Articles
The parable of the mustard pot: the significance of ‘parish’ in contemporary mission and culture
Parochial Christianity resists modernity’s preference for separating ‘Christ’ and ‘culture’, embodying instead the New Testament idea that if anyone is ‘in Christ’, they already inhabit a new kind of place – the ‘heavenly’ place that Christians believe to be the world’s true destination. The vocation of the local church is thus to anticipate this new place in the midst of the old - and its principal testimony to the renewal all things will be the kind of ‘little world’ that it makes...
Lesslie Newbigin: Looking Forward in Retrospect
Sixteen years after the death of missionary bishop Lesslie Newbigin, Paul Weston offers a retrospective of his contribution to missionary theology and assesses his continuing relevance for the church’s mission to Western culture. He backs the view that Newbigin’s work...
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Core capacities for the minister as missional leader in the formation of a missional congregational culture. Part 1: Role of a minister.
This article describes the journey of a congregational minister in his or her search for the essence of missional leadership. The journey led to a research project for a PhD at the University of Pretoria under supervision of Prof Nelus...
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Together at God’s Table: How Practicing Hospitality Shapes Our Imagination
In the missional conversation, there has been a lot of talk about the need for a new imagination in the church but less attention to how imagination is actually formed and how we might get there. This paper will examine the bodily formation of imagination and will suggest that Jesus was on to something vital when he sent his disciples two by two to be hosted by Samaritans...
Rapid Response
Leaving Eden
It was early September 1997, and as Britain was mourning the loss of its favourite Princess, I was moving into a far-from-palatial council house on a rather unsavoury street in south Manchester. At 24 years old I was actually one...
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Priests in the Borderlands
She came into the room carefully moving her pram, her very movements betraying her unfamiliarity with this new phase of life and its accoutrements. Her baby was asleep, tiny amidst the blankets, surely the youngest child here, and she the...
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Wesleyan Wisdom for Mission-Shaped Discipleship
In recent years, some scholars have shifted their focus from missional ecclesiology to mission spirituality, by making authentic discipleship the starting point of missional thinking. From this perspective, it is not churches but people that participate in the mission of...
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Monastic Practices and the Missio Dei: Towards a Socially-Transformative Understanding of Missional Practice from the Perspective of the Northumbria Community
To be a missional people means to live according to the reality of the presence of the kingdom of God that is now at hand. This radical call to missional living requires us to practice intentional spiritual disciplines...
Rapid Response
Dwight Zscheile – A Rapid Response to ‘Monastic Practices and the Missio Dei’
Practices for a Missional Church Planting Order
What practices can sustain missional practice and spiritual vitality among church planters? Taking cues from Ignatius of Loyola this article proposes a rule of life for a church planting order...
Rapid Response
Are we post-community? Challenges to Christian faith and mission in a rapidly urbanising world
This article defines community as ‘a sense of belonging that is the fruit of common commitments and personal investment’ and explores the art and nature of community building for mission within the context of a rapidly fracturing, individualising and urbanising world...
Rapid Response
Alan Roxburgh – Rapid Response to ‘Are We Post-Community’ by Ash Barker