Todd Engstrom

Tag: mc-practices

  • Missional Community Practices – Third Place

    A third place is where a missional community becomes intentionally missional: neutral ground, natural to the rhythms of your friends who do not know Jesus, and regular enough that they can belong before they believe. Mission is about people, not projects.

  • Missional Community Practices – Life Transformation Groups

    A Life Transformation Group is two or three believers of the same gender meeting outside the community gathering to hear and obey, repent and believe, and consider and pray. Neil Cole got this right, and it is where we study Scripture for obedience rather than information.

  • Missional Community Practices – The Family Meal

    If obedience means acting like a family, the question is what families actually do, and families share life around a meal. So we asked leaders to host a meal rather than prepare a lesson, which frees anyone to join, including someone who does not know Jesus.

  • Missional Community Practices – Different Kinds of Gatherings

    We build different kinds of gatherings because the aim is obedience rather than information transfer. Practices without the gospel underneath them produce self-righteousness or self-loathing, so this post answers how rather than why.

  • Missional Community Practices

    Missional communities at The Austin Stone gather three ways: as a family over a meal, as disciples in a Life Transformation Group, and as missionaries in a third place. Here is the overview, with a story of one community living all three.