Missional Church Part 2: What Must Change

This is part two of the series.  Make sure you read part one first, or else you may find yourself lost.  Also, remember, part 3-5 are coming, so don't lose hope after this somewhat depressing post.  The fire purifies and makes us stronger.

What Must Change

The earlier description of Church and Mission may seem foreign to most Christians. If you asked most people what their congregations mission was they probably wouldn’t quote Luke 4:18-19. They might say something like, “to be God’s community front porch” or “to serve God through word and witness.”  (Yes I actually got these off of a few church websites) While these may sound good on the surface level, they are not what Jesus set out to do. The issue here is not bad mission statements. This is just a reflection of many things that have gone wrong in the Church since the Emperor Constantine institutionalized the Church in an attempt to steal control away from Jesus and have it for himself. There are many issues we could discuss here, but for the purpose of this blog I will focus on three.

First, institutional churches are led by a few individuals. The model of leadership for these churches is a top down structure where a few individuals (or in some cases one person) makes decisions that effect the entire direction of the whole community. The members job then is to trust that the leader(s) is(are) working under the guidance of God or some special knowledge that they obtained during seminary and to just go with whatever they decide. This is more like a business model than a Scriptural model. When Paul wrote, “[Jesus] is the head of the body the church... in everything He has the supremacy” he truly meant that Christ has the complete supremacy. This means that your pastor, priest, bishop or Pope are simply members of Christ’s body and should be looked at as no different from any of your other brothers and sisters in Christ, because “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession."

Secondly, institutional churches are centered around a weekly gathering. This is also not a Biblical model for Christian churches. There clearly was a weekly gathering for the churches as described in the New Testament, but they were also clearly not centered around this weekly event. They were together in each others homes daily. They shared everything in common. They lived life as a family with each other. This is the vision God had for His Church from the beginning, because it is who the Triune God is in His very nature. God is community. As God’s people, we are called to live deeper into the lives of each other, not to simply show up for singing and a lecture once a week. If all church is, is a weekly gathering, the pressure is on. You better make it one hell of a gathering (pun intended). And this is exactly what Churches are doing. Highly trained, educated, and skilled people put 100+ man hours per week into preparing for an hour to two hour gathering to make it a top notch experience each week. Jesus did not come to earth and sacrifice Himself to a torturous death to get His people to put on a good show once a week.

Finally, most churches are so focused on their own growth as a congregation, that they show little or no concern for the Kingdom of God. Let me give a few points to support this bold statement. The average church plant costs $200,000-300,000 in the first 2 years. The average mega-church has a yearly budget of $5 million. And the average mega-church pastor is paid an annual salary of $147,000. It is no wonder that these churches are so focused on their own growth as opposed to Kingdom growth. They have a lot of bills to pay! And the pastor is highly rewarded for His success in growing His audience. This is why you drive around a town like Abilene and see a church on every street corner. Statistics show that 80% of church growth is transfer growth, not converts. This is because most institutional churches only care about growing their own congregation, not about growing the Kingdom.

Missional Church Part 1: The Relationship of Church and Mission

I am setting out to write a 5 part blog series on "Missional Church."  In part one I'll discuss the relationship with the Church and God's mission.  In part two we will take a broad look at what must change in most of our churches.  In part three I give a few practical missiological steps your church can take to get started in the right direction (beware, they are gonna be tough).  In part four I share a bit of my own experience in Missional Church.  And in part five I'll cast a vision for you that really gets me pumped!  So without further ado...

The Relationship of Church and Mission
Most of my life I never gave a second thought to the meaning of “church.” I wonder how many Christians are like me. How many of us have stopped to think, “Why are we all doing this? What is all of this about? What is the purpose of the Church? Where did we come from? And what does God want us to be doing?”

Six years ago, I began a journey asking these questions to myself and my Christian brothers and sisters. In this blog post I will attempt to answer these questions according to what I have found in Scripture, and in my journey trying to discover Jesus’ reason for establishing a Church.

In order to why Church and Mission are inseparable, one must first understand who God truly is. We must understand that God in His very nature is community. The Father, the Son and the Spirit are one fellowship. They share everything in common. Yahweh is One God in three distinct Persons. The three live in perfect union and love with each other. This is why God created humankind, because it is His nature to love, to be in fellowship and perfect unity.

When He created humankind, He set aside a specific people (Israel) that He called His own and said He would bless the entire world through them. As God sent a blessing to Israel, so they would be his advocates to the world by passing the blessing on to the Nations. Unfortunately, God’s people continually turned their back on him despite the blessings.  Yet He continued to pursue this love relationship with them. Eventually, He did so through His Son, Jesus, that was sent into the world as a missionary to bring His people back into this love relationship. Then as the Father sent the Son, the Son sent the Spirit to the Church to empower them to be full participants in God’s mission.

It is through this understanding that we see that God is a missionary by his very nature. Mission belongs to the Trinity, and as such is a gift that the Trinity gives to the Church. Our great example of course is the first ever missionary, the King Jesus Himself. It is through His example that the Church understands God’s mission. For a great understanding of what this mission will look like, we look to what many scholars call Jesus’ inauguration address.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus makes it clear that God will continue the work of blessing the world through His people as He blesses them. And this is exactly what we see Jesus doing throughout His ministry. He proclaims good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, gives sight to the blind, sets the oppressed free and proclaims the good news of His Kingdom reign. This is God’s mission, nothing more, nothing less. And this is the responsibility of Christ’s Church: to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, give sight to the blind, set the oppressed free and proclaim the good news of Jesus’ Kingdom.

Neo Pentecostalism

A few events over the summer have gotten me thinking a lot about this great movement sweeping the globe right now. For those of you that have no clue what I am talking about let me briefly explain.

Defined... Or at least described
The largest and fastest growing religion in the world is currently Christianity. The fastest growing sect/denomination/movement (insert your favorite term here) within Christianity in the world today is something most scholars are calling "Neo Pentacostalism" or "Neo Charasmatic." This is a hard term to define for several reasons.
1) Most people/churches who are part of this movement do not claim this title.
2) These churches look very different from city to city, country to country.
3) Many of these churches still go by their former name (Baptist, Community, Bible, even some Catholic churches, although this is rare).

There are a few things that are true of all (maybe I should say most) New Pentecostal churches that can help us identify these groups.
1) A very high view of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and of the Holy Spirit himself.
2) A very high value is placed on evangelism.
3) They believe they are a "New Testament Church" in the since that their beliefs and practices are largely based off of the book of Acts and the outbreaking of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Hence the name.

My Intentions
Ok, so by now you may have a few of these churches in mind, or maybe (highly likely) you are even a part of one of these communities of faith. Let me make my intentions very clear. I am not here to advocate for or judge against any particular faith community or movement. My intention in writing this is to help paint a picture of what I have observed, experienced and researched myself in order that some may learn something that may help themselves or someone they know live deeper into the heart and life of King Jesus.

Ground Rules
So anytime there is a big movement in any given religious group there are positives and negatives. If you don't believe this you might as well stop waisting your time with this blog. All movements are started by or at least managed by people. People have flaws. Movements have flaws. It's simple math.

The Good
It's always good to start with the positives.
1) An amazing number of people are coming into relationship with Jesus through this movement.
2) People in this movement take their faith very seriously. They are very bold about their faith.
3) People in this movement are finding thriving community through their church families who are part of this movement.
4) The Spirit is often manifesting himself in amazing ways in these communities.
5) There is a very high respect for the Scripture in this movement. Particularly in the book of Acts and in some of the Old Testament prophets writings.

I think most of us could agree that these are all very good things that this movement has brought to so many people. I for one am thankful for these things.

The Bad
Like I said, there is good and bad in every faith community. Lets just be honest and own it. (See previous posts to see how I have owned my faith traditions failures and successes.)
1) There are a few significant leaders in this movement that hold way too much weight in what happens in faith communities across the US. This also trickles down from the US to other nations due to missionary efforts. If we look at recent history we see that movements like this that had one or 2 central charismatic leaders typically crumble and leave horrible aftermath that Christians will be trying to cleanup for generations to come. (Think Kip McKean) I pray that this does not happen, but I dare say that no one man should ever hold as much of a burden as Bill Johnson out of Redding, CA does. I often hear young people talking about Bill Johnson as if he was the next best thing to Christ himself and talking about his church in Redding as some sort of Christian Mecca. It is hard to see anyway that this can end well. Again, I pray I am wrong because if I am not, things will get very ugly.
2) All too often a sense of pride finds it's way into these circles. This pride is largely based on the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit. Those not experiencing the manifestations of the Spirit are often ostracized and made to feel inferior to the others. This leads to individuals either leaving the community to find a place to belong elsewhere or faking a manifestation in order to be accepted.
3) The Holy Spirit often is given more attention than Jesus himself. This would grieve the Spirit deeply. Everything he does is about pointing back to Jesus. He never draws attention to himself, but only to Jesus.

Closing Thoughts
So here's what I hope you can take away with you.
1) Stay humble. What you believe now probably isn't exactly what you believed 5 years ago and it's probably not exactly what you'll believe 5 years from now. It's possible that you are wrong. So be humble and know that your way of doing things is not necessarily the best way of doing it.
2) Be cautious of people who like to start ministries titled "insert name here ministries." Its an easy to see marker that they are struggling mightily with pride. Don't blindly follow anyone.
3) If the people around you talk about the Spirit more than Jesus, gracefully remind them that Jesus is the King and all of life in His Kingdom is about loving, honoring and serving Him. The Spirit's job is to help us do that better than we could on our own.
4) Let's all get along. It was Jesus' dying wish on the cross that we all live in unison with one another. The least we can do is give him that.

Grace and Peace.
Jordan

The Inevitable vs. The Choice

Context is really inevitable isn’t it? You can choose your context to be sure. Regardless of where you are in life you are simply in a context. This is a fact of life you cannot escape. This seems obvious and overly simplistic. Yet it is key to understanding where and how to move and interact with the world.

Some contexts you get to choose, others are chosen for you. A baby is born into a particular context. I was born in the United States of America. Dallas, Texas to be more specific. Even more so, I was born to Clint and Belinda Bunch, an upper-middle-class, white, well-educated, republican, Christian, Church of Christ family. This is not the context I choose. I was simply born into it. There is nothing I can do to change the fact that I was born into the Bunch family.

My friend Tony was born into a very different context. Tony was born in the South Bronx. He’s not sure who his dad is, and to be honest, his mom isn’t sure either. He imagines he looks like his dad, because he looks nothing like his mom. He was born to a lower class, single-mother, atheist family that was just trying to make ends meet and help her son survive in a dangerous school system. Tony didn’t choose his context. He was simply born into it. There is nothing he can do to change the fact that he was born into the Williams family. What a strange world we live in. Some people are just lucky I guess…

Yet there was One who had the opportunity to choose His context. And it should be obvious which one He would choose right? Clearly He should choose the Bunch family. If you get to choose one, go with the Bunches. Am I right? Yet the One I am discussing, didn’t just get to choose to be a Bunch or a Williams. He had the opportunity to choose any context He wanted. Not bad huh?

Being that this One happened to choose the 1st Century AD to be born, you would think He would choose to be Caesar right? I mean, if you’re going to choose you might as well go big.

For some odd reason, He didn’t choose Caesar. He didn’t choose any royal family at all. In fact, He went the way of an illegitimate child of teenage girl who couldn’t afford one night in a motel. Why would He choose such a life? I mean, I’m no genius. But the answer is really clear that you’ve got to go with Caesar on this one!
One must wonder what Jesus of Nazareth was thinking when He choose Mary. He must have had something special in mind. Surely He had to have had a trick up His sleeve. The truth of the matter is, Jesus chose to intentionally place himself in the specific context of an unwed teenage girl so that he could best show his love to the world. It is out of the lowest class on earth that Jesus chooses to enter the world, because it is a sign of a new Kingdom coming. A Kingdom where everything is backwards and Jesus is King. The first are last and the last are first. Mourning is turned into dancing! Weakness is strength! The blind can see and the lame dance the streets all to the glory of the Most High King!

This is Good News for the poor! But what about me? I was born into the Bunch family. It was a context I didn’t choose, but if everything is backwards in this new Kingdom then that means I’m last.

Yet maybe all contexts aren’t chosen for you. After all I am an adult now. I choose where to go to college. I choose who to marry. I choose what job to take. Now, maybe a lot of these decisions were effected by the context that I did not choose, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still choose a new context, a new Kingdom.

In this new Kingdom all of the citizens are madly in love with their King. They radically abandon the ways of the world in order to pursue relationship with Him. They put all of their effort into becoming like Him in every way. As a follower of Jesus, intentionally placing oneself in a specific context that will best allow them to show their love for others is often over looked. We weren’t able to choose from birth, but as adults we are able to choose our context.

So the question becomes, will you choose to be first, or last?

How to renew the Church?

“The renewal of the church will come from a new type of monasticism, which has only in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time men and women banded together to do this." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone 4