Center for Parish Development - Cultivating the Missional Church

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	Featured resource on the Great Commission in Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew: The Biblical Mission of the Church >>

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	SAVE THE DATE........ Missional Church Convocation - July 26-28, 2012 Find out more>>
	The insights of presenter Debra Dean Murphy will challenge all of us to explore what it means to "worship missionally." What is desperately needed in today's world is not new worship, but a rediscovery of the rich meaning and formative power of Christian worship.


	Transforming Churches Seminar 2012 Find out more>>

WELCOME TO THE CENTER COMMUNITY

Everything we do as Christian communities relates in some way to God’s calling and sending of the church to participate in God’s mission. If we once thought of the church as the sending agency – and missionaries were the people who the church sent – we now are thinking very differently.

As we read Scripture afresh in a North American context that is itself mission territory, we realize that God is a calling and sending God, and the church is the called and sent people. What is God calling and sending the church -- and your church in particular -- to be and do?
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Read the current post now, A Doxological Ecclesiology: Part Three.

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Missional Church Convocation
July 26-28, 2012

A Doxological Ecclesiology:
Part Three

May 2, 2012
by Inagrace Dietterich

“Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and what came was the church.”

This often-quoted comment has usually been used to point to the failure of the church to live up to its calling. Yet the theologian Alfred Loisy meant this in a positive way, not to identify the church with the kingdom, but to emphasize the continuity of the church with Jesus' proclamation. In recent posts I've explored what the life and ministry of the church might look like grounded in and expressed through worship. Continuing this theme, I consider here the relationship of the church with the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, and the subversive witness of a kingdom people. Join in the conversation now and face to face at the Center's Convocation in Chicago, IL on July 26-28, 2012.

A Kingdom People

A Kingdom People. The Eucharistic liturgy of the Orthodox Church begins with a doxological declaration: "Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, and unto ages of ages." The church is to bless and acclaim the kingdom of the Triune God. As such, the church is a sacrament of the kingdom which symbolizes the communion of all human beings in a society of perfect love, justice, and peace. "There is no reason for the existence of the church except to symbolize the future of the divine kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim. This explains in what specific sense worship is in the center of life of the church: the worship of the Christian community anticipates and symbolically celebrates the praise of God's glory that will be consummated in the eschatological renewal of all creation in the new Jerusalem.
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