imagining how the church can reorient around mission

It was a sunny, breezy, end-of-summer day eight years ago when I stepped foot on Whitworth’s campus for the first time as a student. I remember like it was yesterday the confidence I had as I waltzed around campus with my nerdy lanyard–student ID card in full view for all to see. I don’t want to be unnecessarily hard on myself, but I do remember feeling like I was pretty cool already, like I was going to take this university by storm. Just like high school, I was going to get all the jobs and leadership positions, make a ton of friends, do all the right things, and you can bet I was going to stuff my calendar full of all the right activities. (Yikes!)

I would run into friends around campus, and at times I’d find myself sort of bragging about how busy I was. A full plate and a growing resume of success, however small, were badges of honor. I think I was a little blind to the love around me, and of course, I was also blind to the suffering around me. I was living in to a twisted theology that said I was loved only when I really proved myself. Busyness and a good reputation were my idols, and the unsustainable approval from my community replaced the unconditional love of God. read more

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:33

If we are told by Jesus to seek the Kingdom, doesn’t that infer it must be accessible in the present and, if so, describes our daily quest?

“Being missional means moving intentionally beyond our church preferences, making missional decisions rather than preferential decisions.” ― Ed Stetzer, Comeback Churches

I got the privilege of meeting with a young church planter from a mainline denomination yesterday. She is charming and passionate, though somewhat doe-eyed, seemingly not completely sure what she was getting in to (though, she is quickly arriving there).

I met her last week while teaching a track on the Missional Church at the Whitworth Institute of Ministry. While during the introductions, I came to find out about her dream and calling to church planting (got me excited) and how she was an embedded planter in a mainline church here in Spokane (got me even more excited, because I believe an embedded approach is the healthiest model to embark on the challenging journey of planting).

Anyway, that all led to us connecting yesterday. After some small talk, I began to ask into the “why?” and the “how?” of this new project. While I was thrilled to hear the church plant was being initiated, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my gut that those who were helping her hadn’t fully calculated the cost, nor were they clear on how to pull it off.

Part of the dilemma is that the local church she is embedded in and will supposedly send her out is in somewhat of self-protected posture. In other words, they like they idea of birthing a new church, but they don’t want it to cost them anything. There is already an apparent pulling back of support because they fear they will lose members.

Ok, listen carefully to this next part: You cannot do any form of mission, particularly church planting, without risk. Because the denomination she is a part of is dying, and the church that wants to send her is an aging congregation and apparently not robust, there is a contraction of resources…which is the very worst thing a denomination or a local church can afford to do.

If you want your church to flourish, you must have the courage to release resources – both money and people. It is not the churches job to try to keep people. If a church goes into protective mode, the very people the church wants to participate will not stay. The people who correctly see “life as mission” will go somewhere, where the church is not trying just to stay alive, but to a place where the church will give itself away for the sake of the Kingdom.

What happens is, to keep from dying, all resources flow toward vital systems, which seem logical and even natural. Yet, in the Kingdom, there is a counter logic. We hear Jesus say all of these crazy, counter-intuitive things like, “If you want to live, you have to die. If you wanna be great, you have to submit and become a servant.”

If a church, or a denomination for that matter, cannot transition its identity from a “container” for Christian people (Christendom orientation) to a missionary community, it will eventually come to an end. I know, those are hard words…sorry. Why? It will come to an end because the church is living counter to what God intended it to be…a community on mission.

r

Do you wear skinny jeans or pleated pants?

Kind of a funny question, but those are the metaphors theologian Scot McKnight uses to describe two prevailing and popular views of the Kingdom of God in his book, Kingdom Conspiracy. The first view, skinny jeans, predictably represents a more current approach that frontloads public sector social justice activism, while often times bypassing the church. He writes, “Kingdom means good deeds done by good people (Christian or not) in the public sector for the common good.” (p.4) The second picture is, again predictably, a perspective that is more represented in “traditional” Christianity. He describes this group’s view by saying, “…the Kingdom is both present and future, and the kingdom is both a rule and reign.” (p. 9) read more

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him (enthroned) at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to
come.” Ephesians 1:18-21

No, this is not me. 🙂

In the 1st chapter of Ephesians there is a remarkable passage that talks about power.  In
particular, it refers  to the type of power that Christian’s possess as a result of their union with Jesus. I guess the question for me is what is that power? What does it look like? The text is emphatic; it is spectacular. As a matter of fact, Paul uses four different words, synonyms, to describe how dynamic that power is. What it is compared to in the text is the power that raised Christ from the dead and enthroned Him as King. That’s significant power (as I wrote that last sentence, my voice unsurprisingly deepened and got louder like Moses in the movie, “The Ten Commandments”)!!!

Historically, that power on a practical level has been construed as demonstrations of the supernatural. In the contemporary church these
demonstrations might look like “speaking in tongues” or “healings” or “prophesy” or something even like raising a gob of money (“Look at this money – see how powerful God is!”) or growing a big church. My point is not to contend that these types of manifestations are not legitimate and shouldn’t be included here. They may. In the Kingdom, however, while I do not hesitate to affirm the idea of miracles, the power suggested in the text may be manifested in some very counterintuitive ways. Paul says in another place that God’s power was made perfect in his weakness. Huh? Weakness = power! I think the world definitely needs to see the dynamic and spectacular, but my guess or presumption is that God’s power is manifested most profoundly in our humility. I very much doubt that it is manifested well in our self-assertion or our personal aggrandizement, but in our ability to self-efface and resist the desire to exert power. That historically has been a very real problem for the church. Perhaps it is in these personal or institutional displays of power, the church has found itself the least like her Savior.

The people I know who are not Jesus followers are seemingly indifferent to testimonies of supernatural stuff (at the least incredulous), but they seem not only interested, but also drawn to Christians who have abandoned the idea of entitlement or culturally persuasive sway. We the church must discover and exhibit a humility that represents the Christ who said, “Take my yoke upon you for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Humility is one of the most challenging and counterintuitive virtues for people to have. It is however, if not the, one of the most favored and “powerful” virtues in the Scriptures.

Peace,

r

“When Jesus healed people, when he celebrated parties with all and sundry, when he offered forgiveness freely to people as if he were replacing the Temple itself with his own work – in all these way it was clear, and he intended it to be clear, that this wasn’t just a foretaste of a future reality.  This was reality itself.”

– N.T. Wright read more

"The Kingdom is primarily the dynamic reign or kingly rule of God, and derivatively, the sphere in which the rule is experienced. In biblical idiom, the Kingdom is not identified with its subjects. They are the people of God's rule who enter it, live under it, and are governed by it. The church is the community of the Kingdom but never the Kingdom itself. Jesus’ disciples belong to the Kingdom as the Kingdom belongs to them; but they are not the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the rule of God; the church is a society of men."

The Theology of the New Testament, George Eldon Ladd

“If God’s tomorrow means the end of exploitation, injustice, inequality, war, racism, nationalism, suffering, death and ignorance of God, Christians must be ‘signs’ of God’s conquest of all these ‘burdens and evils’ through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ"

David Bosch, Transforming Mission

Jim Wallis writes, “The goal of biblical conversion is not to save souls apart from history but to bring the Kingdom of God into the world with explosive force. It begins with individuals, but is for the sake of the world… Churches today are tragically split between those who stress conversion but have forgotten its goal, and those who emphasize Christian social action but have forgotten the necessity for conversion… Both need to recover the original meaning of conversion to Jesus Christ and to his kingdom.”  Announcing the Kingdom p. 194

Although, I struggle a bit with the language of "bringing the Kingdom."  This type of language is missing from the NT.  When language related to the KOG is used, it is more related to us "entering it" or "inheriting it."  The language of bringing or building or extending is absent.  Regardless, I love Wallis' bridging of the conversionistic with the activist approaches.  A sadly missing wedding in much of evangelicalism. 

I do not know how to blog. This blog is not one of intellectual prowess, I find it perplexing that you should take the time to read it, but here I am, honest and open with my struggles, knowing that through wrestling with these issues, God will transform my heart.  I am consistently finding myself in desperation.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Yahweh is in control, yet I am subject to a nearly continuous feeling of urgency.  I want God. Now.  We live between Jesus’ two comings and have been commissioned to be lights to His world, dull as we may shine. How do I, a 20 year old child with close to no knowledge of my Creator and his ways, not only accept this mission, but enter into it with faith?  Is the answer found in words?  And furthermore, who is able to articulate this answer? Search your soul and answer me this, how do we, as servants of the Most High, bear witness to the world of the reality of the Kingdom and the good news therein?  I feel wholly inept, but in my immense feeling of inadequacy, I find a crucial dependence upon the Lord. You and I are called to respond to His word, and I find myself stymied. If my soul had a face, surely the expression would be one of wide eyed, restless confusion.  I long to venture further into this journey set before me, but am overcome by a feeling that I will only blunder about, hoping that I may somehow bump into God.  To depart from our threshold of comfort devoid of God would be foolish, yet it is necessary to find the balance between knowing God will come through for us, and operating under a false justification that we are acting in the will of God, for his Kingdom.