3 posts tagged “missional”
Two weeks ago I spoke at a conference for Christian artists (kind of ...). I spoke about my journey in learning about what/who we are to be as the church and a few insights I've come to. It's a little bit disjointed, but I thought I'd share it here anyway. This is what I wrote down to go by, but I didn't present it word for word. At the moment, I added some things and left other things out, but these are still the basic ideas I put forth.
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About seven or eight years ago, I got really frustrated with the church and stopped going for a while. During this time a friend let me borrow a book called “The Post-Evangelical” which dealt with what it means to be a Christian in a postmodern world. That led me to read other books, listen to lectures, and attend conferences that were thinking along the same lines. At the time it was refreshing to hear some of the disconnect and dissatisfaction I had been feeling affirmed, but after a while I noticed that that was almost all of what it was doing. There was a lot of talk about how the traditional church had failed, but relatively little talk about what to do moving forward. Every book/lecture/conference seemed to have the same things to say, just in different ways.
I ended up coming across the writings of N.T. Wright, who is a first century historian and theologian. He has given me a much better perspective on who Jesus was (and is), what he accomplished, and what we're here to accomplish. Modernity had a metanarrative that assumed that modernity itself was the climax of humanity. Science would eventually break everything down into objective facts, and there would be no use for religion. The Christian establishment reacted to that by essentially taking the same approach to doctrine: the assumption was that we could eventually break the bible down into concise doctrines and timeless truths. Realizing that metanarrative to be false and seeing how it is used to gain (and abuse) power, postmodernity rejected it, and as a result became highly suspicious of all metanarratives. One frustration I've heard from Christians who are solidly grounded in modernity is that when they are trying to bring someone to Christ they hear something along the lines of “That may be true for you, but it's not for me.” The conclusion that Wright reaches is that our reaction should be to affirm the assertion of postmodernity that the metanarrative of modernity is, in fact, false. But the challenge is to realize that instead of throwing out all metanarratives, we are to recognize the true metanarrative, which is the story of God pursuing and eventually redeeming humanity through Jesus. In this metanarrative, the cross is the climax and the resurrection is the beginning of a new creation. Jesus died on a Friday. Was in the tomb on the Sabbath – the day God rested. And was raised on the first day of the week, signifying the beginning of the new creation. In one place N.T. Wright uses the analogy of Jesus as a composer writing a score and the Church as the orchestra (or whatever) that is to take that score and play it. In other words, we cannot accomplish what Jesus accomplished, but we are to implement the Kingdom of God that Jesus was announcing. Jesus' reply to Pilate that is so often translated “My kingdom is not of this world” is actually translated, perhaps more clearly, in the NRSV as “My kingdom is not from this world.”
So, these lines of though have been leading me to think more about how we can live out the mission that Jesus has called us to.
This approach to ministry calls for a radically different way of looking at things, let alone doing things. We need to read the bible as the story of God searching out humanity. In Jesus' parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, and eventually lost son (which most of us know as the parable of the prodigal son) is is always the God character who is doing the searching. We all know we need to think about the Church differently. The image that I keep coming across is the parable of the wheat and weeds. In this parable, the farmer sows good seed in his field, but an enemy sneaks in and sows weeds. The farmer's servant asks if he should pull up the weeds and the farmer says to let them grow up together and the harvesters will sort it out at the harvest. Statistically, the church is no different than the world at large. We have the same divorce rates, the same unwed pregnancy rates, the same rates of bankrupcy, etc.. So why do we try to pretend that we are, and separate ourselves from the rest of the world? We also need to change the way we think about people who aren't christians. Every human has the image of God within them. It's been distorted and covered by our sin, but it's still there. Our job is to find that image within others and help it to grow.
I'm still trying to figure out how these things work out in practice. The one thing I do know is that it will look very different in different contexts. Some may look like what we traditionally think of as church, others will look nothing like what we think of as church. We have to be okay with that.
I named my son Josiah, after the Old Testament king credited with restoring the Law of God and clearing the temple of idols and false Gods. Last night, I wrote down under “dreams” that I want to raise my children with these ideas. If we don't start changing things right now our children will have it so much harder than we ever have. That's a real motivating thing for me. I want to sow the seeds that my children can grow into something amazing.
“Christian mission in the postmodern world must be the means of the church grasping the initiative and enabling our world to turn the corner in the right direction.”
“The Challenge of Jesus” by N.T. Wright pg. 168
"It is important ... to distinguish between centered sets and bounded sets .... The attractional church is a bounded set. That is, it is a set of people clearly marked off from those who do not belong to it. Churches thus mark themselves in a variety of ways. Having a church membership roll is an obvious one. This mechanism determines who's in and who's out. The missional-incarnational church, though, is a centered set. This means that rather than drawing a border to determine who belongs and who doesn't, a centered set is defined by its core values, and people are not seen as in or out, but as closer or further away from the center. In that sense, everyone is in and no one is out. Though some people are close to the center and others far from it, everyone is potentially part of the community in its broadest sense.
"A useful illustration is to think of the difference between wells and fences. In some farming communities, the farmer might build fences around their properties to keep their livestock in and the livestock of neighboring farms out. This is a bounded set. But in rural communities where farms or ranches cover an enormous geographic area, fencing the property is out of the question. In our home of Australia, ranches (called stations) are so vast that fences are superfluous. Under these conditions a farmer has to sink a bore and create a well, a precious water supply in the Outback. It is assumed that livestock, though they will stray, will never roam too far from the well, lest they die. This is a centered set. As long as there is a supply of clean water, the livestock will remain close by.
"Churches that see themselves as a centered set recognize that the gospel is so precious, so refreshing that, like a well in the Australian Outback, lovers of Christ will not stray too far from it. It is then a truly Christ-centered model. Rather than seeing people as Christian or non-Christian, as in or out, we would see people by their degree of distance from the center, Christ. In this way, the missional-incarnational church sees people as Christian and not-yet-Christian. It acknowledges the contribution of all people."
-Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch in "The Shaping of Things to Come"
To understand the difference between Christendom-like thinking and tghe emerging missional model, the following examples might help. Recently it was reported that a congregation in a small rural town in Australia had taken an innovative step toward reaching its community. A Melbourne newspaper announced, "Patrons of the Hamilton Hotel will soon be offered spirit of a different kind. In an unusual conversion, the town's Baptist congregation - who are teetotalers - have taken over one of the six pubs." The Hamilton community watched in amazement as the pub, located on main street opposite the local post office, was bought by the Baptist church and renovated into a church and conference center. Its front bar was turned into a recreation area for young people and its dance area was rebuilt into a chapel and meeting room. The bar was transformed into a coffee bar, the old pub now becoming an alcohol-free building.
In the article, various church leaders from Melbourne and the pastor of the Hamilton Baptist Church spoke of the relocation as innovative, creative, and daring. However, one sour note was sounded. Midway through the newspaper article a local from Hamilton is quoted. "One of the hotel's former regulars, farmer Bruce McKellar, 71, said he would miss his corner of the bar. 'I would walk in and straight to it; we all had our own space,' he said." The implied sadness of this comment wasn't lost on us. Farmer McKellar had been displaced from his personal seat at the bar, and though he had probably moved on to one of the other pubs, he would never again be welcomed at his favorite watering hole. In Australia, like England, the local pub is a place of acceptance and friendship. Patrons develop allegiances to their pubs and though they might visit one another occasionally, they feel a deep connection to their local (as it's called). Though American bars can be less friendly, more forboding places, the myth perpetuated in the successful television show Cheers, about a place "where everybody knows your name," is true of most English and Australian pubs. In Hamilton, farmers, tradesmen, and business people had been shooed out of the Hamilton Hotel to make way for the Baptists.
This project, though appearing innovative, in fact reflects Christendom thinking. It assumes that the church belongs prominently on the main street, and it claims that the church has the right to take over a public space and clean out the local people while creating a so-called sanctified religious zone. Whether it's in a pub, a school auditorium, or a two-hunred-year-old cathedral, it represents the same thinking. ... What is needed is the abandonment of the strict lines of demarcation between the sacred and profane spaces in our world and the recognition that people today are searching for relational communities that offer belonging, empowerment, and redemption.
On the other side of the planet, in the English town of Bradford, another pub has been transformed by Christians. The Cock & Bottle is a yellow, two-story English pub at the bottom of the street on the corner of Bradford's inner ring road. Two years ago it was rented by the Bradford Christian Pub Consortium. Bradford is a hardscrabble, working-class town. It has been noted in recent times for its racial conflict and street violence. But the Cock & Bottle represents a place of sanctuary and solace. Malcolm Willis has been employed by the consortium to manage the pub, and he and his wife live upstairs above the bar. He proves himself to be a genuinely missional leader when he says, "Jesus said go into all the world. And this includes pubs. He didn't say sit in your church and wait for people to come to you." The willises and their staff (all Christians) have set about creating a loving, welcoming environment, where locals are cared for, listened to, and ministered to. Says Willis, "Initially, many won't accept you talking about Jesus. Maybe after you've listened to them ten or twenty times - which can be exausting - they might say 'Can you pray for me? And then you see things happen." The missional church always thinks of the long haul rather than the quick fix.
Of course, the dilemma about whether Christians should be serving alcohol or not is bound to arise. Willis is himself a teetotaler, but he has an earthy and realistic outlook on the issue of drinking, "Yes, we're selling booze to people who could do without it, but if we don't, they'll just go somewhere else - at least if they're here, we can get alongside them. I knew that when I came here I personally had to be seen not to drink, but I'm not everybody. Someone once showed me Proverbs 31, which says, 'Beer and wine are only for the dying or for those who have lost all hope. Let them drink and forget how poor and miserable they feel. But you must defend those who are helpless and have no hope.' So I have to ask, What would Jesus have done? I think the Lord would have been here in the pubs."
There is a world of difference (and not just geographically) between the Cock & Bottle and the Hamilton Hotel. The former is missional, incarnational, and very risky. The latter is safe. It demonstrates sound financial management (it was cheaper for the Baptist Church to renovate the pub then to build a brand-new building). But it is classic Christendom thinking.
-from The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch
