Vol 2:16 Missional Church: Communities of the Spirit

As I continue reading Eugene Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor, I keep running into thoughts that ignite my pastoral and missional imagination, especially as it correlates with a post-Easter sermon series on 1 Peter in which I am focusing on what it means for us to be communities of the Resurrection, communities of the Spirit – filled with hope, sojourners in the land, being a royal priesthood, etc.

Peterson reiterates for me an understanding of church that is deeply missional. He writes about his discovery of the Lucan accounts of the birth of Jesus and the birth of the church as being parallel – “Luke 1-2, the story of the birth of Jesus, our Savior; Acts 1-2, the story of the birth of church, our salvation community” (p. 124).

He then raises the question about how we think about salvation and how we think about church. He expresses that often we think of salvation of God’s work and the church as our work, i.e., as “what we do to continue the work of Jesus in his absence” (p. 125).

But what Luke expresses in Acts that the birth of the church is a work of the Holy Spirit as much as the birth of Jesus was the work of the Holy Spirit. Peterson expresses that as he and the congregation, he was planting in Bel Air, Maryland, were studying the book of Acts they “were learning that the Acts text set the entire church operation as the work of the Holy Spirit. We were learning that folding chairs, the urn of coffee, and financial reports were included in the operation” (p. 125).

He concludes by saying:

"God gave us the miracle of congregation with the same sign he gave us the miracle of Jesus, by the descent of the dive. The Holy Spirit descended into the womb of Mary in the Galilean village of Nazareth. Thirty or so years later the same Holy Spirit descended into the collective womb of men and women, which included Mary, who had been followers of Jesus. The first conception gave us Jesus, the second conception gave us church." (p. 127)

This is a great reminder for us as we live as missional communities of the resurrection and of the Spirit in this post-Easter and pre-Pentecost season. In being missional communities, no matter how much we do, how much effort our ministry takes, how much we think this is our work – none of this is our work. Yes, we are involved, but all we are engaged in is all the continuing work of the Spirit working in and through the life of communities of resurrection to accomplish the redemptive purpose of God in the world. In fact, the more we make it “our” work, the less it is about what God is accomplishing and to that extent we cease being missional.

In fact, to participate with God in what God is doing in the world, requires us to open our lives more and more to the blowing of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God to move us, to shape us, to engage us – even our discipleship and missional engagement is a working of the Spirit in us, rather than our work.

As Paul urges us to “work out our salvation” (cf. Php. 2:12), rather than it being a “to do list” of our own efforts, we read in 2:13 “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Being missional, being missional communities, being communities of resurrection is all about our being open to be taken hold by the Spirit because it is the Spirit who continues the ministry of Jesus in the world.

Vol 1:22 Continuing Reflections on Introducing the Missional Church: Rediscovering our Missional Calling

In Roxburgh and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church (Baker, 2009) the metaphor of the missional life is expressed through being a “missional river.” The currents of this river are described as involving mystery, memory, and mission (p. 39).

Over the past two weeks my reflections were on mystery, and memory; today I focus upon mission.

Mission focuses upon making clear what our role is within the world as the church of Jesus Christ. Just as Abraham and Israel were called for the sake of the world – which means that God reveals and demonstrates God’s purpose for reconciling humanity and restoring the world through those whom God calls, likewise God has called the church “to be the demonstration of what all creation is to be” (p. 45).

This is a reframing of how we understand church, how we understand ourselves in relation to church. As North Americans much of our religious experience, much of our church life has been around self actualization. Spirituality is defined and experienced as what heals us as we do the inner work of becoming whole. “The church in North America to a large extent has lost this [missional] memory to the point that mission is but a single element in multifaceted, programmatic congregations serving the needs of its members. The gospel is now a religious message that meets the needs of self-actualizing individuals” (p. 45).

Though healing work is important work, it is not our primary calling or work. Roxburgh and Boren state that, “there is no participation in Christ without participation in God’s mission in the world” (p. 45). I agree with this statement – we are called first and foremost to participate with God in accomplishing the redemptive purpose of God in the world (and somehow in the midst of this giving of ourselves to God the Spirit brings healing to us as a gift, which we receive as a gift). The church’s calling is to be “God’s missionary people” (p. 45).

In coming to understand this, we come face to face with the Gospel which confronts our tendency to make God about us, rather than our being involved in life and ministry for God.

On numerous occasions Jesus declared that to follow him involves denying self, taking up the cross (dying) and following after him (cf. Matthew 16: 24ff, Mark 8: 34ff, Luke 9: 23ff). Being baptized – by either water or the Spirit, is not about becoming privileged, or aligned with the powers of the world, but dying with Christ, being raised with Christ, in order to live to God (cf. Romans 6: 5ff).

Unless we get this, unless we understand this, being Christian, living out the Gospel is always going to be about us, our self-actualization. God is merely an aspect of our life, but not the center or all of our life. But if I respond to God’s call – it is a giving of all who I am to God; all of who I am is placed at God’s disposal for God to do in me, through me, whatever God desires to do with my life. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (cf. Galatians 2:20).

If this cost is too great (cf. Luke 9: 57ff), then perhaps we need to reevaluate to what extent we can call ourselves followers and disciples of Jesus Christ. If God has a convenient place in our lives, rather than all of life being centered in God, then we may be religious folk, but we are not God’s people participating with God in making all things new.

I know we mess up more than we want to in life, and we do not always live exemplifying the purposes of God as God’s people, but is it our confession to be God’s people, a people who participate with God in living out God’s mission, to seek to be centered in God, to seek to love our neighbors as Christ loves us, to recognize we do not do this well alone but we need the Spirit of God to take hold of our lives? I pray that we who call ourselves Christian indeed do identify and center ourselves with and in Jesus Christ – in being rooted in Christ, only in this way are we empowered to be the people of God, accomplishing with God, God’s purpose for the redemption of the world.

Vol 1:16 Reflections on What I'm Reading

The book written by several missional authors that helped establish missional understanding in the North American context is Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eeredmans, 1998). It provided a theological foundation for understanding the need for a missional understanding of church in North America. Many readers struggled with how to apply Missional Church to their settings, asking the question, “what does a missional church look like?” In response the Gospel and Our Culture Network produced Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness (Eerdmans. 2004) which presented nine congregational sketches – churches that were very different from one another – to show how being missional was not so much about a particular model of church, but instead displaying a particular pattern in being the people of God who are sign, instrument, and foretaste of God’s present and coming reign.

Other helpful books on understanding missional over the years have been The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America (Eerdmans, 1996), StormFront: The Good News of God (Eerdmans, 2003), a recent collection of writings known as the Missional Church Series also published by Eerdmans, features titles such as, The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry and The Missional Church and Denominations: Helping Congregations Develop a Missional Identity – to name two.

However, a recent book I have picked up is a great primer on re-understanding the importance of being missional. It seems that far too many have co-opted the term missional to mean what they want it to mean, such as being associated with church growth and attractional understandings of church, but all these dilute an understanding of what is meant by missional. Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren have produced an excellent volume (so far at least since I just started reading it) on helping readers interested in understanding what missional is about to cut through all the pseudo understandings in order to help us rediscover the essence of being missional in North America. Their book is entitled, Introducing the Missional Church: What it is, why it matters, how to become one (Baker Books, 2009).

I am planning on having our Church Board read through this book together so that the community I pastor might come to more clearly understand why being missional is so important and in what ways we need to be open to being transformed so as to become missional in all we are and do.

Roxburgh and Boren take their readers on a journey to understand how missional is more of a metaphor than a model, how it is related to living as God’s people demonstrating the present and coming reign of God, how it reframes an understanding of church as being sent into the world, rather than being the community that sends. They talk about developing a missional imagination that is more rooted in a biblical imagination than a modern worldview. Missional is a fluid concept pictured better as a river than an idea to be defined. Missional is about participating with God in God’s mission, rather than our seeking God to bless our activities.

So, if you need a refresher on understanding missional or have never really understood what it means, I invite you to read this book along with me.


Next week: Being missional in preaching – Hearing the voice of the Spirit in our midst