Last week we shared one of Mission Alive’s core beliefs–taking a mission-first approach to ministry. We believe that God is a missional God and we seek to emulate God’s primary concern– the restoration of his creation.
This kind of restoration cannot be accomplished from a distance. The church must be the ongoing incarnation of God in the world. As the body of Christ, the church embodies God’s character, wisdom, and mission. As God became incarnate in Jesus, each new iteration of the church must reimagine what the Gospel looks like when embodied in its own time and place.
That means that the church is always reforming to manifest the presence of God effectively in each new place. This ongoing act of reforming the church (called contextualization) requires the church to reimagine how to represent the eternal Good News in fresh and creative ways so that people can hear it clearly. Like the Apostle Paul, the church must, “become all things to all people so that by all possible means we might save some.” We in Mission Alive value leaders who have the capacity to imagine afresh how to embody the Kingdom of God in the world. As a result, Mission Alive’s training is not model specific but rather context-specific, encouraging leaders to identify practices that fit their context rather than perpetuating a predetermined model of ministry.
This incarnational approach is why our IFCs focus first on understanding their community, identifying what is preventing its members from thriving and then working together with their community to bring about an environment where faith can flourish.
We’d love to share more about starting an IFC! Click the button below to explore our six types of Innovative Faith Communities that can be started by individuals or teams.