127. From Sunday-centric to Mission-centric, with Jon Ritner, author of Positively Irritating

Jon Ritner is the author of Positively Irritating: Embracing a Post-Christian World to Form a More Faithful and Innovative Church.  In this episode, we discuss what it means to be the church in a post-Christendom world.  How can the church be the kind of church that a Post-Christendom world actually needs—and the kind of church that God is calling the church to be?


THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Jon Ritner is the author of Positively Irritating: Embracing a Post-Christian World to Form a More Faithful and Innovative Church and has served as lead at Ecclesia Hollywood for the last seven.
• After serving as an executive pastor of a megachurch, Jon Ritner eventually made his way to a microchurch network in Brussels, Belgium.  
• Later, Jon Ritner and his wife moved to Hollywood to help churches adapt and innovate in an increasingly post-Christendom world.
• The early church existed in a pluralistic pre-Christian culture.
• Jon Ritner uses the metaphor of an oyster to help us understand that challenges, when approached with a posture of learning and embrace, can lead to beauty.
• Thanks to Covid, we have just spent the last two years in a liminal space.
• The mission of God is not just the conversion of every individual soul.  It’s the redemption and restoration of all of creation.
• Jon Ritner argues that ministry should happen throughout the week in all the places where God’s people are.  Then they can come together to celebrate on Sundays.
• For many people today, going to church is almost a cross-cultural experience.
• Jon Ritner explains that many churches unconsciously create an insider-outsider divide when they announce that if someone wants to find belonging they have to come to the church.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Jon Ritner:
  • E-mail: jonritner@gmail.com
  • Website:  www.jonritner.com
• Books mentioned:
  • Missional Church, edited by Darrell Guder
  • Positively Irritating, by Jon Ritner
  • The Master Plan of Evangelism, by Robert E. Coleman
• Church Leadership Institute
• Related Episodes:
  • Ep 2: What is the Mission of God?, with Markus Watson
  • Ep 12: God is a Woman in Labor, with Christiana Rice
  • Ep 24: Joining God’s Mission Through Neighborhood Exegesis, with Marcos Mujica
  • Ep 43: Introduction to “Beyond Thingification: Helping Your Church Engage in God’s Mission”
  • Ep 67: How the Church Lost its Missionary Identity

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