Category — Church

For the majority of Christians, church and missions operate in separate and distinct realms.  The church nurtures and instructs the ’saved’, and missionaries cross cultures and evangelize the ‘heathen’.  Church is here and familiar, missions is over there and foreign.  The points at which church and missions usually connect are money and recruitment.  Because the work of missions requires money and fresh recruits and since the church is where both can be found, mission organizations and agencies find it necessary to relate to the church.  Likewise, since people within the church have full-time, secular jobs, they ‘do missions’ by providing finances for those who do the work of ‘fulltime’ missions.

The place where missions and the church have traditionally converged is mission education.  The church’s role has been to educate its adults toward their obligation to give and its children and young adults toward the possibility of joining the ranks of the missionary professionals.  In short, the promotion of offerings and the recruitment of individuals is the function of mission education.

However, a revolution in the church’s understanding of missions is underway.  One of the seeds of this revolution is found in a theological re-framing of missions as missio Dei.  God is a missionary God, who moves toward his creation to reconcile and restore.  Thus, God is the one who initiates and sustains the mission - it is his mission.  He sends the Son, and the Father and Son together with the Spirit sends the church.  Because missions is part of the intent and activity of the Triune God, it should not be a side issue or auxiliary to the essence and purpose of the church.  To participate in God is to be party to his mission.  It is not that the church has missions as one of its activities; rather God has a church for his mission.

This new understanding of the church and mission calls for a similar revolution in mission education.  If missions is central to the church’s purpose, then mission education must be about more than raising money for the mission of denominational or para-church organizations and their projects, and it must pertain to a wider audience than just potential mission personnel.  Because mission is a whole church affair, mission education must be a critical component in the nurture, formation and life of the people God.

In order for the church to be faithful to the new understanding of missions, mission education must be renovated in several ways.  Mission education must be …

Formative.  Rather than just educating people in what they need to do, they must also be formed into who they are to be.  Rather than training people for a missionary vocation or mission activity, they should be equipped with missionary character and lifestyle.  Instead of just idealizing the missionary vocation or highlighting human need in far-away places, mission education must address one’s love of God and love of neighbor, the way one relates to family, friends, and enemies, truth-telling, consumerism - the habits of hands and heart.

Imaginative.  Rather than teaching that the mission of God finds expression in only certain activities and a specific vocation, mission education should open a wide array of avenues in which God is at work.  The emphasis should be on assisting people, especially young people, to think creatively about how their skills, interests, work and leisure activities are part of the mission of God - not in how these are means to an end, but how they are mission.

Integrative.  Rather than isolating mission education into a corner of church life or to specific hours of the church week, it must be integrated into the whole.  Thus, every aspect of church life and every dimension of the church calendar must be seen as missional.  Discipleship, worship, Sunday School, Awanas, prayer meeting, choir - everything - must be viewed through a missional lens.  We must ask questions like - ‘If the church exists for the mission of God, then how do we prepare, equip, position ourselves for God’s mission through our worship?’  Worship does not have to be overtly missionary, as much as it needs to be intrinsically missional. Worship should lead people to see God as the Creator of all peoples, as the one worthy of praise by the whole of creation.  Worship must be seen as more than a private affair between me and God but a public event before the world.  Similar questions must be asked about Sunday School, children programs, choir, etc.

Collaborative.  Rather than the professional missionaries or ‘mission-minded’ people in the church being viewed as the sole mission educators, people across the spectrum of church life must see themselves as contributing to the education / formation of children, youth and adults for the mission of God.  If mission education is the formation of the person and not just specialized training for the professional, then the skills, experiences, and gifts of the whole body must be employed.  Collaboration around mission takes place when the mission of God is not the specialty of a few but the concern of the whole.

Prescriptive. Rather than just providing facts about mission activities elsewhere and images of exotic and far-away places and people, mission education must challenge people to faithfully participate in God’s mission in their homes, workplace, and relationships.  Mission education must lead to obeying what we learn of God and his mission rather than just being amused and amazed by mission stories and missionary lives far away.

Expansive.  Rather than leaving us in places of comfort and convenience, mission education should pull us toward the ends of the earth (literally), challenge us to live beyond our human capacities, and to ask ‘what could God do’!  Mission education should lead to see God’s universal concern for all the peoples of the earth and humble us that he invites us to participate with him in his mission.

Transformative. Rather than the goal being missions as a cognitive understanding gained via classroom instruction (teacher, students, books), the goal should be life transformation that leads to missional lifestyle.  Life transformation occurs for most people through involvement that is whole life - hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mind.  Therefore, a two-week trip to Brazil can be part of missional formation leading to life transformation.  People see, smell, hear, touch, feel, and embrace what God is doing and thereby their view of God and the world is transformed.

Mission education has a place in the local church if it is retooled to be formative, imaginative, integrative, collaborative, prescriptive, expansive and transformative.  This does not necessarily mean that existing programs or structures have to be discarded.  Nor is it a matter of mission education becoming more relevant, or having better or more attractive literature.  Mission education will serve its purpose if sharply focused on forming the whole church for its chief purpose - the mission of God.

A revolution is taking place right before our eyes - a mission revolution.  Some might mistake it to be a rebellion against power and authority, but such a characterization would be wrong.  A rebellion is an attempt to overthrow and unseat, while a revolution is the act of re-creating or re-forming from the bottom up.  Rebellion takes place in the halls of power, revolution takes to the streets.  Over coffee at Starbuck, on airplanes returning from Niger, in church offices, and at small gatherings, ‘like-hearted’ pastors and church folk are joining passions and resources into mission collectives.

In simplest terms, a mission collective is a group of people and churches united around the proclamation of Jesus Christ in word and deed.  This means they are, above all, pursuing collaborative mission activity and contributing resources to the common witness of the collective.  In its essence, collectivism honors the contribution of each church and every individual, trusts the work of the Spirit in each, and seeks involvement in the diversity of God’s mission.  Absent are organizational enormity, top-down control, forced uniformity, and politicized, single-issue missions.  Front and center is the mission of God - it is the sinew and muscle holding the collective together, the electricity empowering collaboration, and the nerve center providing coordination and direction.  It is the singular reason for diverse, autonomous congregations and unique individuals to unite in trust and respect for mission.

In practical terms, a mission collective translates into churches giving people and money to joint mission endeavors, sharing ideas and materials, working across demographic and doctrinal lines to create and hold in common needed training materials, systems, procedures, strategies, and encouraging each other to do more and be the best possible witness to Jesus Christ.  A concrete example of a mission collective is Global Connection Partnership Network.  GCPN is “a community of churches committed to a direct global witness.”  It connects, partners, resources, provides material, trains, collaborates, and supports in order for “God’s glory to be realized throughout the earth.”

While the traditional, hierarchical mission paradigm will not cease to exist, growing numbers of young students, adults, and pastors are looking for something different - something more organic, relational, and participatory.  For them, mission involvement no longer rises or falls on promotion or mobilization originating from a distant place or a famous people.  They see and hear mission all around them - in their churches, from fellow students, among friends and in their pastor.  Mission is bubbling up from the bottom.  The revolution is underway as collectives in Waco, Arlington, Oklahoma City, Atlanta, etc., form, grow, and encounter the world.  Long Live the revolution!

Even though I am driven by particular questions, I am not without answers.  I open my hands toward what I do not know, and at the same time, I stand firmly in what I do know. For example …

What is conversion? … Conversion is part of the deal; it must take place.  Conversion must be to a person, not a religion, creed, culture, institution, etc.  In order to be made whole, reconciled to God, to be forgiven of my rebellion, I must turn from my way, my self aggrandizement, and to God through Jesus Christ.

What is the gospel? … The gospel is not a group of words or a set of propositions in an elite or special language meant to convince the mind.  The gospel is a person who confronts my whole existence (not just my mind).  Jesus is Good News.

What is community? … Community is more than coffee, songs, handshakes, and kisses.  Community is friendship, solidarity, love, and life.  Community is not clean and easy … it is messy, confusing, and expensive.  It requires me.

Who are the people of God? … The church is not defined by who shows up to meet within four walls. The church is the people of God on pilgrimage through the mall, school, workplace, home, giving witness to Jesus.  This witness is not from position, power, or privilege by the power of the Spirit.

How are we to do missions? … The mission of God is much, much more than what happens through the professional missionary or the mission enterprise.  Because God is the Creator of life, his mission runs through the whole of life, finds expression in every aspect of life.  Mission is best done via relationships, trust, and the people of God.

Am I authentic? … I am authentic if I make known what is true - I am a sinner, an inadequate teacher, a poor husband, a struggling follower of Jesus Christ, and so on.  I am in the process of being transformed and always will be.  If this process stops, I am no longer authentic.

Am I still living? … My aim is to live - to feel the hurt around me, to give of myself to those who cannot give back, to listen -really listen- to the people talking to me, to act out of conviction, to love well.

While I have questions, I do have some answers.  Yet, the largest question for me is … am I living into the answers that I do have?

It’s Sunday morning.  A man rises and reads the following text:

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come (Matt. 24:14).

The speaker then exhorts his hearers to do missions in order that they might hasten the return of the Lord. They are told that through missionary activity they can actually accelerate or speed up Christ’s return.  Since every sincere Christian wants to see Christ return as quickly as possible, it makes logical sense that they should be involved in missions.  In fact, they are told that one of them could possibly be the actual person who preaches the gospel to the last people group and thus initiate the Second Coming.

While this may be a popular interpretation of Jesus’ words and seems to be a persuasive reason for missionary service, several questions need to be raised …

Will we actually cause Christ to return? The implication is that in some logical, mechanistic manner we trigger or force God to bring human history to a close.  Rather than merely living in the expectation of his coming and being acted upon by his return, we stand above this event in a controlling, initiating manner.  On the contrary, Jesus is not issuing a command or prescribing a strategy.  He is stating a fact - “the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached.”  God will return when he decides to do so and will conclude human history for reasons that are far beyond our comprehension or control.  Thus, it seems unwise for any of us to obligate God to a timetable conditioned by our actions.

Doesn’t such an interpretation encourage escapism? The message is - the world is evil, you want to get out of it as soon as you can, and therefore, do yourself a favor by doing missions.  And yet, in the preceding verses, Jesus encourages his disciples to do just the opposite.  Even though things will become harder and harder before the end, Jesus tells them to remain firm and faithful in the present, evil age.  It seems that an appeal to do missions in order to bring about the end may have more to do with our desire to escape suffering than the redemption of the world.

What constitutes ‘the whole world’? It seems the speaker makes clear what Jesus has left unclear.  Does ‘the whole world’ mean all geo-political entities (nations), ethno-linguistic groups, dialects, cultures, provinces, cities, or villages?  Must these be 25%, 45%, or 65% evangelized or Christianized?  Do each of these portions of the world have to have one or two churches, a group of churches, or a ‘church planting movement’ before Jesus returns?  Do these churches have to be self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating?  In my lifetime, I have seen various definitions of ‘the whole world’ come and go.  What is now in vogue will surely be replaced with a fresh explanation.  Jesus does not give specifics at this point, and thus, it seems unwise for any of us to speak in quantifiable absolutes about what will precipitate his return.

What does it mean that the gospel of the kingdom will be preached? The speaker implies that proclaiming the kingdom is a verbal sermon about personal salvation.  Could it be that the gospel of the kingdom encompasses much more than people merely hearing a message or even giving intellectual or emotional assent to it?  It seems that the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed was a call to lordship and discipleship (Matt. 5-7) - the transformation of life, family, clan, and village.  We may be proclaiming less than the gospel of the kingdom, if all we are doing is preaching evangelistic sermons in hopes of representative converts from people groups.

I confidently expect the gospel of the kingdom to be proclaimed in the whole world, and I fervently desire to see the whole church involved in this mission.  At the same time, I believe that our motivation should flow from interpretation that is true to the historical context, as well as the intent and aims of Jesus’ life and ministry.  Rather than appealing to a desire to escape this world, or a desire to make our actions significant, or to fulfill some nebulous aim, shouldn’t we base our motives for mission on Jesus’ summon to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves?  May you and I be found loving well when the end does come!

‘Throwing the baby out with the bath water’ is a way of saying that in an attempt to rid ourselves of the dirty, bad, or undesirable, we toss out that which is essential or prized.  The idiom is quite graphic.  Imagine a mother lovingly washing her daughter’s face, arms, and hair.  She is careful not to rub too hard but thoroughly washes between fingers, behind ears, and around eyes and mouth.  All the while, she softly reassures the child that she loves her.  Once the mother is done, she takes the tub full of water and baby to back door and toss both into the yard!  We get the message - you don’t throw out something or someone of value just because it sits in that which of no value.  Besides being mentally unstable or out of touch with reality, a mother might throw her child out with bath water because she thinks (wrongly) that the only way to dispose of the nasty water is throw it and its contents into the yard.  The problem is that she cannot differentiate between the value of the child and the filth of the water.

A surprising number of people inside the church feel that the only way to deal with the ugly past of missions is to throw it out with the bath water.  They want to “own up” to the fact that missions was party to some of the ugliest episodes of human history - colonial aggression, slavery, cultural genocide, and power grabs.  For its distractors, missions belongs to an era of unenlightened and even brutish abuse and disregard, motivated by religious naiveté and simplicity.  They insist that in order to be free from this unsavory past, we must distance ourselves from every part of it.  And yet, such an opinion is itself too simplistic and, frankly, is an over-reaction motivated by an attempt to resolve an uncomfortable past.

We must differentiate between value and filth.  Missions is too valuable to throw out for at least three reasons. First, the value of missions can be seen in the myriad of good done by men and women on mission.  In fact, I would say that far more good has been done in the name of missions than bad.  We must not allow ourselves to be blinded to the vast amount of good and noble by dark and unsavory exceptions.

Second, missions is valuable because it is an enactment of the mission of God.  Missions is a human endeavor, carried out by culturally bound and sinful men and women, and thus, it will always be in need of a bath - repentance, refinement and humility.  And yet, in some miraculous way God demonstrates his love, grace, and glory through the human means of missions.

And third, without missions the church becomes too established and secure in itself.  Much of the reason for rejecting missions is that it is not respectable, or it is unsophisticated.  Missions is an embarrassment.  The church needs missions because of its embarrassment and offense.  Through participation in missions, we are reminded that we are a pilgrim people, exiles, sojourners, and witnesses of someone far greater than ourselves.

Who am I to dismiss, vilify, or reject missions?  I am merely a broken, and yet redeemed, man invited to participate in God’s movement toward humanity.  God’s mission uses me - my dirty bath water and all - to reveal his love, grace and glory to the world.

Wilbert Shenk asserts …

Without mission the church dies.  Although what we ordinarily call the church may continue to exist as a religious group, a missionless church is no long an authentic church.  The proof of its missionary character will be demonstrated by its response to the world. (“New Wineskins for New Wine: Toward a Post-Christendom Ecclesiology,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, April 2005, 75)

Shenk’s point is that church renewal and outreach must accompany each other.  Both dimensions must be addressed, if the church is to do more than just exist as organization, as religious entity.  The church exists to give witness to the glory and purposes of God … without this mission it betrays its charter and constitution.

The irony is that as the contemporary church feverishly seeks to renew itself via a focus on its growth, health, services to members, branding, worship styles, etc., it is in fact doing the opposite-destroying itself.  Jesus said, “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (Jn 12:24).  Unless the church gives itself away in witness to, care of, and justice for the neighbor nearby and those at the ends of the earth, it will die.  Mission rhetoric and seasonal participation in mission emphases are not substitutes for giving ourselves away.  Mission means we give ourselves to the world, go ourselves to the world, and love the world more than ourselves.  This is the mission of and hope for the church.

 ”The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”
    Mark 10:45 

Just as Christ came as a servant, service is the role of the church.  And yet, the church is constantly tempted to be a triumphant and victorious community that aligns itself with power, privilege, and place rather than finding itself in the places of service.  There is a fine line between the the “victorious Christian life” and the assumption that privilege and rights belong to us irrespective of others.  An indicator of when we have crossed that line is when we expect to be served by the powers in society, to be at the head of the table, to be respectable and honored - to be socially advantaged. 

History shows that the people of God usually do not voluntarily move toward service.  Rather, service is forced on us via humiliation, loss, and exile.  Quite possibly the American church is at the brink of such loss.  The Christendom arrangement within the American context (particularly in the South) has run its course, and Christianity is being disestablished in school, by government, in polite society, and within the wider popular culture.  Many Christian leaders act as though it is still 1950 and that society still cares about what they have to say or is looking for them to determine what is right or wrong.  However, the year is 2009 and society is not listening, nor does it care what we think.  At best, the wider culture only wants to manipulate and corrupt Christianity for its ends. 

The need for the gospel to be at home in its context (contextualization) must be balanced by the necessity of critical self-examination.  Christianity becomes un-Christian when its essence is severely diluted by societal forces.  Patriotism and gospel, consumerism and gospel, entertainment and gospel, sports and gospel, wealth and gospel are dangerous mixtures that can and will mute the church’s voice and disengage it from mission.   Thus, the church constantly needs are reminder; a means to assist it in strking the right balance.

Service is the means through which we remember who Jesus is and are reminded who we are to be.  Jesus was in the world, for the world, and serving the world.  Our renewal as the people of God will not come through accumulating more power, or recapturing a golden era, or re-inventing ourselves.  Rather, renewal comes as we realign our mission to that of the Suffering Servant by taking up a towel, kneeling before the maimed and marginalized-washing feet, dressing wounds, and loving without conditions. 

Service is not resignation from or a forfeiting of the church’s role in society.  It is the means through which it actually is salt and light, permeating the whole of society.  The power of the gospel is made real not in our alliance with the state or in political maneuvers but in our service.

Jesus came to serve; we are called to serve.  Either we freely pick up the towel or circumstances may force it on us.

As already noted in previous posts (2008: Oct 19; 2009: Jan 9, 23, Mar 11, 22, Apr 12, May 19), the face of global Christianity has been radically altered.  Jehu Hanciles, Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration, and the Transformation of the West (2008), highlights how the development of Christianity into a non-Western religion has impacted Western Christendom.

According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (2001), the church in Europe and North America is losing members at a rate of six thousand members a day (just over 2.2 members a year).  The level of apostasy is much higher with regard to churh attendance: roughly 2.7 million church attendees in Europe and North America cease to be practicing Christians every year (an average loss of seventy-six hundred every day).  These extraordinary developments are substantiated by numerous reports (114).

How are we to respond to such information?  Several options: We can dismiss this information as only academic, statistical mumbo-jumbo, or we can give way to resignation, hand wringing, and despair, or we can pursue the questions which this information provokes.  

I believe that integrity and faithfulness demand that we pursue the obvious questions.  Such questions as …

• Is this a signal that the church has lost its place of prominence in Western culture, or that faith has been successful translated into new places and fresh expressions?
• Does the decline in church attendance indicate an abdication of faith or that people are doing their faith in different ways and places?
• Where are those who leave going?  To new religions, other forms of ’spirituality’, or to the mall?
• Has denominationalism run its course and thus is the blame or cause of the statistical decline?
• Where would the church in Europe and North America be if not for Pentecostalism and Charismatics?  If not for Christian immigrants from Africa and Latin America?
• Has the Western church merely succumbed to the long process of secularization and thus just needs to rediscover or rejuvenate its conservative and/or evangelical moorings? 
• Is the information a call to re-double our efforts to re-evangelize the homeland, or is it a cause to rethink the nature and purpose of the church within Western culture?  
• For what reason and on what basis should we continue sending missionaries to Africa, Latin America, and Asia? 
• In what ways should the shift evoke adjustments in our personal and corporate lives? 
• In what ways should the shift cause us to rethink faith, church, theology, missions, etc?  

Tough questions!  Some would say these kinds of questions should not be voiced aloud, less we undermine our evangelical and missionary commitment and resolve.  Well, my contention is that to avoid these questions and blissfully continue doing church and missions as if nothing has changed is irresponsible.  Faithfulness to the gospel and the mission of God demands that we not dodge, dismiss, or mask difficult or uncomfortable questions.  Nor is it acceptable to just keep repeating well-worn answers.  The change in world Christianity is massive, complex, and dynamic and thus demands that we make reasoned and intentional adjustments in our thinking, living and loving.  Tough questions require an authentic response.

Alan Hirsch seeks to provide clarity in the midst of mounting confusion over the word missional.  After stating that missional does not mean emerging or seeker-sensitive, and is more than social justice and church growth, he offers his understanding of missional.

A proper understanding of missional begins with recovering a missionary understanding of God.  By his very nature God is a “sent one” who take the initiative to redeem his creation. This doctrine, known as missio Dei-the sending of God-is causing many to redefine their understanding of the church.  Because we are the “sent” people of God, the church is the instrument of God’s mission in the world.  As things stand, many people see it the other way around.  They believe mission is an instrument of the church; a means by which the church is grown.  Although we frequently say “the church has a mission,” according to missional theology a more correct statement would be “the mission has a church” (Leadership, Fall 2008, 22).

I completely agree.  Missional has been co-opted and turned into the next emphasis, a new technique, or some slick program.  Instead, missional has to do with theology - our understanding of God; who he is, what he does, and his ultimate purpose.  A clear understanding and use of missional is essential, if the church is to be God’s church.  The church needs to hear anew that God is a sending God, and thus, the church is a missional people.  She exists for God’s mission.

 In The Coming of the Third Church (Orbis, 1976), Walbert Bühlmann makes an interesting connection between church growth and maturity …

“growth in maturity in a minority Church brings, as a consequence, numerical increase while growth in maturity in a majority Church leads in most cases to a numerical diminution, which is a healthy readjustment in which many nominal Christians discover that following the Lord exacts a price which they are not ready to pay.”  (147)

The minority church , of course, is located in those places traditionally called ‘the mission field’, and the majority church is in Europe and America.  The growth and maturity for both churches is found in the high price of following Jesus.  In the case of the minority church where discrimination and persecution is taking place, this price brings numerical growth.  For the majority church, the high price of discipleship produces health, as it trims away nominalism.  In both cases, costly discipleship is the key for growth and maturity.