Part 2 in the retelling of our story from the original M.T. site shares our individual hopes for the future, as Instigators of Missional Tribe.
As Part 1 retold, Missional Tribe started with the group that the Holy Spirit led to begin it – four Boomer generation Anglo men who soon invited in three Anglo women, leading to a core group of seven with two of them Canadian and five American. That will always be the reality of our history. However, from the beginning, the imperative toward diversity, inclusivity, and activity in Missional Tribe have also been significant drivers of future change. We hope you’ll stay with us as an ongoing participant in developing this tribe’s future DNA and unfolding history!
And finally, in recounting the journey toward that future, the first seven Missional Tribe members share here their hopes for the Tribe.
Sonja Andrews/Calicirian. Missional Tribe functions as a collaborative space to gather stories, generate supportive community, and provide leadership from behind for the people who are eating, living, and breathing the praxis of missional lives. It’s a place for sharing nitty-gritty, not arguing over polished theory.
Brother Maynard/Subversive Influence. My hopes and aims for Missional Tribe are: To foster conversation for the exchange of story and mutual encouragement of one another in our various missional efforts and endeavours. To network and form community that is accepting and from which we can learn. To offer resources and ideas for the missional life. To gather and publish stories from the front lines of missional engagement.
Peggy Brown/The Virtual Abbess. Just as was begun at The Abbey, and continued at Wikiklesia, I yearn for a place where I can converse “virtually” about the challenges and opportunities I face as I answer the call of God to make disciples in an incarnational environment (responding to the vision for CovenantClusters). It is in developing these virtual relationships, learning that I am not alone as I listen to my same story being told from so many different perspectives, that I find my isolation “in real life” is assuaged and the call is confirmed.
Missional Tribe is a way to facilitate these conversations and relationships so that our isolated liminality, which offers no hope of communitas, is bridged and we can find our way through the deconstruction to the reconstruction process – forging a virtual “communitas” that is both full of collected wisdom and welcoming to the “nobodies” like me – listening one another into free speech. As a result, I can be free to speak of what God has called me to do because so many others, all around the world, have responded to that very same call. And I do not have to recreate the wheel every step of the way, because the tribe shares freely that which they have been given freely.
Linda/Kingdom Grace. The Missional Tribe site will be valuable as a place to collect and link the missional resources and material already written. However, more importantly, it will be a place to collect grassroots stories as a means of teaching, supporting, and encouraging one another in both individual and community missional expression. Hopefully, it will also become a place of connection and conversation for people who find themselves on the missional journey.
Bill Kinnon/Kinnon. Millions of pixels have been pushed across thousands of blogs and websites – discussing, questioning, telling stories about missional. But the illumination of those pixels has too often been ephemeral. Great insights have shone brightly for a moment and then been seemingly extinguished by the latest momentary brilliance. It shouldn’t be that way. And nor does it need to be. Missional Tribe is a grassroots organization committed to indexing the illumination; providing evergreen space to continue the light-giving conversations; and offering discussion space where stories can be told, ideas be illumined, and friendships be created and strengthened.
Rick Meigs/The Blind Beggar. MissionalTribe is a space where story and praxis is given emphasis over the theoretical and conceptual. It is a kinship of diverse people who practice “the way of Jesus,” a way that informs and radically transforms their very being. It is a place where the great conversations around the missional paradigm can be brought together so they are evergreen and accessible.
Brad Sargent/futuristguy. We catalyzed Missional Tribe to provide a centralized place to strengthen an otherwise decentralized movement. It offers a place for connecting people from diverse missional branches. Through questions and conversations, stories and recommendations, we hope to help this tribe cross-pollinate practices, theologies, and theories for living our faith and sharing our life.
