The Mission Has a Church

Hirsch has some great insight into the impact of missional thinking for church and denomination. What does this mean for denomaintions doing reogranization/restructing? Where is our theology impacting, and in fact guiding, our reorganizaiton? What

Here are a few quotes for your consideration:

Regarding a missions/missionary approach-- "What is going to sound like Good News for this people group?" "What is church for this people group?" At this point, I'm curious what the varied contexts mean for the UMC. How much room do we give for these missional questions, especially for church starting, and how do we oversee that in an international denomination. KISS comes to mind regarding the Book of Discipline and the mandates at the highest levels allowing for context specific expressions of United Methodist Christianity.

My ongoing curiousity-- What is our shared theology of Chruch that is informing the UMC reorganization? Missional language and thinking is helfpul to me in the process of the renewal of a local congregation and an international denomination.

Hirsch quotes from the video:

Church "evicted missiology out of the equation."

"God is a missionary God."

"Mission isn't a subset of ecclesiology, but a subset of theology."

"It is part of the doctrine of God, not the doctrine of Church."

The key it to let "missiology determine ecclesiology."

"The mission has a church!"

"It is a fundamental paradigm shift."

Necessity of "unlearning" how to do church.

The "biggest hindrance is unlinking our imaginagations from the Constantinian mold of church."

"To borrow from Einstein: the problems of the church can not be resolved by the same type of thinking that created them in the first place."

The conversation returned to the immediate context of sharing the Gospel or starting a church. Numerous biblical stories come to my mind from the New Testament when I think about this.

As I continue to think and pray toward General Conference 2012 I hope that these sorts of primary theolgoical and biblical conversations will also be part of our reorganizaiton and renewal!

Check out the full video for yourself at Hirsch video interview .