What is a Missional Community? – More Than a Bible Study

This is the fifth and final post in the series “What is a Missional Community?”  We have defined a missional community as:

A community of Christ followers on mission with God in obedience to the Holy Spirit that demonstrates tangibly and declares creatively the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a specific pocket of people.

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We could probably expand several volumes on on theological, philosophical and practical levels. I want to highlight one distinction that is important for us in pursuing these kinds of missional communities at The Stone.

A missional community by nature is intended to be more than a typical bible study. 

For us, a missional community is not just a bible study, it’s not just a fellowship group, it’s not just a social action club, it’s not just a support group, and it’s certainly not just a weekly meeting. 

Healthy missional communities include all of those things over time, but it’s a family of missionaries learning to follow Jesus in every area of their lives. 

My friend Seth McBee has illustrated this idea well:

A missional community is a group of people asking “What does loving my city and neighbor really look like?” and “how can we make disciples of Jesus together?”

Often times, our missional communities realize Jesus may ask far more of them than they ever thought. The good news though, is that we are experiencing and knowing Jesus where He is…on mission to the broken and lost.