Course Description
The Congregation as Mission Outpost
This course is an invitation to reflect upon our life and witness as individuals and congregations with a view to discovering the values we exhibit which undermine our efforts to be missional in character. The course will offer learning activities that will help to free us from the institutional practices that deaden our churches.
This course is intended to assist elders in becoming more missional in their calling. It will seek to engage them in a consideration of the church's life and witness that challenges and moves away from the institutional values which often impede the movement of the Spirit and the work of the gospel.
Course Goals
- look to discover the differences between "institutional" and "missional" values in church life
- facilitate an evaluation of your own way of being an elder in the light of those values
- develop a plan to become more strategically missional in your vocation as an elder
- assist elders to lead their congregations into more missional ways of being through concrete, specific objectives
- unfold the many scriptural resources which challenge and encourage the growth of missional thinking
Course Outline
The course consists of ten modules. Each module will deal with separate themes:
- Assessing institutional vs. missional values
- Where are you and your church on the values continuum?
- How did The Presbyterian Church in Canada ever get to this place?
- Examining how we communicate our faith
- Relationships and missional values
- Focusing ministries missionally
- Integrating newcomers among us
- Stewardship in a missional church
- Management vs. leadership in a missional congregation
- Developing a plan for a missional future