After reviewing the precedent literature in the areas of American exurbs, biblical hospitality and missional communities, I believe that there are transferable principles that can aid in the formation of missional communities in exurban America. There as well pitfalls and dangers that need to be examined also as leaders move toward implementation of these gleaned concepts.

In a reality defining act, the missional community must help people regain a theology of place. Exurbanites are constantly looking to where they must drive to work, to the next place they need to be, or to the next house they want or the place that they want to live. With what has been learned about the residents of the exurban areas it is safe to say that the vast majority are distracted and feel no real ownership in their communities. They see their time there as transitional so there is no need to be invested or at the end of the day they are just too tired.

The missional community then serves as a centering force for the exurbanite. They should become hubs of activity on the street or in the cul-de-sac. They are productive centers where exurbanites can look out of their window and see that something fruitful something good is happening here. This will help combat the prevalent notion that anything of value is always somewhere else.

Like Zacheus who was left to be a light where he was, missional communities must claim their space as redeemed people at street level. Jesus says that his father is always at work (John 5:17) and the missional community embraces this idea and looks for opportunities to join in.

Methodology here becomes important, as we are welcoming people out of the edges and into the presence and work of the King. The people of God have for years carried the three-step idea as a marker for what the process of hospitality looks like. The process involves evaluating the stranger, welcoming him or her as a guest and sending him or her out as a friend. I argue that this three-step process needs a fourth step as missional communities seek to impact the exurbs of America.

Evaluation is an essential; the community and its members must be honest about how they see individuals or families around them. The evaluation of the person(s) that we are pursuing with hospitality helps define who the person(s) really are and helps make them more human. It helps the community member to shelf pre-conceived notions about the person and from this day forward to treat them out of respect based upon who they really are. In the exurban context this may take multiple conversations, shared encounters or meals.

The next step of welcoming the stranger into our space leads to opportunities to know the person at a deeper level. It is hear that the guest is transitioned from stranger to friend as they are becoming more fully human to us. Here expectations levels are raised as the guest/friend and the host glean what they can expect from each other. Trust is built as tasks are shared or stories are exchanged.

It is at this point that I begin to argue for a difference in the pattern. The next step is to send them out as a friend with the caveat they comeback to become family. Our goal as Christians is to create family and in a world where friend can mean anything from a best friend, to a dating relationship, to an acquaintance at Starbucks, or to a networked person on Facebook we need to delineate that our goal is that the stranger eventually becomes a family member.

Family members are resourced differently, loved differently. They are sought out differently. They are tracked differently and contacted differently. They are held to accountability differently, at a higher level as more is expected from them. In all of these instances the standard is higher and our goal is to see each and every street become one big family of God. The missional community can facilitate this at street level if it has solid vision as to why it is there and what the ultimate goal is.

Families in the south, where I have lived all of my life, have family reunions. We get together and share meals and stories. We reflect on the time since we last gathered. My family does this yearly but the missional community with members that live within eyesight will do this more frequently both formally and informally do to proximity. The family must and will reunite when new family members are being added regularly and when there are stories to tell, needs to be met or hurts to be expressed. Simply put the missional community wants the stranger and the barbarian,

*To be seen for who they really are and given the opportunity to become fully human.

*To be welcomed as guests and for the guest and the host to be more fully known.

*To leave not as a stranger but as a friend recognizing the new bond that exists between them.

*To comeback and continue the relationship as family where the guest, the host and the larger community live, love, hope, dream, hurt, serve and worship together

This larger four-step map serves as a great guiding framework for the ultimate goal of the community but it does not speak to specific methodology. It is at this juncture that I believe that the methods of St. Patrick can have huge impact in how the missional community lives in the exurbs.

Missional communities are committed to having the interests of others first. They see themselves as the body of Christ; they empower people to daily mission. They look to join God in what he is doing where they live and finally they exist to know God and be known by Him and others. Matt Smay and Hugh Haulter lay out a rhythm of missional living that calls communities to live out of mission, communion and community (Halter and Smay 2008). The rhythm or way of live invites all members to be on mission to seek communion with God and live out biblical community. This means that missional community members live in such a way that there is space to commune with God their creator. They recognize that they are “sent ones” and are looking for opportunities to bring the kingdom to Earth[1] and finally have time and space for community where friends, food and life are shared. But it is not enough for the community to simply know each other. The community exists for its host – the surrounding community. St. Patrick recognized this as he sought to evangelize the Celts and worked to know those in his midst, work with them to meet immediate contextual needs, discuss spiritual matters along the way as they arise, and eventually invite the stranger or in his case the barbarian into faith in Christ (Hunter 2000).  

George Hunter points out that to convert people to a real faith in Jesus the people of the land had to know who Jesus was. Since there was a language barrier the best way to do this was through the lives of the Christian community (Hunter and Ebooks Corporation. 2002). St. Patrick and his community moved into the Celtic space and got to know the people. They shared stories (often through plays), they shared meals and they shared their lives with the inhabitants. St. Patrick knew that there was no shortcut to knowing people so his community committed for the long haul (2002:20).

Previous Roman models of evangelism had been based on a model of presentation, decision and then fellowship. St. Patrick upended this system and sought fellowship first, followed by ministry and conversation that gave way to belief and an invitation to commitment (Hunter 2002:53).

Much like St. Patrick, we find ourselves in the midst of a world that doesn’t understand us. We speak the same language but we really don’t or maybe it’s that we shouldn’t. We share common spaces but we don’t really share the space. Our lives look similar but we are a million miles apart. We make speeches or presentations but the surrounding culture is either not listening or doesn’t’ understand us.

Missional communities established and led by the Spirit of God stand up to meet this challenge. Right where they are, where they live they are a community of people who are committed to knowing, serving and loving each other and their shared locale. It is through this love that they are known and our God is seen, known and followed. Love, compassion and mercy are a common language that everyone speaks and the beauty of what Jesus and the early church left us in pictures of the kingdom fleshed out is that it works anywhere any time. Our American exurbs desperately need this mindset. The question is, “Will we find where God is already at work and join in or will we just go to church?”

The Apache Indians of the American West practiced way of life that yielded an open system of community leadership that was decentralized. This made them hard to conquer as every person in the tribe understood the way of life and carried with them the ability to make decisions and act out of a communal ethic that at its core had the communities best interest at heart. When conquering forces came against them they were hard to defeat because there was no hierarchical structure or leadership. There was no one group to kill or take out to disrupt communication or decision-making; there was no head to “cut off.” The way of life they were committed to made their way of life continue on (Brafman and Beckstrom 2007). Church communities often struggle with over centralization. Leadership is often centered upon the few in a certain location. Everything of importance happens there and comes down from those people in that place. The missional community like the apache nation understands its shared values and lives by them as they are sent out daily into the world. God from the beginning seems to be sending us out but it is the tendency of humankind to settle in a place or for lesser things (Cole 2005). Missional communities must stand against this centralized urge so that people live with shared values and empowerment as they go out as kingdom people

Missional communities, I believe, must be committed to a decentralized pattern of leadership and engagement. The way of life is of utmost importance. Communities are created and led by the spirit of God (Van Gelder 2007) and are not just a gathering or an event. The members see themselves as the actual body of Christ not the machine of Christ (Frost 2006)
– a people living to model who God is as pictured in the life of Jesus (Stetzer 2009) [1] where God wishes to waste no effort or energy (Cole 2005) .

The community is then a group of individuals who are committed to a way of life that places them on daily mission individually and together out in the world – not just when they gather. M. Scott Boren points out in The Relational Way that this requires for many a different way of thinking – a different way of seeing what it means to be the church (Boren 2007) . Randy Frazee in a talk at Willow Creek Community Church in 2007 defined this change of vision as changing operating systems. He stated that we are not asking people to add a new program to their computers. We are asking people to switch from a PC to a Mac. Both are computers but how they operate is completely different. Missional communities see the world differently and live on a different operating system (Frazee 2007) .

In the same way, missional communities ask people to change. Strangers or guests who enter are asked to become part of a community that doesn’t just gather for events but that sees themselves daily operating in a new way. These communities are daily led by the Spirit of God to consider others more important than themselves and to look for ways to get to know, look to serve and grow to love those around them. But they don’t do this alone and the story is not about them. The story is about a God who goes with them into the world and community that is their to support, encourage and resource them along the way. The community must be a place of hospitality, a place where people thrive.

Missional communities keep before them the missio dei, the mission of God. The missio dei is as Darrell Guder points out “the result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purposes to restore and heal creation.” He later adds that for us to have a better understanding of the missio dei we must recapture the truth that God is missional and initiating; we are the instruments that he uses – not the other way around (Guder 1998) . Maybe a more simple way of putting it is, “Find out what God is doing and join in.” (Blackaby 1990) I have stated that God is missional. I believe that God is at work[2], that we are gifted to bring about good works, which God created us to do[3], so the question is are our eyes open and are our hearts ready to join him. The answer of those who claim to be missional or of those communities claiming to be missional communities must be a yes!

Part of the missional communities journey is a journey toward empowerment. It’s growth is not dependent on its programming but upon how well it empowers it’s members (Brewin 2007) . As stated earlier, systemic problems in the American exurban lifestyle fight against this empowerment, as people seem to no longer have the time to take up roles for which they are gifted. Kester Brewin later states, “Our problem today: our space for imagination to expand and take shape is inversely proportional to the speed at which we live”(2007:57). We struggle to slow down long enough to let God create growth in us or to see opportunities to love others well because our lives are driven by our desires for worldly things. Missional communities because of their pattern of considering others first must rise up against this pattern.

To stand against these patterns the missional community then meets the problems head on, where they originate – for our purposes in the exurbs. Missional communities join God in what he is doing in their contexts. This means that just as we don’t drive away to “do church” missional communities don’t drive away to do all of their missional activity. God is working here; the trick is to be open enough to find out what He is doing in the exurbs and join in. Alan Roxburgh points out that contextualizing is “weaving together.” (Roxburgh, Boren, and Priddy 2009) It is the community recognizing it’s gifting and using it to meet needs, heal hurts, answer questions and be the good news where they live. Members of the community are individually temples, places where people see and meet God, and we collectively are a temple (Cole 2005) . The missional community is committed to be a temple that shows off the beauty and grandeur of our God and invites other people to enter in.