The Neighborhood MC group — What does it look like?

When we think about what it means to be missional (sent by God to carry out his mission where we live and work as daily practice) what does the place where we do that look like these days? Leslie Newbiggin wrote some good stuff on understanding western (now postmodern) culture and how that culture views the gospel of Jesus (ridiculous nonsense, according to philosophy and science). So that’s generally the mind set of people in our area. You can count on it. But modernism is a house of cards quickly collapsing under the weight of its own ridiculous claims, and so people are developing their own forms of spirituality, sort of like a Ben & Gerry’s ice cream flavors. They have to, because humans are spiritual beings, created in God’s own image (spiritual, eternal, creative, industrious, etc). But it’s a mess. Now we hear about people forming an MC group to help single Moms, to serve the poor, to reach their Muslim neighbors, to make a 3rd place for inner-city high school kids. It’s like Jesus leaving the temple court yards and going back out into the hills to talk with the prostitute, or the lowly educated guy, or the sick people, or the demon posed. No matter what the local culture looks like, an MC group is simply Jesus in society, modeling the real church and its mission for all his disciples to see. Is the concept of an MC group all that complicated?

Gilles Gravelle