I cant make it to LICC where there is conversation on discipleship coming up. But Jason asked for few of my thoughts on the subject particlaurly around the shortfall between missional youth work and church i.e. Missional youth work hits a dead end if there isn’t a trully mission shaped community to feed young people into.
My main thought was that actually this is to avoid the real issue that a genuinely missional work would always seek to grow that community from the community it is serving. Whilst to an extent we are in an in between time (as christendom dies) the language of discipleship (into a mission shaped community) or even the notion that this is part of the answer reinforces a dualist divide that should not be present. If we do embrace a kingdom missional theology then we are already that community the moment we meet those young people. The way most seem to the use the word Discipleship reinforces this kind of dualism, as it usually refers to some sort of post decision idea. However if we are not about bounded sets and Christ centred (see Dave Andrews) and decision is more a willingness to journey together then the community can be formed and shaped together and then discipleship is far more reciprocal and I would argue real. I guess a key question in this would be; what are we (myself and the yp) being discipled towards? The old paradigm would put of primary the importance of orthodoxy where the missional community would be orthopraxis. In our experiences with the yp we see evidence of the fruit of the spirit and orthopraxis but none would call themselves Christians.
Forgive my less cleverer comments to this thought than richard, for i know he has thought a lot about this, but i am about to start my disertation examining msc’s, mission shaped communities, focussing on one particular church who is totally transforming thier image and identity into a msc style church. One iniitial thought that I have, around this whole issue, is whether or not the community is mission shaped, and if so, does the community already have conditions, principles, beliefs that those whom it is seeking to mission too must then fit into. I like the idea of a community organically evolving out of mission that we are involved in, ie, that relationships are built and thus, community beliefs are formulated out of those relationships. My fear or concern is that if a community is already established, then principles and guidelines have already been set, as oposed to the idea of them being formulated out of the relationship of the mission you may be involved in.
forgive me if i have waffled, or not made sense, or my thoughts are a bit basic for this discussion.
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