Summary of Insights, Challenges and Experiments from Mission Summit Conversations (June 2013)

• Insights
  • God is at work through the missional church focus and emphasis of their congregations, regions, and cities that has stimulated new ministries.
  • There is no “one way” to be church.  We must be willing to create space for spirituality both in and out of our church buildings.
• Challenges
  • How to form encouraging, excited, authentic congregations that are willing to change and transform in humanly connected ways
  • We need to surrender our assumptions about what church, church leadership, etc., should look like.
• Experiments
  • What would a congregation look like today if you designed it from scratch?
  • We need to identify and call leaders and support them spiritually and financially in training with new forms of ministry.

Summary of Insights, Challenges and Experiments from the Mission Table (November 2013)

• Insights
  • The future will probably involve functioning without buildings and full-time staff, and functioning in multi-ethnic/multi-cultural settings with minimal organization
• Challenges
  • Deepest challenge is to imagine what God is up to and seek to align with it in fresh ways of living into the body of Christ
  • Avoid private religion fed by rugged individualism to rediscover the need for the community of faith.
• Experiments/Projects
  • We need to redefine the church away from facility, paid clergy and fixed constellation of programs

Read the full notes:

Mission Summit Conversations:

• Group 1 Learnings
• Group 2 Learnings
• Group 3 Learnings

Mission Table:

• Day 1

Views expressed are the sole opinion of conversation participants. They do not express the views of American Baptist Churches USA, or individual American Baptist churches. Conversation notes and summaries are shared to allow American Baptists and friends to easily review and use these Mission Summit Conversations and the Mission Table learnings as they wish.