MI-111 Christian Community Building

A church is a people who belong to God and to each other, and who are sent into the world. Learn how such a community grows from grace into belonging, discipleship and mission.

This course follows Christian Community Building, a practitioner's book from a Lutheran setting in Finland that speaks to free churches too. It starts with grace and the leader's honesty, turns to belonging, discipleship and shared service, and ends with sending, raising leaders and multiplying. You weigh cases from church life with the book's own tests.

What you will study

• Why "theology creates sociology": Jesus first, then community, then mission
• Dropping the mask: grace, honesty and the leader's own life
• A rule of life: a trellis for growth, not a burden of rules
• Belonging: the first welcome, groups of different sizes and a safe place
• Discipleship as apprenticeship, the way Jesus trained his followers
• Every member serving: the priesthood of all believers
• A sent community, and what happens when a church turns inward
• Raising leaders, and a mature church that multiplies

Course materials

• Christian Community Building (Pöyhönen and Lehtonen), a WWES textbook
• The Bible