The document discusses the concept of a mission-shaped church and provides several perspectives on how churches can focus outwardly on their communities and view mission as central to their purpose. It includes numerous quotes emphasizing that churches should exist primarily to serve non-members and that being inwardly focused can lead to decline. The document also suggests that churches should understand and engage with their local communities to be relevant and first responders to community needs.

1. Mission-Shaped Church

4. When the Church is the Church

5. When ferocious cannibals captured a hapless missionary he had the privilege of giving them their first real taste of Christianity. Sauce unknown

7. Worple Road Evangelical Church

9. The Decade of Evangelism

10. Breaking New Ground Church House Publishing, 1994

13. A Purpose Driven Willow Creek Cell Church running Alpha, doing NCD and engaging in numerous Faithworks initiatives.

18. Rather than face the challenge of the field, it is easier for us to provide an all-round, meet-every-need-of-the-barn-members’-lives programmatic structure. All you need is a hired leader with good managerial skills and a pleasant personality who is not too boring in the pulpit. No history, no future, just endless repetition of the introverted present.

19. An army marking time until it has worn a hole so deep that it vanishes from the landscape. A macabre theatre performing the same play for the same pasty-faced audience, world without end, while the real world rolls by outside. A hospital where the only patients are the staff trapped in an infection-laden institution of their own making. A farm wilfully keeping its fields as set-aside in a time of famine. John Houghton, Outhere, p.27

20. Stir in a few cultural taboos of our own making, add some incomprehensible music to accompany bad poetry, wear blinkers to avoid eye contact with all but your special clique, and you have the perfect, totally irrelevant sub-culture. John Houghton, Outhere, p.29,30

21. Who in our culture goes to hear a speech lasting forty-five minutes, especially when it is preceded by something as uncool as community singing? John Houghton, Outhere, p.31

23. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy; Attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

24. If mission is at the heart of God’s will for his people, it follows that the only way to glorify God is to make it the heart of our churches. John Houghton: Outhere , Nexgen, 2004, p.18

25. There is Church because there is mission, not vice versa. Bosch, p.390

26. It is not the Church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world. Tim Dearborn, Beyond Duty: a passion for Christ, a heart for mission , MARC Europe, 1998

27. We are sent to war. We are not sent to minister to a congregation and be content if we keep things going. We are sent to make war… and to stop short of nothing but the subjugation of the world to the sway of the Lord Jesus. We must bear that in mind in all our plans… our aim is to put down the kingdom of the devil… This mission is going to be what its officers make it. William Booth in Christian Mission Magazine

29. If your church is full of members, you get an occasional missionary. If your church is full of missionaries, the rest is just about geography. Erwin R. McManus, Seizing Your Divine Moment , Nelson, Nashville, 2002, p.166

40. We Preach Christ Crucified

41. We Preach Christ Crucified

42. We Preach

43. We

52. This centralist paradigm is an in here/out there model. It sees mission or evangelism as an extension of its gathered life, a form of recruitment rather than the heart of our existence. John Houghton, Outhere, p.52