ways into small missional community [9] earthy good news?

Hi everyone. It’s great to see lots of questions, learning, wisdom and ideas being shared on the network. Thanks everyone for your contributions. Please keep them coming!

This latest post in the ‘ways into small missional community’ series is an exercise in [re]discovering roots and imagining the future.

The great story of Jesus is known as ‘Gospel’ - which means ‘good news’. So it may be important to ask how Jesus could be good news where we are, in this place, for these people and for this setting.

It can be helpful to break this down into two questions:
first [and here’s the return to roots] ‘why is Jesus good news?’
then second [and here’s imagining the future] ‘so what could this good news look like here?’

We may have lots of responses to the roots question. But what might that lead to? How is the good news felt and tasted, lived and experienced? In the task of creating Christ-following missional communities we need to discover earthy ways of expressing and living the good news where we are.

An example: one of many possible answers to the roots question might be to say that Jesus is good news because he shows us that God is love. Now there’s wonder in that idea - it’s perhaps the most beautiful of all equations - but how do we say it and live it in ways that are more than cliche or jargon? The imagined future question takes us into the earthy business of how God’s love could be lived and experienced here. What might that actually look like ‘on the ground’? How could 'God's love' be shared and encountered in real ways in this neighbourhood or network? What can you imagine happening?

So why is Jesus good news for you? And what could the good news look like where you are - in, around and through the community-project of which you are part, or of which you are dreaming?

peace to you
Ian

[PS In working with this question you may find it helpful to look again at ‘ways into small missional community [2] what’s the big idea?’]