One of the turning points in my understanding of the mission that God has sent us on as his people came through our MC Leader training at Soma Communities. It was on the discipleship process. We sat down as leaders and went through many verses in the NT that showed how Jesus...
When we (Soma Communities) train around the world, one of the most asked questions after training on The Story Formed Way is this: How do you get your neighbors to come to the Story? While this question is pretty natural, we need to be careful in how we handle the Story and "getting people to...
Here's the latest in our series on the GCM distinctives: 6. Discipleship, shepherding and leadership development happen primarily in community on mission The Christian community is the God-given context for pastoral care and leadership development. In the Christian community the gospel...
The GCM Collective has identified some of our key distinctives and are working an explanatory paragraph for each one. Here's the fifth ... 5. Everyone exercising gospel ministry Mission is communal. Gospel ministry is not the preserve of a professional elite or people in full-time...
The GCM Collective has identified some of our key distinctives and are working an explanatory paragrpah for each one. Here's the third ... 3. All community is missional and all mission is communal The Christian community is created by the gospel for the gospel. So its defining purpose is to...
Here is the fourth part of my course preparing people for cross-cultural mission. What do you think you will miss most? friends and family home comforts familiarity (e.g. favourite foods) entertainment a professional environment Christian community corporate worship and...
Here is the third part of my course preparing people for cross-cultural mission. (Here are parts one and two.) God is great What are the worries you have about doing mission in another culture? The refrain we kept repeating when I visited missionaries in the Middle-East was: ‘fallen...
Here is the second part of my course preparing people for cross-cultural mission. God is glorious You are going to be very conscious of what other people think about you. Your fellow team members Do they think you are competent? What are they making of your progress? How do they...
I recently ran a short preparation course for people about to go out as cross-cultural missionaries. We looked at some standard material on culture and contextualization. But half the course was based on a conversation with a missionary we have sent to the Middle-East. As we talked about...
One of my blog posts that garnered the most ever comments was one questioning whether the incarnation is a right model for mission as expressed in the oft repeated phrase, ‘incarnational mission’. So I was interested to see two people independently questioning it along similar...