have made the decision to start my blog again under the new name ‘missional life’. Please do get in touch to let me know if there are any subjects which you would like me to focus on over the coming months.