Dave Weiss' new E

How will you personally measure the outcomes named in your learning
objectives? I remember very clearly the first time I heard someone refer to “building missional communities of faith.” My first thought was, “ Oh great. some new buzzwords, but what do they mean?” I have been trying to get a handle on post-modern and emergent ministry and what that means to me here in suburban Pennsylvania. What really helped was really disecting the phrase. Missional (which still trips most spell checks), the idea of the fact that we are surrounded by a mission field and that God has a mission for our lives. This is a two fold issue, dealing with two very important relationships, my relationship to God(internal mission) and my relationship to my fellow man (external mission). Community, the idea that the people in the church are interdependent, and of course the faith that holds the whole thing together.

My hoped for outcomes for this cohort group are:
1. To experience, in a small microcosm, missional community in this cohort as we encourage each other, build each other up, and keep each other accountable through this study (internal mission) and prepare to communicate our findings to other cohorts (external mission).
2. To grow in my own personal understanding of what to means to be a missional leader and apply what I leatn in my ministry context so that I can lead by example and encourage others to fulfill their God-given missions both internal and external.
3. To discover the current missional elements in my ministry and to learn what elements are off mission and need to be re-evaluated.
4. To revitalized my walk with the Lord.
5. As a bi-vocational minister, I hope to learn how to lead missionally helping others to gain a sense of mission and help them to take some of the load off me so that I can remain on mission and not distracted by things that I do not need to be doing.
6. To build deep relationships with my brothers in this cohort that will spill over into our congregations working together as the body of Christ should.

The indicators for me will be
1. Gaining a better understanding of what it means to be missional, that I can not only define it but also live it.
2. Seeing more of the members of my congregation in active ministry, using their gifts and talents to serve the Lord.
3. That God will use these “ministries” to add to the number in my congregation. (I will try not to be number focused, but in my ministry context as a new church plant, growth equals survival.)
4. More free time as I let things go into the hands of others, allowing me to spend more time with the Lord and family.
5. A willingness in my congregation to reinvent ministries and cut ministries that are not bearing fruit, and a clearer understanding of what that fruit should look like.
6. One of my favorite speakers always says that “If you want to be successful, speak to people who have been successful.” My hope is that in our immersion retreat, through meeting and speaking with “successful” missional leaders that I will gain a new perspective on what success (and fruit) looks like in a missional context.
7. FRUIT!