Day 21: Missional Transformation

[featured_image]Welcome to Day 21 as you Take the Missional Challenge!

Take the Missional Challenge is a 31 Day experience designed to help align believers with Jesus’ mission. Each day’s post includes missional concepts and activities. For more information – click here.

Shifts are happening. Hopefully as you Take the Missional Challenge, it is impacting the way you think and the way that you act. That’s what happens as you follow Jesus in loving obedience and align your life with His mission. This is Missional Transformation.

Missional Transformation is a process of discovery that begins when believers recognize their responsibility to align themselves (passions, desires, behaviors, habits) with the missionary purpose of Jesus.

Missional Transformation requires a series of significant shifts in your thinking and behaviors – shifts from ways that are familiar and even comfortable to actually being Jesus to everyone everywhere.

It’s about new habits – and requires radical adjustments, realigned activities, relevant approaches, and redemptive action.

Missional Transformation focuses on…

1. Alignment – not Assignment (related post)

The Great Commission (Mt 28:19-20) is not an assignment or a task to be completed. It’s rather a way of life – aligning with Jesus’ mission.”If we want to be on mission with God we simply must pause long enough to understand how God is on mission. Only then can we know with some degree of certainty that we are aligned as his instruments and not misaligned as his obstacles.” (David Garrison, Church Planting Movements)

Question: How will I function as a missionary aligned with Jesus’ mission?

2. Disciples – not Decisions (related post)

Too often evangelistic efforts focus on decisions, rather than making disciples. There is a big difference! Jesus was a disciplemaker. We need to do what Jesus did.

Question: How am I making disciples who will make disciples who will make disciples?

3. “Being Church” – not “Doing Church” (related post)

“We are not called to go to church. We are called to be the church.” (George Barna,
Revolution)

Church isn’t something you do – it’s who you are! Too many Christians are content to “do church” for an hour on Sundays, rather than being the church all week long.

Question: How will I start being the church all week long?

4. Mission – not Maintenance (related post)

“Maintenance-minded churches tend to design most of their events for their members. Missional churches exist to reach those who are not yet part of the church, and so design activities that connect them with people outside the church.” (Milfred Minatrea, Shaped by God’s Heart)

Resources, energy and focus must be redirected toward redemptive mission. Church members cannot be all about serving the members – they have to start serving the last, the lost and the least.

Question: How will I focus on meeting the needs of those outside the church?

5. Incarnational Practices – not Institutional Programs (related post)

Programs run far too many churches. The mission of Jesus cannot be a program – it must be a pattern of your life.

The key practice of missional Christianity is being Jesus to everyone everywhere!

Question: What incarnational practices will I adopt to “be Jesus” to those around me?

6. Sending Capacity – not Seating Capacity (related post)

It’s not about how many seats in your church – it’s about how many people your church has sent on mission. Every believer is a missionary – sent by Jesus to bring the love of Jesus to those in their neighborhood or zip code.

Question: To whom have I been sent? How will I live as a “sent one” in my neighborhood?

7. People of God – not Place of God (related post)

“For once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10)

Church is not a destination – it is God’s missionary people.

Don Everts has observed, “Referring to the church as a building is like referring to people as 2x4s.”

Question: How will I embrace the Church as God’s people – not a place?

DAY 21 ACTION STEP: Experience Missional Transformation

• Review the list of shifts listed above and explore one related post.
• Prayerfully consider what shifts you need to begin to make in your thinking and behaviors.
• Commit yourself to obey anything the Spirit is leading you to do!

Day 21 Missional Challenge: Missional Transformation is a discovery process that requires alignment with Jesus’ missionary purpose. Consider how you can become better aligned with Jesus’ mission.