Jim Cantelon - missional church

Here are some more thoughts on what Jim Cantelon shared at the pastor's retreat that I attended last week.

In one of Jim's sessions he talked about being a missional church. He used Acts 2 - the story of the early church - to give us a frame for what missional church should look like. Two things stood out to me.

First, is that we need to be open to the supernatural, the transcendent. The church is not simply a country club that does some nice service things. We are the people of the living God, who have been filled with the Spirit of God. In the early church this lead to people speaking in languages they did not know (the gift of tongues).

Second, the church needs to be rooted in the bible and proclaiming the truth of the bible. We are not simply to be a group that engages in experiences. We are the people of the God of truth and he has spoken to us. And we are called to be his ambassadors to the whole world preaching truth.

These two things, the supernatural and the preaching of the word, need to be held together if we are going to be a missional church.