Top Blog Posts of 2009 and Plans for 2010
It’s that time of the year to look back over another year of blogging, and begin to form plans and ideas for the next year.
The most viewed blog post in 2009 was actually written in December 2008. Missional engagement and reflective learning was an explanation of some quick observations I made about the link between engaging in mission and the reflective learning cycle.
Here’s a quick quote from the original post (after the jump):
So, then, to become a missional community is to become a learning community actively engaged in reflecting outwardly on our surrounding context and culture – and inwardly on our own organisational culture. This cycle of constant learning and changing must become part of the very culture of our community for us to remain missionally engaged with our local and global context.
We can reframe these two points to say that to maintain a missionally engaged community, two organisational values are required:
1. A constantly shifting (outward) worldview
…which informs and causes…
2. A constantly shifting (inward) paradigm – or understanding of what “church” / “community” should be in that context.
It’s a while since I’ve written any more on this but I want to make a conscious decision over the next year to put some more work into it and blog through some more observations based on this idea of missional engagement as a cycle.
The second most viewed post in 2009 was my Open Letter to Fresh Expressions written a few weeks ago. Coming out of that post, I’d love to also look more into what it means to form communities which are truly mission-shaped and mission-oriented. I’d also like to use that chance to reflect on more stories from the formation of The Lab community and lessons we’ve learned as we’ve stumbled along over the last few years.
So, bearing all that in mind – here are some topics I intend to explore further on the blog in 2010:
- Finishing the Mission Viewpoints series – and more “biblical studies” posts written from a missional perspective.
- Work on forming and growing Mission-shaped Communities.
- More exploration of a missional engagement “cycle”.
- Observations on the link between faith and consumerism, particularly amongst young adults.
Which bits of my writing so far have interested you – and what would you like to see more of?
What aspects of theology or culture would you love to explore more of in 2010?






