imagining how the church can reorient around mission

A few years back now, I was approached by a prospective church planter seeking to get an endorsement for the project. This person told me his plan of planting a church to attract and teach young people the Scriptures like what was happening at the church I was pastoring (the church I was leading at the time was made up of about 60-70% college-aged folk). To say that how I responded caught him off guard would be an understatement. Because of a core theological belief I hold that God is a missionary and that the church should emulate that identity, my advice was, “Go home and take off your pastor hat. Put it in the closet. Then, put your missionary hat on. Spend your time reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus. If God allows you to reach young people with the Gospel, then you can put your pastor hat back on, but if you don’t start with your missionary hat on first, I don’t think you should plant the church.” It was obvious by this person’s crestfallen countenance that the advice wasn’t what he was hoping for.

Those who know me might find the title of this blog unnecessarily provocative, if not disingenuous. After all, I’ve spent the “lion’s share” of my 35 years in ministry catalyzing church planting, both locally and internationally. Over the years, however, as a result of my involvement in church planting in the region, I feel the need to qualify my commitment. I’ve been approached by scores of would-be church planters, looking for advice about how starting a new church might happen in Spokane. If I can be completely candid, over the last 15 years I have discouraged as many of those people as I have encouraged. The reason is, unfortunately, much of church planting is a replication of things that have gotten us into the dilemma we are currently in regarding the church. It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Statistically the trajectory of the church in the west, and in particular, the Pacific Northwest part of America is one of obsolescence. The church is shrinking faster than we can add new members or new congregations. The flood of younger people looking for the exit ramp out of churches grows at an almost exponential rate. There are many reasons for this, but in my humble opinion, one of the foremost reasons is our attempt to start churches, rather than to do mission both individually and as church communities. read more

“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.

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I love this post from Frank Viola on the Missio Dei – below is an excerpt.  You can find the post in its entirety at The Missio Dei  Take a look.

The big sweeping epic of God’s timeless purpose is centered on a bride, a house, a body, and a family. These four elements make up the grand narrative of the Bible. The mission of God—the Missio Dei—is wrapped up with each of them. read more

Here's a little bit more from Barth for you (from the book, “The Witness of God”):

“Must not the faithful, the most convinced missionary think seriously about the fact that the concept ‘missio’ in the ancient church was a term from the doctrine of the Trinity, the designation of the divine self sending, the sending of Son and Holy Spirit into the world?” p. 108

Here are several seminal statements about the church from Karl Barth’s "Church
Dogmatics" as cited in the book, The Witness of God; The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community .

“The community is alive, there, and only they are, where she
is engaged in recruitment and when she strives for this recruitment especially
in the apparently darkest areas of the world: in places where the Gospel is
still completely unknown or completely rejected, in medio inimicorum. The community is this such a missionary
community, or she is not the Christian community.” read more

I'm
reading a book right now called, “The Witness of God; The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community." It's written by John
Flett. 


There's
much written about the "missio Dei" right now, but quite a bit of it resides on a
superficial level. To hear people talk about the concepts basic to the
missio Dei – “…the Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the
Spirit, and the Triune God sends the church,” is good!  There has been a wonderful
correction in theology as a result of the missio Dei concept, but often times
the superficiality of describing it misses some essential elements. In this book
there is a deeper, more full-orbed exploration of the notion. This book is not necessarily for the casual reader, but I think a significant contribution to the field of
missiology.
 
While
I'm reading the book my intention is to insert a quote or two from each section
I'm reading. Here are a few from the first couple chapters:
 
Flett
quoting Bosch: 

“’Our mission has no life of its own: only in the hands of the
sending God can it truly be called mission.’” He continues (his own words now),
“Mission is not something the church does, dependent on ecclesiastical
management and developed according to some notion of the efficient use of
resources. It is justified by neither human capacity nor historical accident.”

 
This
is also from Bosch: 

“’The recognition that mission is God's mission represents
a crucial breakthrough in respect of the preceding centuries. It is
inconceivable that we can again revert to a narrow ecclesiocentric view of
mission.’” read more

I head
out to Los Angeles tomorrow to join up with Dan Steigerwald and several
others in a “Train the Trainer” event. It is another piece of our effort to
push out the INFUSE MIssional Training that we have put together. There will be
potential trainers from Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, and Spokane.  This
curriculum is being facilitated in partnership with FORGE America.  It
should be a great time of learning how to raise at missional pioneers in our
cities.
 
The next INFUSE (take a look at the outline) training will begin in Spokane, WA
next week. If you’re from that area please consider joining us in this fantastic
training opportunity.  You can sign up at Ecclesia Spokane.

In an attempt to describe a missional ecclesiology in brief, I am reminded of one of the most

  influential theologians of the last century, Karl Barth.  He reintroduced the classic doctrine of missio Dei, this idea in scripture where you have God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit, and then the Father, Son and Spirit sending the church into the world for the sake of the world.

via jrwoodward.net

A good blog by my friend JR Woodward. It tracks nicely with some of what I have been writing about movement. Take a read!