Missional Renewal in a Large and Established Suburban Western Church

Author

Michael StevensFollow

Date of Award

5-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Primary Advisor

Dr. Jeff Childers

Secondary Advisor

Dr. Penny Martin

Committee Reader

Dr. Wes Crawford

Abstract

This thesis addresses the topic of missional renewal at Clovercrest Baptist Church (CBC), specifically focusing on participating in the mission of God through simple, memorable, and reproducible missional practices. The identified problem is a lack of process or framework for enhancing participation in God’s mission and churchwide missional renewal at CBC, a large suburban Western church. The purpose of this project intervention is to develop a resource guide of missional practices that facilitate participation in the mission of God at CBC towards missional renewal. This intervention is guided by the theological foundation that God is a God of mission. He initiates relationship and restoration with humanity, desiring to reconcile all people to himself. God saves and then sends his people on his mission of restoration and renewal. The early church is an example of this, as is the present-day Majority World church. These two contexts were used to identify and explore missional practices for the project intervention team to discern. I used purposive sampling, the maximum variant approach, in recruiting the project intervention team, and the project totaled ten sessions. The project team participated in discussion-based sessions where their contributions through comments, stories, and feedback assisted in developing the missional resource guide. Sessions consisted of lectio divina, prayer, communal discernment, teaching on missional practices, small group exercises, larger group feedback and discussion, homework tasks, weekly reporting, an open-ended group interview, and a group evaluation. I conclude that (1) God has a mission and calls his followers to participate, (2) developing missional practices that are simple, memorable, and reproducible is essential in living out the mission of God, (3) integrating missional practices into one’s daily life, one’s habitus, through supported accountable relationships is vital in living out God’s mission, (4) being led and empowered by the Holy Spirit is central in living out God’s mission, through discernment and obedience, (5) barriers of engagement and contextualization in missional practices for everyday followers of Jesus require further investigation, and (6) this resource guide has applicability beyond CBC into the wider Western church.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Stevens, Michael, "Missional Renewal in a Large and Established Suburban Western Church" (2023). Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations. 51.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/dmin_theses/51