WELCOME to Missional Made Simple!

The idea of this blog is to stimulate thought and discussion on the everyday practicalities of Missional Community life, to which I hope you feel free to contribute!

My name is Alex Absalom.  I’ve been married to Hannah since 1994 and we have three very energetic sons, with whom we try to do Labrador parenting (lots of love, food and outdoor exercise!).  I love playing sports, supporting Liverpool Football Club and drinking good tea (hot, never iced!) and an occasional single malt Scotch!

For almost 20 years I’ve served as a church leader in both the UK (including at St Thomas’ Church Sheffield) and the United States.  In 2007 we moved as a family to the USA, specifically to help a local church develop Missional Communities and the associated structures for leadership development.  During that time we saw around 15 Missional Communities a year planted, with an average size of 29, and learned tons of lessons and made loads of mistakes!

Since January 2011 I’ve been part of the leadership team of RiverTree Christian Church, a large multi-site church in NE Ohio.  This is a fantastic church with an amazing history over the past 20 years of (literally thousands of) people coming to faith.  As a family we are so enjoying being part of such a tremendous group of people and being a part of further developing their discipling culture, especially through Missional Communities (called ‘Go Communities’ at RiverTree).  On this blog I’ll be including some of our experiences and reflections on that journey.

Late in 2010 Missional Communities: A Field Guide, which I co-authored with Mike Breen, was published.  Part of the aim for this blog is that it gives a place for further thoughts, reflections and examples, and for you to interact and process what you are reading and experiencing more widely in the area of Missional Communities.  We are all learning and growing so much at this time, so the book is meant to be a conversation opener rather than the final word, and this blog gives a context for some of that ongoing process to occur.

As you will quickly discover, I have also started a Facebook Page for Missional Communities, so some of the material definitely overlaps.  However, I think the blog format allows me to write at more length and pitch more directly at leaders, whereas the Facebook page is intended to be far more universal (and obviously massively interactive) in feel.  So this blog serves as a place for me to share some of my latest learning and reflections – and you are invited to share, question and comment accordingly!

Finally, I try to send a tweet each time I do a new post – usually a couple of times a week – or you can sign up for the automatic email notifier thing in the side column.

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