Over the next two weeks, I’ll be unpacking how we define missional communities at The Austin Stone.
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Like many churches, The Austin Stone has a very clear vision of what we believe God has called us to. We phrase our vision this way:
To be a New Testament church existing for the supremacy of the name and purpose of Jesus Christ.
Through years of experience, prayer and study, we have gained a clearer understanding what it means to be this church in the city of Austin.
Our mission, the application of our vision to our context, became this:
To build a great city, renewed and redeemed by a gospel movement, by being a church for the city of Austin that labors to advance the gospel throughout the nations.
As we’ve mulled over that mission in our city, we were consistently pressed to consider that there are pockets of people throughout Austin and the nations who have not been renewed and redeemed by the gospel.
There are so many in the city of Austin who would not even consider darkening the door of a Sunday worship service.
Faced with this particular challenge, we realized that some of our forms needed to change if we were ever going to see a movement ignited.
That meant changing on the smallest level: we must declare and demonstrate the gospel in community on mission to every pocket of people for a movement to occur.
The Austin Stone, therefore, is in the process of becoming a network of missional communities. We are teaching small groups of people, called of God, joined by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who by the power of the Holy Spirit to pursue the renewal and redemption of their community and the nations together.
In the next post, I’ll define a missional community. How would you define one in light of our vision?
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