Missional Communities + Verge 2010 in Austin

Last weekend I attended the Verge Conference in Austin, TX.  It brought together over 2,000 people from around the country to discuss and learn about missional communities.

The main concept behind a missional community is the merger between home churches and viral marketing. 

Home churches are a small group of people studying, worshiping and fellowshipping in Christ (an attempt to imitate the church in Acts).  They can meet anywhere and anyone can start a missional community without any formal theological training. 

Viral marketing is the spreading of an idea through one's social connections (family, friends, coworkers and neighbors) and then getting your social connections to tell their social connections and so on and so forth.

The two concepts come together by one person starting a missional community (small group) and once the group has grown a few members go out and start their own group.  Then those groups spawn more groups which spawn more groups, creating exponential growth.


Missional communities have worked extremely well in oppressive communist countries like Cuba and China where religion is hated because it competes with the government for the people's loyalty.  They work so well because you don't need church buildings and can go underground with the movement.  Similar to how terrorist cells work.

I'm not sure how impactful missional communities will be in the United States, but it's cool to see people fed up with the current state of Christianity and trying to make it better.  One church, The Austin Stone, has been doing missional communities for many years and has become one of the biggest churches in Austin.  Whether that's because they use missional communties or have an awesome pastor and worship leader is difficult to determine.

My only criticism of the conference was some of the speakers, especially the founder of the movement Alan Hirsch, was a bit anti-American.  There were one too many digs at suburban life, mega churches and how backwards the "west" is compared to everyone else.   But Alan has a British accent so I can understand his frustration with not being American.


Overall the conference was a lot fun; the speakers were inspirational, the worship was full of energy and you could feel the Spirit loving everyone there.  Immediately afterward I felt full of passion for the Kingdom, ready to serve God.  But then a few days later there was a dip in my excitement and I felt a little depressed.  Since this was my first Christian conference I think I was high on emotion while I was there and then boom, I was back to normal life with normal people and normal everything.

I've perked up since and am internalizing the best way to move forward with the missional community idea and how it can impact Zetify.  At the heart of missional communities in the USA is the concept of making Jesus part of your everyday life, not just something you do for an hour on Sunday. 

Planting the Gospel among young adults using technology will play an important part in the shaping of Christianity in America in the next 50 years.  It's just a question of how and when.

For more information on missional communities check out the Verge 2010 Web site or search Twitter for #verge10.