The Missional Church

Sivin quoted the following in his blog, which was taken from Alan J. Roxburgh & Fred Romanuk's The Missional Leader, which is quite thought-provoking:

"God is about a big purpose in and for the whole of creation. The church has been called into life to be both the means of this mission and a foretaste of where God is inviting all creation to go. Just as its Lord is a mission-shaped God, so the community of God's people exists, not for themselves but for the sake of the work. Mission is therefore not a program or project some people in the church do from time to time (the church's very nature is to be God's missionary people. We use the word missional to mark this big difference.) Mission is not about a project or a budget, or a one-off event somewhere; it's not even about sending missionaries. A missional church is a community of God's people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God's missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ."