Missional Renaissance

I attended a conference on 1/22/09 at the Kentucky Baptist Convention building in Louisville, KY. The speaker was Reggie McNeal and the focus was his new book "Missional Renaissance". He was an enthusiastic guy who was a little scatter-brained at times, but a joy to listen to and hear his heart for the "missional" church. A "missional" church is a church who focus its attentions on reaching out to the community to demonstrate God's love to people. He proposes spending more time, efforts, and money on "blessing" the community around the church rather than "blessing" the current church. He used several examples to explain this process. He proposed that churches go into the community to serve rather than inviting people to service at church. He also stated that the church is just the airport to the greater destination - Heaven! I think churches spend too much time worrying about getting people in the door of the church where they need to spend time getting people in the door of heaven. He also talked about blessing people in the community by offering prayer up to people as much as possible (waiters, cashiers, etc.). I was challenged by his seminar and I look forward to using some of the things he talked about in my ministry.