Mission in Action

Now further to yesterday’s comments.

1.Seattle: Was interested to note the ethnic make-up of the city.? It seemed to me that there were very few African-American people throughout the place, but quite a number of South-East Asian people and Chinese.? Wondered how that came about.? It also seemed to be a place with a lot of young people, testament no doubt to the high number of university graduates that stay on in Seattle.

2.Conference: Really enjoyed listening to Jeff Vanderstelt from the Soma church in Tacoma. (Hey that rhymes! ed)? Soma’s site is worth a glance – www.soma.org? Jeff spoke at Acts 29 conference and he immediately impacted us at TCH with his commitment to missional communities being the lifeblood of his congregation.? He himself gave great examples of how he is missioning his own neighbourhood, bringing the sweet savour of the gospel into some typically nasty neighbour situations.? For those of you who know Hamo from Upstream Communities and Forge, there was some of that similar suburban salt and light stuff happening.? Not sexy, but effective! Two other network leaders, David Fairchild and Mark Moore, were also interested in the small missional community model.? Here’s hoping that really takes off in the US.? Interestingly everyone, and I mean everyone, had heard of Mike Frost and Alan Hirsch.? I don’t think I met one person in the network who hadn’t. I shamelessly plagiarised Alan’s expression that the “gospel is a virus that is caught as it is sneezed outwards.”? That seems to sum up the missional communities to me.

3.Reflections. Before coming to UK a friend of mine asked, slightly tongue in cheek, if I was going to come back to Oz and move to the urban centre of Perth and set up some funky cafe church.? For me that is exactly what is not going to happen.? If household/missional church can’t happen in the burbs, then perhaps it’s not the gospel driving it.? Jeff’s comments about how relationships between warring neighbours are being healed by the gospel are vital comments to hold on to, especially when it’s not particularly sexy and exciting compared to meeting in a cafe!? ? But surely that is the KOG working.? A mustard seed of the Kingdom growing? in a suburb, changing people? and situations incrementally as? God’s people? make ourselves available.? Perhaps in my suburb of Swan View the first sign that people are changing will be? the fact that instead of driving into the garage and going through the side door into the house, they’ll stop and talk to their neighbour about something meaningful.? Not spectacular, but a start.?

written by Steve