While sitting with my friend Martin Robinson the night before last, the
topic of whether the church is needed to do mission in Western culture came up.
Many people that I know at this point are extremely interested in missional
living, but are taking on the attitude that forming churches simply clutters or
confuses their efforts.

Martin, who is a theologian and missional leader in the UK,
suggested we look at our Mission ventures with

  the picture of two tables. One
table is an open table, free for everyone to come and join and eat. He would
say that that is the missional venture part of who we are as Christians. The
second table, he would say is a “sacramental” table. The idea is that we invite
everyone to a large table or feast regardless of faith or background or gender
or anything else, but our call has to be to also invite them to the sacramental
table as well. Mine along with his experience has shown us that the sheer
mission without connection to the Christian community is a shortsighted
approach. The hope for each of us is that people become Jesus followers not
only now but in the future. The problem with doing unattached missional
pioneering is that there’s no tether or connective point for people to continue
to grow in their understanding, love and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

For me, I want
to be careful to not fall back into a dualistic approach to spirituality where
certain things are spiritual and others aren’t. One of the most freeing things
in my life has been to recognize that all of life can be viewed as sacramental
if turned toward God (the Hebraic concept of “kavanah”). That being said, Jesus
did tell us to remember certain things and to do certain things as a community,
i.e. break bread and drink from the cup, be baptized. Those aspects of
sacramentalism were initiated not just occupy our time, but to ensure that we
continue on, not just begin in the faith.

I think the two tables approach is worth thinking about as
we attempt to be missional people and incarnate the life of Jesus in our
communities.