Here are some hits from the Total Church conference that I managed to capture:

Total Church is all about Christians living out their lives in community that is shaped in every way by the Gospel. (this was hammered throughout…made sense to me)

The gospel is the air we need to breath every single day – it’s not just something we pull out for evangelistic purposes. (I had already come to this conviction recently…the need to preach the gospel to believers not just un-believers)

The life of the believer is one of joyful repentance (Luther). It’s like we are continually saved, continually responding to the gospel. (Same as above)

We model to a watching world our covenantal life together. (It seems to me we don’t show the watching world anything much better/different than what they already experience…tough call)

Mission is the central purpose of the church in the world – central, not peripheral. (Pretty standard, missional thinking here)

More often than not the gospel and mission becomes the last bolt-on element to our lives.

So decision making goes: Job -> Location -> House -> School -> Church -> Gospel/Mission.

Instead it should be: Gospel/Mission -> Church -> Location/School/House/Job

(The above observations are so so true…The Crowded House guys really challenge their people to think very counterculturally on this)

When you use the word church, you are immediately mis-communicating as the word has so much baggage and misperception. (I have sympathy for this view, though I am in two minds about what to do about it)

The bedrock of gospel ministry - Long Term, Low Key, Relational (this was foundational…as an approach this seems so much more authentic than hit ‘em hard, confrontational evangelism)

Living with gospel intentionality in the everyday ordinary things of life. (gospel intentionality was a phrase that permeated the whole day. It very much underpinned the above ministry approach)

A commitment to building relationships and living out the gospel and talking about it as part of normal conversation. May require the introverted people to become relational. (Yep…fire up introverts)

I am reading the Total Church book at the moment which is helping to round out the concept. One key outtake, which others have also noted, is the concept of Evangelism in community, which really exhorts outside relationships being built in the context of the gospel community living out it’s life in all it’s dimensions. I really like the concept, but doing it in practice requires a huge shift in praxis, and it’s foreign to our fiercely individualistic culture.