When: June 10, 2021, 1:45 pm - Thursday

Where: Swang 242

Session 4

Session Abstract

Churches of Christ have always engaged our North American contexts with a vigorous sense of mission. This session continues this long-standing tradition of reflection on missiological praxis in our local North American contexts.

 

Paper Abstracts

Kent Smith, Abilene Christian University, “Love, Joy and Grace: Formation Together in the Life of God”

The mission of God is the life of God. The mission of Jesus is the life of God on earth as it is in heaven. The mission of the community of Jesus is the life of God on earth here and now. This all follows from the essential reality that God is love. Love seeks and creates more love—by nature love is regenerative. These truths, taken seriously, deeply shape the ways we think about mission and the formation of those who want to share in God’s mission. In what follows I survey a process of human formation that centers in God’s life. From this understanding I then examine what it actually means for us to participate in God’s regenerative life together—and to see particular expressions of that life take form in an expanding ecosystem of God’s grace.

 

Tod Vogt and Charles Kiser, Mission Alive, Dallas, TX, “Contemplative Mission: The Interplay Between Spirituality and Missional Practice in Mission Alive Church Planters”

This paper draws on interviews with thirteen Mission Alive church planters to explore how planters’ personal spirituality impacts their missional practice and vice versa. Major themes from the interviews are explored and then translated into implications for equipping future church planters.

 

Jared Looney, Global City Mission Initiative, Tampa Bay, FL, “The Impact of Diaspora Mission and the Shift to a Mission Paradigm in the North American Church”

The context of North America continues to experience tremendous change. While the church in the US grapples with the shifts in religious landscape, global migration simultaneously continues to reshape the makeup of American society. Engaging diaspora communities is not a simplistic consideration of “over there” and “over here,” but the influences of the culture(s) of home, the culture(s) of the host society, and formations of hybridity are all factors that will impact ministry in diaspora contexts. Needing to operate from a missions paradigm will require practices of ethnography, contextualization, and cultural awareness while pioneering fresh responses to essentially new missional realities.

Speakers

Chris Flanders and Greg McKinzie, Abilene Christian University; Lipscomb University, Conveners

• Kent Smith, Abilene Christian University, “Love, Joy and Grace: Formation Together in the Life of God”
• Tod Vogt and Charles Kiser, Mission Alive, “Contemplative Mission: The Interplay Between Spirituality and Missional Practice in Mission Alive Church Planters”
• Jared Looney, Global City Mission Initiative, “The Impact of Diaspora Mission and the Shift to a Mission Paradigm in the North American Church”
• Aaron Wheeler, Ozark Christian College, Respondent