About us in "Small Talk"; Missional-Monastic?

The final part of the three part essay on us that I wrote for Small Talk publication is now available on its website. Thanks so much for their work and for highlighting ours. Go to www.spiritoflifepublishing.com and click on newsletters and go to volume 6 or http://www.spiritoflifepublishing.com/newsletters.html. Support their mission.

Things develop and evolve so fast when you move from organizational to organic. I can already see how this essay written just a few months ago was right at the turning point of how we had transformed from what most folks think of as church into being more of a missional group with weekly worship more like part of our mission to ourselves, resting in God's presence, so we can continue embodying that presence to others. Now I wonder what we might be able to write about us a year or two from now, as we begin to add, bit by bit (see the post below), monastical to missional.

In his latest good book, The New Conspirators, Tom Sine has a good overview of the different streams of dawning church that he calls 1. emerging. 2. missional, 3. mosaic, and 4. monastic. I will try to comment on these more in the coming days, but I can see us in our existing group anyway straddling the missional-monastic, having moved away from the emergent attempt back in 2003. It is also fun to see a developing mosaic type church with the changes that have begun at All Souls in Tulsa with the weaving together of that church with the members of the previous New Dimensions Church led by Carlton Pearson. More to come.