The “missional church” has become something of a Christian buzzword in recent decades. There is plenty of debate as to what this missional church actually is, but whatever it is, it’s what everyone wants to be. Perhaps appropriately, the theme of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s biennial Big Tent Conference, taking place this summer from July 30th to August 1st in Knoxville, TN, is “Live Missionally.”
While words like “missional” and “missiology” are a twentieth century phenomenon (the first recorded use of “missiology was in 1924), the idea of the Church as a body of people sent on a central mission is as old as Christianity itself. Perhaps equally as old is disagreement about the substance of the Church’s mission. Understandings of the Church’s mission have varied according to time, place, context, theological persuasion – and our concept of mission continues to change and evolve!
For our next issue of Unbound, we want you to tell us – What is the Church’s mission? What might it mean for a congregation to be “missional”? How about a denomination? Where do you see the Church living out its mission in the world today? Where do we fall short? What are some best practices to abide by in mission – or pitfalls to avoid?
This is a crowd-sourcing issue, and we want to hear what you have to say!
Send your article proposals to Managing Editor Rev. Ginna Bairby (ginna.bairby@pcusa.org) by Monday, July 6!
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Process of Submission (& Statement on Diversity)
For all submissions, please email ginna.bairby@pcusa.org with the following information:
- Name, e-mail, phone number, address, organizational and/or religious community association (if any) of the Contributor
- The phrase “UNBOUND submission” in the subject line
- Nature of the submission, i.e. Is it an article for the thematic journal or a poetry selection or something else?
- Written assurance that you are the owner of all copyrights and other intellectual property rights to the material and that the material does not violate or infringe another’s rights, including, but not limited to, privacy, publicity or intellectual property, and that the material does not infringe any other copyrights, is not defamatory and is not a violation of law; and
- An abstract of no more than 200 words describing the thesis and/or purpose of the submission. The abstract should be located in the body of the message. Attached abstracts with no abstract in the body will not be opened.
At this time, following the tradition of Church & Society, we do not offer compensation for the publication of submissions.
Criteria for Submission
(Click on a category for details.)
Articles
Photos and Art
Poetry and Creative Writing
Video and Audio
Links,
