New missional course launched for our Synod
The MIssional Lens is a five-week course is designed for anyone wanting to explore missional thinking and a missional perspective. It is aimed at those who are relatively new to the topic and want to develop their understanding, but the course is broad and is for everyone.
The Missional Lens is a new course about looking at faith through a missional perspective. It was designed by Missions Catalyst Karina Kreminski and Lecturer at UTC Damian Palmer.
This five-week course is designed for anyone wanting to explore missional thinking and a missional perspective. It is aimed at those who are relatively new to the topic and want to develop their understanding, but the course is broad and is for everyone.
What does it mean to look at faith, the church and our mission from a missional perspective? We define missional simply as “reorienting outwards”. This means reorienting our faith, ministry and church towards the world, community and neighbourhood. In the same way that our missional God turned towards us and reached out to the world in love, we must also imitate this and reorient towards others rather than turn inwards. Why is this important? Because we believe that this is the true purpose of the church – to exist not for itself but for the sake of the world. Once we see things through a missional lens, our understanding of church, mission, faith and our world might begin to change.
"Often in church we focus on those who are within our community but our missional God calls us to look outwards. In the same way that God showed up in our world and incarnated we also must "incarnate" the gospel. As we embody the gospel in our neighbourhoods and world, we become a witness to our world that the gospel does n fact change lives." says Karina.
The course was trialed earlier this year with various people from different churches of different background and was a hit! "People said that their view on mission changed after this course." says Karina. "Most people think that mission is one part of the church but what we are saying is that mission is the core of a church and that we need to think missionally.. It's no accident that this course is called a missional course rather than a missions course."
The course comes with a participants manual as well as a facilitators guide so anyone can run the course. There is also back up if anyone needs support in that we will be offering videos for training and other resources as the year goes on through our website dedicated to the course.
It is a growing space!
The course wrestled with these five questions
- Mission: Is there a problem?
- Culture: Friend or Foe?
- What does Discipleship look like when it’s missional?
- Missional church: Is it necessary?
We know that most people face challenges around the world and practice of mission and we don't shy away from that, but we let people wrestle with that tension in this course.
There are plans to grow the course in the future.
Learn more!
The course can be done online or face to face, with specific church groups or with a different mix of Christians from various churches. We suggest doing the material weekly over five weeks. Or, you could do it every second week over 10 weeks. Each session is designed to take 1.5 hours and has options for breakout groups and discussions. It is not heavy on content but rather emphasises conversation and group discovery.
Please note - You will need to find a facilitator. We have a facilitator’s guide also, separate to the participant guide.
Find everything you need by clicking on the button below, and reach out to Karina Kreminski - KarinaK@nswact.uca.org.au to discuss in more detail.