The God of the Old Testament is a missionary God, calling one family in order to bless all the families of the earth.
The Christ of the Gospels is a missionary Christ; he sent the church out to witness.
The Spirit of the Acts is a missionary Spirit; he drove the church out from Jerusalem to Rome.
The Church of the epistles is a missionary Church, a worldwide community with a worldwide vocation.
The end of the Revelation is a missionary End, a countless throng from every nation.
So I think we have to say the religion of the Bible is a missionary religion. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable.
Mission cannot be regarded as a regrettable lapse from tolerance or decency. Mission cannot be regarded as the hobby of a few fanatical eccentrics in the church. Mission lies at the heart of God and therefore at the very heart of the church. A church without mission is no longer a church. It is contradicting an essential part of its identity. The church is mission.
Can someone live missionally without a conscious embracing of missionalism?
I suspect “No”.
It is possible to engage in activities, but without a conscious approach there is no “mission”.
Such a life is more frenetic, aimless, and haphazard.
Mission requires intentionally carrying out a preconceived plan and/or purpose.
Can a church move toward missional without everyone necessarily understanding and embracing a missional mindset?
I think “Yes”.
Studies of transitions from traditional to missional by the Gospel & Our Culture Network do not offer a positive picture. It is not an easy road. Many long held notions must be reconsidered.
Still, I think a congregation can move toward becoming missional as long as the Leadership is intentionally missional and is directing the church.
First it may require simply moving toward being Outwardly-Focused. An outwardly-focused church will carry many of the same marks as being an evangelistic church. In some respects an outwardly-focused church merely does what churches that want to think of themselves as evangelistic talk about doing or assume they do (when in fact, they do not).
An Outwardly-Focused Church moves from being ingrown, but may not necessarily require every member, or even most of the membership, to be intentionally missional. It does not require the mindset change, only faithful activity.
But as more people are encouraged to engage the community and are released to serve in various capacities, as leaders show how learning to understand the values and mindsets of the peoples in the community is simply a tangible expression of “loving you neighbor”, more and more people will move toward a missional mindset.
“Calvin so believed in the importance of the everyday activities of Christian life and mission that he had a strange but telling practice in Geneva. He was eager to see Jesus’ church gathered on Sundays, but he was not happy for his flock to retreat from everyday life and hide within the walls of the church during the week. So to prod his congregants to be fully engaged in their city of Geneva – in their families, in their jobs, with their neighbors and coworkers – he locked the church doors during the week. It must have been hard not to get the point. He knew the place of God’s people – gathered together to worship on Sunday, but during the week not hidden away behind thick walls of separation, but on mission together in God’s world, laboring to bring the gospel to metro Geneva in their words and actions, in all their roles and relationships.”
Critics who suggest Calvinism discourages evangelism and is inherently anti-mission might want to rethink their attitudes about the reformer. Calvin’s outwardly focused missional mindset ought to be applauded, and in many cases even adopted. While Mark Driscoll has popularized the term Reformissional, John Calvin was the original Reformission Rev.
It seems as if it ought to be simple enough: “Love your neighbor.” But experience tells me it is not as easy as it might seem. And, if we take seriously the parables of Jesus, we learn it is not as easy as some tend to think. When we read what Jesus holds up as the standard of neighborliness we realize that to love our neighbor is not the same as the absence of hostilities or even just the presence of genuine affections. To love our neighbors we need to be involved in one anothers lives to some degree. Even one insurance company gets that: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there…”
But this is easier said than done in our fast pace, busy, world. And Frankly, even State Farm’s claim seems a little dubious to me. When I think about it, they’re only there for me when I pay them to be. Try dropping your policy and see if they seem like such “Good Neighbors” then. I have my doubts.
But who can blame them? Life is busy. And my neighbors are as active as I am. How are we supposed to engage them, even if we commit to carving out the time?
Josh Reeves offer us a few suggestions. Here are Josh’s Top 25:
Stay outside in the front yard longer while watering the yard
Walk your dog regularly around the same time in your neighborhood
Sit on the front porch and letting kids play in the front yard
Pass out baked goods (fresh bread, cookies, brownies, etc.)
Invite neighbors over for dinner
Attend and participate in HOA functions
Attend the parties invited to by neighbors
Do a food drive or coat drive in winter and get neighbors involved
Have a game night (yard games outside, or board games inside)
Art swap night – bring out what you’re tired of and trade with neighbors
Grow a garden and give out extra produce to neighbors
Have an Easter egg hunt on your block and invite neighbors use their front yards
Start a weekly open meal night in your home
Do a summer BBQ every Friday night and invite others to contribute
Create a block/ street email and phone contact list for safety
Host a sports game watching party
Host a coffee and dessert night
Organize and host a ladies artistic creation night
Organize a tasting tour on your street (everyone sets up food and table on front porch)\
Host a movie night and discussion afterwards
Start a walking/running group in the neighborhood
Start hosting a play date weekly for other stay at home parents
Organize a carpool for your neighborhood to help save gas
Volunteer to coach a local little league sports team
Have a front yard ice cream party in the summer
To read the rest of Josh’s ideas click: 100Ways. Josh has a link at the bottom of his Top 25 list.
In this short video Paul Tripp powerfully confronts the Lone Ranger mentality that permeates our culture, and offers reason why transparent, authentic, relationships are essential. Tripp reminds us that genuine redemptive relationships are God’s design for our spiritual growth and vitality.
One of the fundamental principles of being missional is contextualization. In short, contextualization simply means to take into consideration the context where one lives and serves.
With all the noteriety that missional practitioners serving in clearly post-Christian areas have gained, it seems some, desiring to follow the example of these leaders, all too readily foresake the principle of contextualization.
It is understandable to want to copy the methods and messages of Tim Keller or Mark Driscoll, among others. No doubt there is much to be learned from these guys. But the temptation to copy is really a trap that will lead most of us to ineffectiveness. Those guys serve in New York and Seattle, respectively. What is needed to serve in those contexts is vastly different than what may be needed in Nashville, Birmingham, or small towns like where I live – Bristol, TN/VA. Principles should be benchmarked and translated, not copied. All effective ministry is local.
In the above video Tim Keller offers some helpful thoughts about advancing the gospel in different social contexts.
I was disappointed recently when I read an old post on the Aquila Report, You Will Hear Crickets. The author, Anthony Bradley, is a professor of Ethics at Kings College in New York City, and apparently has some aversion to the missional church movement.
Bradley opens his article:
So I’m beginning to wonder if it’s “a wrap” on this whole “missional” movement splash, especially in terms of church planting? I can definitely see the wind being taken out of the sails for some. I’ve been particularly curious about crickets I hear when bringing up a few issues among missional Christians
He then lists four issues that he seems to believe puts a nail in the coffin of this movement. He even appears to take delight in its reputed demise.
While I have come to understand concerns about some practices and practioners who wear the missional label, I have difficulty understanding why anyone is opposed to the missional movement. Granted some within this movement, including some prominent faces, may have drifted toward heterodoxy, but Missional is a BIG umbrella. If the errors of some, even many, gives reason to eschew the basic principles, maybe I should rethink being identified as Presbyterian. The recent actions of the PCUSA have no doubt caused confusion and concern about what we Presbyterians believe and stand for.
But I do not think I should stop being Presbyterian simply because some have strayed off course. I would rather stand firm and not give over the label to those who no longer stand for the principles. Likewise, I don’t think we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater in attempt to clean up the Missional label. Rather, I think we should work to reform the movement, bringing all things into conformity with Scripture, all the while remembering the mantra coined by Marco Antonio de Dominis, often attributed to Augustine, and popularize by Puritan Richard Baxter:
As followers of Jesus it is as imperative for us to fight every inclination toward dualism as it is to fight against legalism. While legalism is widely recognized as relating wrongly to the Law, the error of dualism is not as widely acknowledged in our Evangelical circles.
Simply put, dualism is like split vision, seeing things only as either spiritual or secular. All things are spiritual.
Walt Mueller reminds us that there are two kinds of dualism common in the church:
Escape – When personal salvation is viewed as an escape from the world into the church, and that the world around us is then to be avoided.
Segregated Spheres – Believing God is only concerned about the spiritual dimension of our lives, we dedicate our spiritual lives to the Lord, but then are shaped by the world in our professional and social lives.
Jacques Ellul offers this critique:
This dissociation of our life into two spheres: the one “spiritual” where we can be “perfect”; and the other material and unimportant, where we behave like other people; is one of the reasons why the Churches have so little influence on the world… All we can say is: That is the exact opposite of what Jesus Christ wills for us, and of that which he came to do.
Here are three teachings of Jesus that should remind us that God intends for his people to engage the culture around us. We are not to avoid it. We are to attack it stealthily.
Jacques Ellul offers a profound insight about how we, as Christians, are to adopt as a priority an Incarnational approach to ministry. Incarnational ministry literally means: In the flesh. It means going where people are, and understanding their real situations, rather than primarily trying to draw them to us with various forms of entertainment and shallow promises. The Incarnational approach allows us to infiltrate the cultures of the world, and the sub-cultures of our community, to become agents of transformation.
Reflect for a little while about what Ellul writes:
The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and we must so act that it cannot take place. So we must know what is the actual form of the world’s will to suicide in order that we may oppose it, in order that we might know how, and in what direction, we ought to direct our efforts.
The world is neither capable of preserving itself, nor is it capable of finding remedies for its spiritual situation (which control the rest). It carries the weight of sin, it is the realm of Satan which leads it towards separation from God, and consequently towards death. That is all it is able to do.
Thus it is not for us to construct the City of God, to build up an “order of God” within this world, without taking any notice of its suicidal tendencies. Our concern should be to place oursleves at the very point where this suicidal desire is most active, in the actual form it adopts, and to see how God’s will of preservation can act in this given situation.
If we want to avoid being completely abstract, we are then obliged to understand the depth, and the spiritual reality of the moral tendency of this world; It is to this that we ought to direct all our efforts, and not to the false problems which the world raises, or to an unfortunate application of an “order of God” which has become abstract… Thus it is always by placing himself at this point of contact that the Christian can be truly “present” in the world, and can carry on effective social or political work, by the grace of God.
John Stott offers a reminder of the task and the tension we, as Christians, must continually navigate when he uses the phrase:
“spiritually distinct, but NOT socially segregated.”
And here is a quote expanding this perspective:
Your business and mine as Christian people is to be in the midst of this world and its affairs, and still remain true and loyal to God, and be kept from evil. …The task of the Christian is to be right in the midst of this world and its affairs in order that he may do the work of evangelism, spreading the gospel and the Kingdom of God, while the whole time, keeping himself un-spotted from the world.
If pressed for a quick summary of my philosophy of ministry, I would probably express it something like this:
Get the Gospel Right
Get the Gospel Out
Get the Gospel Out Right
Without a message there is no mission.
Unfortunately, it seems, many are so zealous to get about the mission that they make little time getting the message of the gospel right. They do not stand amazed at what God has done for us in the person of Christ. Consequently, they are not being formed or transformed by the gospel. They are more anxious about what they will do for God than excited by what God has done for us, and what he is doing in us, and what God has promised to do through us – if only we would root ourselves in the gospel. And because some are neither formed or being transformed, they go out uninformed.
If we are not conscious of what God is doing in us, what do we think we have to offer those who are around us?
While no doubt knowledge without zeal is dead. It is equally true that zeal without knowledge is deadly.
I spent this morning watching the documentary, Lord Save Us From Your Followers. I was prompted by a note from a friend and, despite it not being on my agenda for the day, I was intrigued.
Once again, I am not sure where I have been. This film came out over a year ago. Some of it looked familiar, so I may have caught part of it on GMC or some other television cable network. But for whatever reason, what I saw before did not capture my interest enough. Perhaps I had an initial wrong impression. Perhaps I was just busy and could not watch the whole thing before. But even if that were the case, I am not sure why this went out of mind so quickly that I did not seek it out when I had the time to check it out.
The driving questions about this exploration of the Culture Wars in the United States is: Why is the Gospel of Love Dividing Our Nation? That is a great question.
Here are a few brief thoughts that come to my mind having just finished watching:
Ouch! This cuts close to home. This film clearly reveals how we as Christians (and I personally) are at fault for much of the perception the UnBelieving Culture has about Christianity and Christians.
I was encouraged by the responses of those who are opposed to Christianity and Christians when a Believer was willing to engage them in an honest discussion. I was moved by the power of humility, compassion, repentance and confession by the Believer. Apparently Jesus knew something when he commanded his followers to first take the plank out of our own eyes before confronting others about the specs in theirs. (Matthew 7.5) Paul, too, when he instructed the Galatians to “gently restore” those who were astray of the way of God, but that they should be careful that they did not stumble in their own sin in in the process. (Galatians 6.1)
I am hopeful of a positive impact. But our strategic priorities must be in order. First is the reformation of the Church, including widespread repentance of God’s people for our failure to seek genuine righteousness. Only later can we expect to have any positive cultural impact. (2 Chronicles 7.14)
Now for the qualifications:
I know some who read this blog will be inclined to immediately dismiss the message behind this film because some of the theological premises expressed by those interviewed are questionable (to say it kindly), because it is not a theological discussion, and/or because some of the Christians represented do not reflect your tradition. (For the most part, this is true of mine too. Only John Perkins comes to mind who I know to share a similar theological heritage.) But to dismiss this film for any of those reasons is a sad mistake. At the very least recognize that this film depicts how a wide spectrum of our culture views us.
This documentary runs 1:42, so to watch it takes some time. I suppose it would not lessen the appreciation to break it up into segments. But I do encourage honest Believers, those interested in engaging in holistic mission to take the time, however you break it up.
Dave Harvey is an expert church planter and an astute observer of trends in church leadership. At the Spring 2007 Leadership Conference of Sovereign Grace Ministries Harvey assessed the strengths and weakness of the missional movement in an address titled Watch Your Mission: To Be or Not to Be Missional.
One observation Harvey offers is that sometimes missional practitioners muddy the Cross-centered focus of the Church.
Here is a sketch outline of Harvey’s message:
What are the Strengths of Missional Churches?
Missional Churches Have a Commendable Passion for Evangelism.
Missional Churches Have a Laudable Commitment to Engaging Culture.
Missional Churches Have a Profitable Impulse for Reexamining Church Tradition.
Missional Churches Possess an Admirable Devotion to Social Impact.
What are the Weaknesses of [Some] Missional Churches?
Missional Churches Tend to Be Mission-Centered Rather Than Gospel-Centered.
Missional Churches Tend to Have a Reductionistic Ecclesiology.
Missional Churches Tend to Confuse Culture Engagement with Cultural Immersion.
Missional Churches Tend to Downplay the Institutional and Organizational Nature of the Church.
Missional Churches Tend to Have an Insufficient Understanding of Apostolic Ministry.
As one who desires to be both Gospel-centered and Misisonal, I take Harvey’s cautions seriously. I think he has a valid point. I would say that while being Missional does not inherently make one guilty of this, I would have to concede that many who are Missional are guilty of this.
I suspect this results from an imbalance with the Prophet, Priest, and King tri-perspective. Too much emphasis is placed on the role and influence of the King. This seems only to be natural since, afterall, one of the important principles recovered by the missional movement is that our mission matters; our mission is as much an expression of who we are as is our theology.
An important concept to explore and implement in the ministry of the local church is the reflection of the Offices of Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King. This is known as Tri-Perspectivalism or Multi-Perspectivalism. I have written and spoken a little about this, but I am still far more a student than an expert when it comes to the implications.
“Our union with the Messiah and his desire to continue his earthly ministry by living his life through us are so strong that we may be said to share his three offices of leadership. We are priests as we pray for those near us and draw them into the sphere of God’s mercy and blessing. We are prophets as we hold a biblical straightedge against whatever is crooked around us. And we are kings as we use whatever powers we have to straighten what is crooked, reshaping whatever falls within the scope of our responsibility until it reflects the order of heaven.”
GRACE & PEACE 