Missional Essentials: A Guide for Experiencing God's Mission in Your Life

I just finished taking three different groups through the Missional Essentials book over the past three months. It has been an incredible experience. We had two groups of church planters and potential church planters and then one group of established church guys. My hope and goal for taking these guys through this study was that they would come out at the end of it asking different questions than when they started. Mission accomplished. I also hoped that the questions they walked out with would be questions that lingered and would be questions that hung around until they were addressed. Mission accomplished. Some of these guys were engaged in the missional conversation and some were not. For the ones who were not engaged in the conversation it was paradigm shifting to quote one of the established church pastors. Others expressed that they would never look at their neighborhoods or communities the same way again. I could go on and on with their positive comments.I cannot recommend this book enough for your small groups or missional communities. It engages you theologically concerning the nature of God as a missionary God, but will not allow you to stay in the realm of theology and ideas without pushing you to the practical. If God is a missionary God and his primary activity is in the world, then where, how and when are we as the church going to join him in this missionary activity.Buy the book, go through it yourself, take a group through it and then live it out. Great stuff.

This is in my opinion THE "go-to" resource for helping people understand and then begin to "be" missional people in daily life. I'm a pastor in a fairly large church, and my main task is to help our people to imagine themselves as missionaries to their neighborhoods, workplaces, social circles etc. and then to equip and empower them to do so. In my extensive search for resources, I have found that most tend to be either highly academic/theological (and to normal folks inaccessible) to the exclusion of practicality or highly pragmatic and light on theology. Missional Essentials strikes a great balance between the two. In each of the twelve lessons there's good theological meat (presented in a way that everyone can "get it") and, most importantly, the theology is coupled with insightful, thought-provoking questions. Further these questions encourage tangible action steps from the reader. The teaching paradigm where "information>action>reflection" continues to circle back on itself from lesson to lesson, drawing the reader/participant along into new concepts and behaviors is phenomenal. I will be using this as a primary training tool in my context. Thank you, Brad Brisco and Lance Ford!

4.5 stars for Missional Essentials that carries ideas of thinking out of the box and offering new directions for leadership to reach others in a world that has changed.

goes thru process of becoming a missional Christian and therefore a missional church in 3 parts of 4 sessions each; practical yet enough explanation of scripture behind the steps to understand why God designed and intended the church to be essentially His missional body on earth

Quite simply the best resource of its kind I have ever seen. Small group, large group, missional community, it doesn't matter.

Missional Church is in my view as close to "the" biblical view of the church (if there is such a thing) as we have. This wise and practical guide will launch your group or church on this adventure in fine fashion.

This book met beyond my expectations. We are using it for our Young Adult Outreach Group and are only on week 3 but we are loving it. It has caused a great deal of discussion. It has convicted us. It has challenged us. It's so good!

This is a good resource for those interested in missional living. It is also good for those who don't know what missional living really means. It is a good digest on the topic.

It was very helpful to grasp the concept of "missional." This book helps us to have a missional heart, cultivate it, and gives practical tips how to put it into practice. What I like the most is that Al Tizon explains principles and gives us sample preaching.

This is a great study guide and will be helpful for moving people forward to living in our communities instead of trying to create a place where the community can find us.