We've spoken quite a bit about being missional recently - here are two excellent posts which unpack the word a bit more and also looks at ways in which it's been (horribly) misused:
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2008/06/missional-synch.html
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/2008/06/23/missional-the-new-emergent-not-on-my-shift/

I'm part of NieuCommunities - a group which trains missional leaders. It's part of a wider organisation called Church Resource Ministries which has a podcast section on their site. Their latest podcast is a discussion on the shift happening within church. Here's the summary:

Hugh Halter, director of CRM's Missio team discusses Zer0 church plant training with Vance Grace, director of Church Planting for the Mid-America District of the Christian Missionary Alliance. Topics discussed: the shift from a program / attraction-based church to a relational / community-based church. Vance discusses how Zer0 has done in his own denomination, including the positive kingdom and financial implications of the missional model vs. an attraction-based model.

Ryan Bolger, who has written some things with Bert's professor Eddie Gibbs, shares some thoughts on missional church with Alan Roxburgh. He talks about attractional (come to us) vs missional (go and embody/indwell) and mentions Constantinianism, Christendom (a Western cultural expectation of going to church), what Jesus thought about church (Q: What would it look like if your church looked like Jesus's church?) and the early church.

Ryan says, "Students don't know the waters they are swimming in," in reference to both modernism and how they come to Scripture. This is actually a brilliant interview and there's so much good stuff here! The problem is that it's a 119MB download (!) so I'll save it and bring it to our next meeting.

"The church discovers its true identity and its best identity when its working within the Kingdom."

Here's some scenario planning we were talking about - what would our response be?

“If you were asked to steer a conventional, western church on a missional path and were given the freedom to utilize or reallocate all funds and resources in the best way you felt this could be accomplished, how and what would you do?

You have three staff members and a lien-free building. And the building is located in a neighborhood where few members actually live.”

This question was recently asked of Alan Hirsh and he gives some great guidelines, which I've put into the rest of this post.

I listened to this podcast on the way home from our last Change Agents meeting and thought of you, Bert - looking at how to do a new form of church. It's only about 18 minutes long but gives some valuable input on how to adapt church to meet our own contexts. The interview is with Kester Brewin about his book "The Complex Christ" which looks at self-organising systems and how that model can help look at organising church communities. I have a copy of the book so if anyone wants to borrow it, let me know.

Just came across a site which offers morning and evening Celtic prayer. I wonder how many young people long for communal prayer more frequently that once a week in church?

And of course, the power of a blessing:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever He may send you.
May He guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May He bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders He has shown you.
May He bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.

I received this article from Tim Elmore on what he has discovered about millenials and the subtle changes in attitude that are occuring. Very interesting!

"Off the Record: Confessions of Students Today" (What Millennial Generation Kids are Saying About Life & Belief) by Tim Elmore / www.GrowingLeaders.com

We've talked about paradigm shifts in ministry for quite a while now. John asked Tara very nicely if she wouldn't summarise a book (whose title I do not remember) and her summary is very in-depth. Here are the main points: