Today, here are 2 ways to establish a missional culture. They are both about learning to be part of God’s mission involving new ways of approaching the shape of our week, different from the ways our culture or our past experiences have influenced us to do life. You might want to apply it both to your own journey of learning how to do this, and to how you lead.
1 Establish Missional Rhythms
Learning to live differently takes time and spiritual disciplines allow God, over time, to change us. You may already be familiar with spiritual disciplines such as bible reading, fasting or celebration, try to think creatively about what missional spiritual disciplines you and your community could use. Perhaps you could learning to prayer walk an area, to talk to new people on the commute to work or a regular commitment to be in a public place where people gather. What could you do on a daily, weekly or seasonal basis? A group of my friends choose to spend just under an hour straight after work one day a week walking particular roads of the estate they live in. They prayed for it, talked to anyone they met who seemed friendly and often bought take away prawn crackers to share. Some weeks there were great stories of people they met or answers to prayer, but many weeks seemed un eventful. Over time they got to know people and a group now gather weekly in one of their houses for worship, food and bible reading. What missional discipline would help you invest time to allow God to teach you and use you in his mission? What might this look like this summer? Allow God space to surprise you by what he does.
2 Establish missional Accountability
Building on a missional rhythm, accountability about how your missional spiritual disciplines are going helps it to be a journey of learning about mission and not an event that you just do. When it’s difficult, scary or more likely you just feel tired or bored, sharing your journey with others helps you decide what you want to do about that. Sometimes it might be time to step it up and add another level of challenge, if you’ve been going making new friends is it time to offer to pray with them? Or time to invite people along to something? Alternatively you might be pushing yourself too hard and you need to learn to relax and just be available in a place and let God surprise you. On Saturday I managed to run 2.5k around the local park. On my own I would never have made it, but I was running alongside my sister in law. Partly just the shared nature gave me encouragement to keep going, but also as I started to flag ¾ of the way along, her simple running wisdom on my failure to breathe properly allowed me to make the finish line. Learn to let others encourage and challenge you in your pursuit of a missional lifestyle. Where do you already have accountable relationships? As part of this do you discuss what you are learning about mission? Allow others to be part of what you learn.
Todays two reflections are not quick wins to a missional culture. The culture we live in can encourage us to live quite isolated lives and without deciding otherwise we can slip into a lifestyle where we are not meeting new people. The church culture some of us have grown up in may not have taught us alternative ways of living that make mission a natural part of our way of life. Rhythms of mission and accountability are two ways God can teach us to live differently from these assumed patterns. How could you inspire those you lead to take on missional spiritual disciplines? What ways can you include missional accountability in the discipleship or leadership structures you already have?
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