On Thursday evening (30th Sept 2010) I went to join The Wanderers MSC as they gathered, for the first time in a new way, as many people involved in The Wanderers as possible. We had Curry and Communion - a great time together. A number of things occurred to me about this. The 'extended family' (oikos) nature of this - people were part of this and yet involved at all sorts of different levels in the wider MSC activity. The way in which this gathering involved a potent combination of perspiration and inspiration - they have got on with doing things... not waited around for things to happen.... they have also been very open to getting inspiration from God through praying together as a core team etc. Finally I was really encouraged that this MSC started under two years ago as just four people. Now there was a group of 18 gathered for curry and communion, some of them, maybe even up to half of them coming to faith over the last year or so. How encouraging! How simple!

MSCs - households of faith

I've been spending quite a lot of time with leaders of missional communities in the past couple of weeks. There is lots to be thankful for - two MSCs are preparing to do ALPHA courses with people who are interested in exploring faith further. The great thing is that these ALPHA's are emanating from a community of people who are willing to take the call seriously to 'go and make disciples' - in other words they aren't expecting some 'others' to do it... they are doing it themselves. This confirms that as a church a key part of our vision is to seek to transfer responsibility... the ability to respond.... to those who have been commanded by Jesus to go and make disciples. Communities of disciples are well positioned to respond positively and strongly to our society - an MSC is small enough to care and big enough to engage as a spiritual household, an extended family in a western world that is thirsty for community. The 'oikos' was the household of extended family and friendships formed around common purpose that was  the primary 'unit' of early church. MSCs as oikos are about committing our lives together to a common purpose and re-ordering our lives bringing faith, family & mission focus together. It means that we also need to have to adjust our faith expectations. Where perhaps we have expected people to come to faith through something centrally organised like ALPHA or our services instead we are expecting MSCs as 'oikos' to be life-transforming environments that multiply and this requires that we have faith for people coming to Christ as we go.I'm praying that faith will be released for multiplication of MSCs throughout the surrounding area.