Ben Sternke

Field notes on our life in God after Christendom

Missional Communities

Kickball and Other Missional Adventures

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We define mission not so much as “doing stuff for God,” but more as “joining with God in what He’s already up to.” Jesus said “I only do what I see the Father doing,” and we’re trying to learn from Him how to live like that.

One of the ways our Missional Communities (MCs) begin discerning what God might be up to is simply by planning events and get-togethers that help facilitate greater relational connectivity among the people in the MC and those in the mission context, and it’s the reason we sweated through two intense games of kickball last month in 90-degree heat.

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One Size Doesn’t Fit All

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As we’ve been attempting to plant a church as a network of missional communities, one of the most important things we’ve learned is that you can’t simply import a “church service” dynamic into a missional community and expect it to work. Steve Cockram of 3DM helped me realize on a huddle call a few weeks ago that the skills required to lead groups of 75 or more (worship services) are very different from those required to lead groups of 20-50 (missional communities).

We discovered this the hard way. When we first started meeting I simply did what I knew how to do: plan and lead worship services. The problem was that we only had 20 adults at the time who were part of our church planting team. It felt “off,” and never quite worked like we thought it would.

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What Powers Mission?

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After a wonderful final Learning Community immersion (“Establishing Centers of Mission”) with the 3DM team, I’ve been thinking about mission a lot. Not mission-as-project or mission-as-event, but real kingdom-of-God stuff: people becoming disciples of Jesus and joining with him in his work. What is necessary for real kingdom mission to flourish? What hinders it?

This morning I was reading Andrew Murray’s wonderful little prayer primer With Christ in the School of Prayer, and came across this gem of a quote, which deserves a slow, careful reading, because the implications for mission are astounding. [Read more…] about What Powers Mission?

Why Is Your Church Structured Like That?

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Maybe you’ve heard this story:

A young woman was preparing a ham dinner. After she cut off the end of the ham, she placed it in a pan for baking. Her friend asked her,”Why did you cut off the end of the ham”? And she replied ,”I really don’t know but my mother always did, so I thought you were supposed to.” Later when talking to her mother she asked her why she cut off the end of the ham before baking it, and her mother replied, “I really don’t know, but that’s the way my mom always did it.” A few weeks later while visiting her grandmother, the young woman asked, “Grandma, why is it that you cut off the end of a ham before you bake it?” Her grandmother replied, “Well dear, otherwise it would never fit into my baking pan.

It’s a funny, possibly apocryphal story that should make us think about why we do things the way we do. What brought this story to mind was a hilarious diagram of fake org charts I saw on Seth Godin’s blog:

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Missional Learning Commons 2011

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Okay, the short-and-sweet facts of the matter: For several years now, the Missional Learning Commons has been a highlight of my year. It’s a collaborative learning event for missional churches and practitioners to share stories, discuss ideas, and encourage one another for the sake of incarnating the Gospel in their contexts. It has been an incredibly generative time for me over the past few years, and I meet wonderful new people every year.

So you should come this year! This year’s MLC will take place Oct 28-29, 2011 in the Chicago area, and in addition to our regular diet of on-the-ground practitioners and collaborative discussion, we are excited to announce that Mike Breen and a team from 3DM will be around to share some of what they have learned and help facilitate some of our conversations by asking some provoking questions. They’ll also be doing a discipleship-and-mission workshop on Friday Oct 28 during the day (before the MLC) for those interested in learning more about what they do.

Head over the MLC site for more info and to register. Feel free to RSVP via Facebook as well. But for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, a little back-story:

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