Fast Forward to Mission

The shift toward missional Christianity is not primarily an intellectual adjustment; it is an embodied habituation.

When people attempt to transition from consumer-oriented church attendance to active neighborhood presence alone, they almost always retreat when they hit the first barrier of awkwardness or fear. They need a team. And that team needs a shared playbook—a structured track that guides them through the discomfort of meeting their neighbors, listening to local stories, and practicing radical hospitality.

Lance and I designed Fast Forward to Mission as a concise, highly focused training manual for small groups, missional communities, and church planting teams. It strips away academic discourse and replaces it with structured action labs, guided field experiments, and communal debriefing tools designed to be worked through together over several weeks.²

The core reframe of Fast Forward to Mission is that missional capacity is forged through shared muscle memory rather than informational study.

Traditional church small groups gather in living rooms to discuss a curriculum or dissect a sermon. They talk about mission, study biblical passages on mission, and pray for distant missionaries—while remaining entirely insulated from the physical neighborhood surrounding the house they are meeting in.

This workbook inverts that habit. It insists that the small group meeting is an action lab:

1. The Briefing: Learning a single foundational posture (e.g., listening, proximity, table hospitality).
2. The Field Exercise: Going out into the streets, local diners, parks, and front yards to practice that posture.
3. The Debriefing: Gathering back together to process what happened, where God was encountered, and what fears were surfaced.

Discipleship happens in the debriefing of shared missional action.³

Fast Forward to Mission is structured around two primary pedagogical brackets, moving teams from conceptual orientation into lived practice.

Lays the essential groundwork for team action. It summarizes the core theology of the missio Dei and the priesthood of all believers into tight, highly digestible briefings. It establishes team covenants around three core practices:

• Proximity: Choosing to spend consistent time in shared physical spaces.
• Frequency: Becoming recognizable regulars in the third places of the community.
• Spontaneity: Cultivating spiritual margin so that interruptions are received as divine invitations.⁴

The section includes practical tools for conducting a "Neighborhood Audit"—mapping the local coffee shops, public parks, community centers, and neglected corners where people gather.

Provides the operational debriefing guides for six sequential action labs:

1. The Art of Listening: Walking the neighborhood without an agenda, observing the social fabric, and listening to the ambient cries and joys of the place.
2. Finding the Third Place: Identifying and adopting a local public space where team members can become known as friendly, consistent presences.
3. The Table Habit: Moving hospitality from private dining rooms to shared, open-table meals that welcome strangers and neighbors.
4. Uncovering the Quest: Learning to listen to pop culture, local events, and neighborhood struggles to identify the spiritual search hidden beneath everyday routines.
5. The Serving Project: Partnering with existing local civic or charity organizations rather than inventing competitive church programs.
6. Establishing the Rhythm: Codifying personal and communal rules of life to sustain everyday mission over the long haul.⁵

Fast Forward to Mission belongs to the companion genre within this body of work, functioning alongside The Forgotten Ways Handbook (2009) and Disciplism (2014).

It does not introduce new theological concepts; it operationalizes the ecclesiological vision of Right Here, Right Now (2011). Where The Forgotten Ways Handbook provides diagnostic instruments for systems-level church leaders dealing with the full mDNA framework, Fast Forward to Mission is dialed directly into the weekly rhythms of grassroots practitioners and neighborhood small groups.

• The small group leaderwho wants to stop running traditional Bible study circles that never impact the surrounding community.
• The church planterpreparing a core launch team to inhabit their target neighborhood before launching public Sunday services.
• The missional community coachseeking a turn-key, actionable field guide for training leaders in basic neighborliness.
• The team of Christian friendswho want to live on mission together but need a practical, low-barrier roadmap to get started.

Fast Forward to Mission is designed to be used in tandem with Right Here, Right Now (2011)—which provides the full theological foundation and narrative case studies.

For groups ready to expand their neighborhood practice into a full-scale organic network, The Forgotten Ways Handbook (2009) provides the next level of organizational and mDNA tools.