One of the things we need to come to understand in this current season of shaking going on in the Church is the idea of being "missional." Missional is not a form of church. It is a label we give to the qualitative or descriptive aspect of how a church actually lives. It is about how much like Jesus the people of the Church become and how muck they influence, woo, and transform the culture in which they are placed.

In other words, how "missional" the church is must be largely determined by the extent to which the people attending the local church model the life, activities, and words of Jesus. It does not matter how big or small your church is. Any church of any size can be both missional and non-missional at the same time. The difference is in the lifestyle of the believers.

Jesus was missional therefore we must be also. It is interesting that in all His teaching, preaching and ministering Jesus never really talks about the Church and He did not establish or plant a church. All He talked about was the Kingdom - and it seems like the crowd just grew on its own. He lived a normal life and lived like a normal person for 30 years before he even got intentional about drawing a crowd. He grew to know the people He was about to reach and then as one of them - understanding their culture and their viewpoint of life and spiritual matters - He was then able to move among them as one of them and talk about a different Kingdom. And do so in terms that the people would understand. This is being "missional."

So, in the Church that Jesus is building we need to think about building a strategy based more around missional activities (acting like missionaries to a foreign culture) and less about creating church activities to entertain the saints. We need to start to think like missionaries and to train to be just that - apostolic people (sent out ones) who will seek and save the lost reaching the lost at all costs.

This will mean a major change in the way we think about the Church - leading to a change in what we expect from the Church - leading to an adjustment in programming from church activities to one built around missional activities - leading to the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry of being laborers in the harvest fields - leading to a sent out people (apostolic ones) who will be workers in the harvest field.

A vast change in the way we view and see and understand Church is underway as God continues to shake all that can be shaken so only the essentials remain.