Family Church/Family Missional Community
Creative flexibility has seen the emergence of this missional community. As Sarah has left it was impossible to maintain the 9:30 service on the second and fourth Sundays, but this has offered an opportunity. The term missional community may be new to many of you, and to introduce it I need to take a paragraph to summarise some church history.
The early church is sometime summarised as having three directions – up, in and out – up towards God, out to God’s world and in as a community. As Christendom became established in the West, then the assumption was everyone was Christian so the outward mission weakened, and in a static community where you worked at the same factories and socialised at the same sports club, pubs and social activities the inward community was seen as happening naturally in the wider community. Now that society is post-christian and community is much more fluid the term missional community has been adopted for groups that want to balance up their out and in alongside the worshipping up.
As something that is looking to be an expression of church that is a missional community – the Sunday afternoon looks and feels a little different. We want to always share food together and see our time connecting as families as an important part of being church together. And want to take the challenge of thinking through ‘what does it mean to do family well?’ as the outward focus of living out the Christian life in the world.
So are we saying we are a service that is only for families – no but we do have a focus on family life.
So If you want to focus on family life, and value connecting together, playing games and sharing food; and if you want to worship and do community together then you may consider coming along and seeing what creatively emerges.
