In an article titled, "The 'Missional Church': A Model for Churches?" David Horrox writes, "The church should stop mimicking the surrounding culture and become an alternative community, with a different set of beliefs, values and behaviors. Ministers would no longer engage in marketing; churches would no longer place primary emphasis on programs to serve members. The traditional ways of evaluating 'successful churches' – bigger buildings, more people, bigger budgets, larger ministerial staff, new and more programs to serve members – would be rejected. New yardsticks would be the norm: To what extent is our church a 'sent' community in which each believer is reaching out to his community? To what extent is our church impacting the community with a Christian message that challenges the values of our secular society?"
Well, that lays out a significant difference between a traditional way of looking at church, and even a growingly popular way of doing church (marketing and programs and measuring "success") and a radically new/ancient way of being the church. Ultimately, to be true to the Gospel, the Church needs a transformation. Not a change, but a transformation. The purpose of the church is not to sell religious goods and services to its clients/members. The purpose of the Church is to be foretaste of God's kin-dom and the means to God's missional ends: healing the earth, ensuring the health and dignity of every person and the abolishment of violent way of dealing with differences.
What would it take for First Plymouth to take such a bold step?
As Lieutenant Cable sang in South Pacific, "You've got to be carefully taught." We learn from our mother's knee that church is for us, the family of God. Some of us do "missional" things in our daily lives. Does that make us missional Christians?
ReplyDeleteI've been reading "A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story" by Diana Butler Bass. In it she talks about the "two loves," love of God and love of neighbor, as the Christian way. In the Didache (late 1st, early 2nd century church/pastoral manual for believers) it's clear that the church is a place where Christians are formed for the mission of the two loves. The formation of a Christian took several years culminating in baptism after careful examination by the community.
Church membership now is more like joining the Optimists or the Country Club, a place where people come to socialize using the props of Christianity as a fulcrum around which life is organized. Not everywhere, of course.
What would a missional church look like in real life? Leslie Newbigin, the early missional scholar, thinks it will have these characteristic:
1. It practices corporate praise, thanksgiving, gratitude, and grace;
2. It declares truth that challenges the reigning plausibility structure
3. It establishes relationships within a local neighbourhood
4. It encourages mutual service in the priesthood of all believers
5. It expects mutual responsibility rather than individualism
6. It nurtures hope and a re-imagined vision of the future.
The church is not the focus of mission. Mission exists by going out, like missionaries, into our own spheres of influence and living our lives as people of the way. In many ways people are already doing this. The church then becomes the place where people are able to discern where God is at work in their own surroundings where they live their daily lives, and then plan, in community with other people of the way, how to engage in God's project there. It's "Mission Central" where we can listen, learn, love and be sent out.
In the Episcopal Church at the end of worship the people are given the charge, "And now, God, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ." That's what the missional church prepares us for, to go out into our worlds and live as people of the way, loving God and loving our neighbors. (In my humble opinion...)
Here's a great video about church metrics, measuring results. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9lxaQDczhs