![\"Missional.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/imgs\/Missional.jpg\")
<\/span>Arguably, Darrell Guder\u2019s book (Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0802843506\")
<\/strong><\/em>) is the most significant book on the church in the last two or three decades. But, as one of the contributors,\u00a0Alan Roxburgh,\u00a0observed, the book was good but it was too impractical for pastors and churches. So Alan, along with M. Scott Boren, have done something about it: they have now written an accessible missional church book called Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (Allelon Missional Series)<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0801072123\")
\n<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n
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\u201c\u2026 a journeying people who were forced to discover again and again what God wanted them to be doing in the world\u201d (15). So we see an initial sketch of what \u201cmissional\u201d might look like. That definition, so I believe, cuts into the tendency of so many today to impose an ancient world on a modern world, of the tendency to return to the Bible and live just like then, and of the tendency to read the Bible in order to retrieve a bygone era and reclaim it for our own. No one in the Bible acted like this. In the Bible, the people of God were empowered by the Spirit to strike with the gospel in new ways for new days.\u00a0\n
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Those first messianic Christians \u2014 like Peter \u2014 were unprepared for what God was about to do through them: instead of boxing the Pentecost-inspired Spirit-driven new people of God into an old container, God prompted Peter to see that if God grants the same Spirit to the Gentiles, then \u00a0he was to participate in what God was doing. This event generated what Roxburgh and Boren call the \u201cmissional imagination\u201d (17). So they observe: \u201cthere is a natural tendency to try to fit the work of the Spirit into old familiar patterns\u201d (17).<\/div>\n
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They bring back the \u201cattractional\u201d vs. \u201cmissional\u201d model idea: \u201cif you build it, they will come\u201d is the attractional model. That is, church is an event and the church provides spiritual goods and going to church is about being spiritual.<\/div>\n
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But the missional church \u2014 here\u2019s a potent line \u2014 is not about the church! No, the God of mission is doing something in this world and the church is part of what God is doing. The missional imagination asks \u201cWhat is God up to in this neighborhood?\u201d But this does not lead the authors to the burn down the church and retrieve the organic origins approach.<\/div>\n
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Nor is this about creating the \u201cideal model of the church\u201d and trying to live that out. There is no model; there is Spirit.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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They challenged three ideas:<\/div>\n
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1. That there is one model for the church.<\/div>\n
2. That there is a singular, biblical missional model. Journeying into the unknown is there.<\/div>\n
3. That there was a time in history when the church got it right and we need to recover it.<\/div>\n
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Missional folks are wanderers.<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not All Who Wander are Lost<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Arguably, Darrell Guder's book (Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)) is the most\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/12\/09\/not-all-who-wander-are-lost\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not All Who Wander are Lost\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Arguably, Darrell Guder's book (Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)) is the most\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/12\/09\/not-all-who-wander-are-lost\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-12-09T05:38:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/imgs\/Missional.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/12\/09\/not-all-who-wander-are-lost\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/12\/09\/not-all-who-wander-are-lost\/\",\"name\":\"Not All Who Wander are Lost\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2009-12-09T05:38:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-12-09T05:38:10+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"Arguably, Darrell Guder's book (Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)) is the most\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/12\/09\/not-all-who-wander-are-lost\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/12\/09\/not-all-who-wander-are-lost\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/12\/09\/not-all-who-wander-are-lost\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Not All Who Wander are Lost\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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Arguably, Darrell Guder\u2019s book (Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)) is the most significant book on the church in the last two or three decades. But, as one of the contributors,\u00a0Alan Roxburgh,\u00a0observed, the book was good but it was too impractical for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[425],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-missional"],"yoast_head":"\n