Nomad, Christian Community, Mission and the Future of the Church.

Welcome to Nomad podcast. It's good to have you back for our fourth show, but if this is your first time with us,

then we're a group of friends from Nottingham, England. I'm Tim and myself, along with Hannah,

Laura, Nick and Michael are thinking about what Christian community and mission might mean today.

We're doing this by chatting with various Christian leaders and thinkers and visiting other Christian

communities and seeing how they're incarnating

God's love in their local contexts. Nick is getting things started this month with a chat with

Mike Frost, a missional church planter, lecturer and author, and one of the world's leading thinkers

about how the church needs to change.

Mike, thanks so much for joining us.

Could you start by just telling us for those people who won't know a little bit about yourself, please?

Well, I'm speaking to you from Sydney, Australia, so it's probably very early in the morning

or very late at the night or something for you right now.

I teach at a seminary or theological college here in Sydney.

I direct a mission centre.

And I've planted missional churches, and I've done a lot of writing about the whole

missional paradigm for the church which I think is how you and I connected.

Absolutely.

Mike, could you start by asking this question?

It's a rather fundamental question, but how do you understand the purpose of church?

Well, I might not be going to give you the answer you expect here because I think most people

think that when they know I talk a lot about missional church, they think I'm going to say

...