RICHMOND—Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond is offering a class next year on the missional church movement, open to both laypersons and clergy.
“An Introduction to the Missional Church Movement” is a master of divinity level course and will be held at Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, beginning Feb. 7. The course will meet each Thursday, 7-9 p.m., for 10 weeks.
“Movements come and go. But what of a movement bent on rediscovering the original intent of God in creating a Spirit-led community of faith—church—that would be his personal presence in the world?” said Mike Harton, BTSR's interim dean of the faculty, who will facilitate the course. It also will feature other BTSR faculty members, as well as leaders of missional churches.
The course will trace the roots and progress of the missional church movement, with focus on how persons and churches become missional.
According to Van Gelder, in his book, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit, the missional church movement began with a fundamental re-examination of the American understanding of the church's nature, ministry and organization. It recognizes that the church is about human behavior that is being transformed through God's redeeming power, and about patterns of life that reflect redemptive purposes. It acknowledges paradox: while the church lives in the world as a human enterprise, it is the called and redeemed people of God.
A missional church is a church that is shaped by participating in God's mission, which is to set things right in a broken, sinful world, to redeem it, and to restore it to what God has always intended for the world. Missional churches see themselves not so much sending, as being sent. A missional congregation lets God's mission permeate everything that the congregation does—from worship to witness to training members for discipleship. It is global in its vision and incarnational in its ministry.
For more information or to register for the course, contact Ida Mae Hays at (804) 355-1218 or Mike Harton at mharton@btsr.edu.