I spend most days in the office. Meetings. Planning worship. Writing sermons. Answering e-mails. Study. Reading (the pile on the corner of my desk--stuff to read--getting bigger). When I leave the office, I visit. Church Members. Family of Church Members. Hospitals, homebound, post-surgical rehab, assisted living, nursing homes. I fill out my monthly Report to Session, a listing of everything I've done since the last Report to Session, and it is full. A lot of suff. I've been busy, no doubt, and I can document it. And, much of the church's work done, the church moves forward. I love my job. I love my calling. I love the people I work with. And what I do makes a difference. It matters. The Word is read and proclaimed, sacraments celebrated, prayers prayed. People learn, their minds and hearts expanded. People are challenged. They're affirmed. People feel cared-for. And I'm grateful.
But, every day, another day at the church done, I drive home, toward the mountains glowing in the afternoon sun (unless, of course, it's been another 12-hour day and the sun has long since disappeared behind the Continental Divide), praising God for my life. And the question, always there: do I have this right?
Leading an established, traditional, attractional church to embrace becoming a missional/incarnational church obviously involves change. Massive change. And it's change that has to begin with the church leadership which means that it's change that has to begin with me. I cannot lead what I do not live. If I want the congregation I serve to, collectively, lead a missional life, I must be leading a missional life. It isn't so much that the kinds of things pastors typically do are at odds with missional leadership, but it is easy to allow them to continue to define the bullet points of your ministry. What pastors typically do, in other words, is all you do, and that cannot be. I don't mean to diminish what pastors do or suggest that whatever it is, it isn't enough. But to the extent missional church involves shifting from an inward to an outward focus, so too must missional--which is to say, pastoral--leadership. I'm not a pastor only to the congregation I serve but a pastor to the entire community.
I want to get this right. But it's tough. Missional leadership is not the leadership seminary taught me just as missional church is not the church seminary taught me. I can read books, attend seminars, and write blogs all about what to do, but the pull of the familiar is brutal...it's hard, on a daily basis, to break free of the routines that have defined ministry for so long. It requires not just a knowledge of what new stuff to do (a challenge in itself) but the mindfulness, the discipline to do it. It doesn't help that my default reaction all my life has been to read and think...find something I want to do, I read about it and think about it but, somehow, don't always get around to actually doing it. That won't work here. The knowing and thinking is important, but as with any issue of discipleship--and that's what this is--important only to the extent it results in doing. Living what I lead...
Do you struggle with this? How do you handle the struggle?
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Changing "Normal"
Back in my former life as a university professor, the area in which I worked--the intersection between mass media and the creation of culture--was populated by individuals who liked to use the word hegemony. Hegemony refers to the ability of cultural institutions like the mass media to define "normal." There are assumptions, values, ideologies, etc. that are so profoundly accepted they not only are unquestioned, they are simply accepted as, collectively, constituting normalcy. Like fish unaware of the water in which they swim, we live in a particular cultural milieu where, at a very basic level, we accept that the way things are is the way they must be.
As I have begun in earnest a conversation with the congregation I serve about what it will mean for us to embrace a missional/incarnational understanding of church, I've become aware in new ways of the hegemonic power of the institutional church, of what those in the missional church movement like to call "Christendom." I've told the congregation that in any move to missional, half the battle is mental, simply getting our heads around a different way of understanding what Christ calls his church to be.
This mental battle is more than just resistence to change. We could remain a traditional, attractional church, merely implementing a new strategy for church growth, and encounter resistence to change. And change to the stasis of any system will be resisted to one degree or another.
No, this is a battle of an altogether different order. A move to missional is not just a change in our understanding of church (in itself a significant hurdle) but a change in our understanding of normal. It requires stepping outside one paradigm of being church with a level of awareness sufficient to make it clear that the ways we've done church in the past are only "normal" because that's the way we've always done them. To that extent, many of the ways we've done church are not divinely ordained so much as they are inherited. Encouraging the congregation to recognize that it is within our power to redefine normal while remaining faithful to Christ's calling, and that even though the ground beneath our feet will move as the redefining progresses the center--Christ--will still hold, is the challenge.
And then there's this: to the extent we can be a missional/incarnational church only insofar as we're living missional/incarnational lives, the "normal" that is being challenged is not just about church but about the intricacies of our daily existence.
High thinking, perhaps, that comes to ground in something as comparatively mundane as suggesting that a particular committee is not really necessary. People can acknowledge that the committee doesn't work very efficiently, that folks are not lining-up to be part of the committee, even that the work the committee does doesn't require a committee to be accomplished...yet they struggle to imagine the church without the committee.
One of the things I've discovered about remaking normal is that some people can make the leap instinctively and immediately: they can envision the new normal and the benefits it provides...they get it. Others grasp the new normal incrementally, arriving at an understanding over time, a piece at a time. And still others will never get there at all. Some leaders advocate defining the new normal and forging ahead, taking with you those who can make the leap and leaving all the others to forge for themselves. I'm not sure you can do that in a church...something, perhaps, about us all being members of the body of Christ. This is part of my learning curve--figuring out how to lead through a process of redefining normal. It is one thing to research and speculate upon the power of hegemony, safe on the sidelines of academia; it's another to be in the thick of it, groping about to find your way.
How do you redefine "normal" in your context? What challenges do you face?
As I have begun in earnest a conversation with the congregation I serve about what it will mean for us to embrace a missional/incarnational understanding of church, I've become aware in new ways of the hegemonic power of the institutional church, of what those in the missional church movement like to call "Christendom." I've told the congregation that in any move to missional, half the battle is mental, simply getting our heads around a different way of understanding what Christ calls his church to be.
This mental battle is more than just resistence to change. We could remain a traditional, attractional church, merely implementing a new strategy for church growth, and encounter resistence to change. And change to the stasis of any system will be resisted to one degree or another.
No, this is a battle of an altogether different order. A move to missional is not just a change in our understanding of church (in itself a significant hurdle) but a change in our understanding of normal. It requires stepping outside one paradigm of being church with a level of awareness sufficient to make it clear that the ways we've done church in the past are only "normal" because that's the way we've always done them. To that extent, many of the ways we've done church are not divinely ordained so much as they are inherited. Encouraging the congregation to recognize that it is within our power to redefine normal while remaining faithful to Christ's calling, and that even though the ground beneath our feet will move as the redefining progresses the center--Christ--will still hold, is the challenge.
And then there's this: to the extent we can be a missional/incarnational church only insofar as we're living missional/incarnational lives, the "normal" that is being challenged is not just about church but about the intricacies of our daily existence.
High thinking, perhaps, that comes to ground in something as comparatively mundane as suggesting that a particular committee is not really necessary. People can acknowledge that the committee doesn't work very efficiently, that folks are not lining-up to be part of the committee, even that the work the committee does doesn't require a committee to be accomplished...yet they struggle to imagine the church without the committee.
One of the things I've discovered about remaking normal is that some people can make the leap instinctively and immediately: they can envision the new normal and the benefits it provides...they get it. Others grasp the new normal incrementally, arriving at an understanding over time, a piece at a time. And still others will never get there at all. Some leaders advocate defining the new normal and forging ahead, taking with you those who can make the leap and leaving all the others to forge for themselves. I'm not sure you can do that in a church...something, perhaps, about us all being members of the body of Christ. This is part of my learning curve--figuring out how to lead through a process of redefining normal. It is one thing to research and speculate upon the power of hegemony, safe on the sidelines of academia; it's another to be in the thick of it, groping about to find your way.
How do you redefine "normal" in your context? What challenges do you face?
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
The Power of the 'burbs
My wife and I have been married nearly 30 years and in that time we've owned five houses. If you factor in the places we've rented, that's another seven or eight. Every one has been in the suburbs. In fact, every time Terry and I have moved, making a choice about where to live, it has been suburbia.
Partly, no doubt, this has been because Terry and I are both products of suburbia, born and raised therein because our parents, too, in making choices about where to live, chose suburbia. Suburbs are what we know. Partly, too, it has been a function of the cities where we've lived: not Boston or New York City or Philadelphia, cities where there are a lot of options for living in a downtown neighborhood should you so choose, but Ft. Worth and Austin and Columbia, Missouri, cities where downtown is for working, not living, and the vast majority of housing options are elsewhere.
Whatever the reason, living in the 'burbs has had a significant impact on shaping our lives. Duh. Hardly a profound observation but one, now that we're trying to lead more missional lives, we're coming to understand in new ways. A missional life is also to be an incarnational life, your daily decisions and actions bearing witness to the Good News right where you are...a life necessarily lived in community, in the midst of the people with whom you share your slice of the suburban landscape. Yet, despite all the marketing developers do to try to paint a particular suburb as a community, life in the suburbs can so easily be an escape from community. Just walking down the street where I live, it's hard for me to avoid the feeling this is not a community so much as an assemblage of houses, autonomous entities where families just like mine retreat from the demands of middle class life. I don't know these people; in some cases, I've never even seen these people. Granted, my family is relatively new to the neighborhood, but I've made little real effort on my own to meet my neighbors.
Truth be told, my neighbors have made little real effort to meet me. But my guess is that for them, like for me, this isn't the result of a conscious decision to be un-neighborly. It is, instead, a consequence of lives that take us one place to work or go to school, another place to shop, another place to visit friends, another place (tellingly) to go to church (assuming, of course, that we do church), and yet another place--home--to eat and sleep and do laundry. It is a consequence of lives full of demands: once we're home, the most neighborliness we can muster is a wave hello across the street.
Living missionally in the 'burbs, therefore, means confronting the power of the 'burbs...a power to define ourselves first and foremost as single families in single family homes, places of privacy and (hopefully) comfort where we can keep the demands of middle class life at bay, if only for awhile...a power that makes any real sense of community, especially as we'd understand it in a Scriptural sense, hard to find. But if it's in suburbia that we find ourselves, it's in suburbia that we are called to serve the Risen Lord, beginning with
acknowledging that, here, community likely will not arise merely because people live in the same place, but because we have proactively chosen to create it.
I continue to discover that faithfully living a missional life means rethinking some of the most basic realities of daily living--"defamiliarizing" them, as it were. But that's because missional living must follow from missional thinking, a re-making of how we make sense of the world and our place in it, whether that be downtown, uptown, or in the 'burbs.
Partly, no doubt, this has been because Terry and I are both products of suburbia, born and raised therein because our parents, too, in making choices about where to live, chose suburbia. Suburbs are what we know. Partly, too, it has been a function of the cities where we've lived: not Boston or New York City or Philadelphia, cities where there are a lot of options for living in a downtown neighborhood should you so choose, but Ft. Worth and Austin and Columbia, Missouri, cities where downtown is for working, not living, and the vast majority of housing options are elsewhere.
Whatever the reason, living in the 'burbs has had a significant impact on shaping our lives. Duh. Hardly a profound observation but one, now that we're trying to lead more missional lives, we're coming to understand in new ways. A missional life is also to be an incarnational life, your daily decisions and actions bearing witness to the Good News right where you are...a life necessarily lived in community, in the midst of the people with whom you share your slice of the suburban landscape. Yet, despite all the marketing developers do to try to paint a particular suburb as a community, life in the suburbs can so easily be an escape from community. Just walking down the street where I live, it's hard for me to avoid the feeling this is not a community so much as an assemblage of houses, autonomous entities where families just like mine retreat from the demands of middle class life. I don't know these people; in some cases, I've never even seen these people. Granted, my family is relatively new to the neighborhood, but I've made little real effort on my own to meet my neighbors.
Truth be told, my neighbors have made little real effort to meet me. But my guess is that for them, like for me, this isn't the result of a conscious decision to be un-neighborly. It is, instead, a consequence of lives that take us one place to work or go to school, another place to shop, another place to visit friends, another place (tellingly) to go to church (assuming, of course, that we do church), and yet another place--home--to eat and sleep and do laundry. It is a consequence of lives full of demands: once we're home, the most neighborliness we can muster is a wave hello across the street.
Living missionally in the 'burbs, therefore, means confronting the power of the 'burbs...a power to define ourselves first and foremost as single families in single family homes, places of privacy and (hopefully) comfort where we can keep the demands of middle class life at bay, if only for awhile...a power that makes any real sense of community, especially as we'd understand it in a Scriptural sense, hard to find. But if it's in suburbia that we find ourselves, it's in suburbia that we are called to serve the Risen Lord, beginning with
acknowledging that, here, community likely will not arise merely because people live in the same place, but because we have proactively chosen to create it.
I continue to discover that faithfully living a missional life means rethinking some of the most basic realities of daily living--"defamiliarizing" them, as it were. But that's because missional living must follow from missional thinking, a re-making of how we make sense of the world and our place in it, whether that be downtown, uptown, or in the 'burbs.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Lord, Expand My Comfort Zone--I Think
A willingness to move out of your comfort zone is pretty much a prerequisite for being a missional church and living a missional life. We can do our best to restructure traditional, attractional church models, so that to all intents and purposes a church looks missional. But a church actually being missional means that those who call it home are living missional lives. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that a church is only missional to the extent that those who call it home are living missional lives.
Living a missional life comes naturally for some people but, I have to admit, I'm not one of them. Moving out of my spiritual and material comfort zone is difficult, especially insofar as it involves the whole business of "going forth"--business that, admittedly, is foundational to the entire missional enterprise. At an intellectual level, I can embrace it. Easily. I can read Genesis 12 as readily as the next person. I know that God is a calling-out God. I understand the Greek word for church in the New Testament is ekklesia--the "called-out ones." But living it...going forth as one who is called out to meet people I do not know in places I do not know... That's tough. It's not my natural inclination. Even just going across the street in my own neighborhood--a place I do know--to meet someone I've seen any number of times already makes me uncomfortable.
I can explain my reaction, talk about how, by nature, I tend to be an introvert; how I spent much of my childhood choosing to be alone because I was one of those frequently nerdy kids who found it hard to fit in. I can even explain it in terms of roles and power: as a pastor, with the congregation I serve, I can work a room full of people, meeting and talking with strangers and I'm fine. But invite me to a party where I'm just me and don't know anyone there, I trail along at my wife's heels like a puppy dog. Obviously, an ability to explain my reaction doesn't necessarily equate to an ability to change it.
I'm reminded of several realities. I do believe that I cannot lead what I do not live, so I have to work to expand my missional comfort zone whatever it takes. I need to remember that what I'm asking of the congregation I serve, even if I'm simultaneously asking it of myself, is difficult and it's frightening. And I must constantly remind all of us engaged in making this move to missional that much of the battle is mental, changing thought patterns that themselves are rooted in a suburban, consumerist, a person's-home-is-their-castle mentality that mitigates against the formation of true community, against opening up to people who are strangers and, in some ways at least, are very different from you.
Praying that God will make me into the person God needs me to be takes on a whole new meaning when that involves moving me out of my comfortz zone and, therefore, exchanging old, ingrained ways of thinking for new ones. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind," Paul writes. I know it needs to happen. And I want God to help me. I think.
Living a missional life comes naturally for some people but, I have to admit, I'm not one of them. Moving out of my spiritual and material comfort zone is difficult, especially insofar as it involves the whole business of "going forth"--business that, admittedly, is foundational to the entire missional enterprise. At an intellectual level, I can embrace it. Easily. I can read Genesis 12 as readily as the next person. I know that God is a calling-out God. I understand the Greek word for church in the New Testament is ekklesia--the "called-out ones." But living it...going forth as one who is called out to meet people I do not know in places I do not know... That's tough. It's not my natural inclination. Even just going across the street in my own neighborhood--a place I do know--to meet someone I've seen any number of times already makes me uncomfortable.
I can explain my reaction, talk about how, by nature, I tend to be an introvert; how I spent much of my childhood choosing to be alone because I was one of those frequently nerdy kids who found it hard to fit in. I can even explain it in terms of roles and power: as a pastor, with the congregation I serve, I can work a room full of people, meeting and talking with strangers and I'm fine. But invite me to a party where I'm just me and don't know anyone there, I trail along at my wife's heels like a puppy dog. Obviously, an ability to explain my reaction doesn't necessarily equate to an ability to change it.
I'm reminded of several realities. I do believe that I cannot lead what I do not live, so I have to work to expand my missional comfort zone whatever it takes. I need to remember that what I'm asking of the congregation I serve, even if I'm simultaneously asking it of myself, is difficult and it's frightening. And I must constantly remind all of us engaged in making this move to missional that much of the battle is mental, changing thought patterns that themselves are rooted in a suburban, consumerist, a person's-home-is-their-castle mentality that mitigates against the formation of true community, against opening up to people who are strangers and, in some ways at least, are very different from you.
Praying that God will make me into the person God needs me to be takes on a whole new meaning when that involves moving me out of my comfortz zone and, therefore, exchanging old, ingrained ways of thinking for new ones. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind," Paul writes. I know it needs to happen. And I want God to help me. I think.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
The "Real" Work of the Church
I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about just what is the "real" work of the church. It's an unavoidable consequence of going missional. Once you embrace the idea that God is a missional God, a God who calls out God's people to go forth to be a blessing to the nations, it's difficult not to look at what you do in the name of being church and ask yourself, "Is this really what we ought to be about?"
But old habits die hard. And slowly. I was reminded of this in an upside-the-head sort of way several days ago. Drew West, a member of the congregation I serve, graduated from high school this past summer. Rather than go straight to college, or straight to work, or straight to a backpacking-trip-through-Europe-before-I-have-to-get-serious-about-my-future, Drew went to live for six months in Zambia. We have a sister congregation there, Chawama Presbyterian Church. The Lord is at work among our Zambian brothers and sisters in powerful ways, but Lusaka, the city where Chawama is loocated, is not Longmont, and Zambia is not Colorado. It is a dangerous place, especially the part where Drew is living. Yet he felt called. And he went. Living with the pastor of Chawama and his wife, Drew is helping in the church school. He's also teaching 70 Zambian children the Gospel of John.
Drew is writing a blog of his experiences (you can read it here: http://drewzambia.wordpress.com/) and, in reading it, you can trace the workings of the Holy Spirit not only in Drew's life but in the lives of the people with whom, daily, Drew is living and working and worshiping. Drew is discovering what it means to live a missional life, and not because he's a "missionary" in the traditional sense, not because he's left behind life in the West to live and work in a desperately poor, desperately desperate Third World country. He's living a missional life because his life, daily, is an expression of the Good News of Jesus Christ. He's living God's call to be a blessing to the nations. He's living what is, in fact, the real work of the church.
I've not been reading Drew's blog. Not reading it and not responding to it, thereby not saying to Drew, "We care about you and the work you're doing." The fact I haven't been reading and responding isn't intentional, isn't the consequence of thinking, "I really should read Drew's blog" and saying, "Nah..." I haven't read it because I haven't made time to read it because I've been too busy doing church work. Despite all my re-thinking of just what, indeed, is the "real" work of the church, I've been so caught-up in the habits of day-in, day-out church maintenance--the old habits that die hard--that I've overlooked the fact that here, one of our own is not just talking about being missional but is actually being missional, doing what is, in fact, the "real" work of the church.
I'm now reading Drew's blog. And responding to it. The reading and responding may help Drew but, even more, it helps me. It holds me accountable. It reminds me what the real work of the church truly is.
Physician, heal thyself.
But old habits die hard. And slowly. I was reminded of this in an upside-the-head sort of way several days ago. Drew West, a member of the congregation I serve, graduated from high school this past summer. Rather than go straight to college, or straight to work, or straight to a backpacking-trip-through-Europe-before-I-have-to-get-serious-about-my-future, Drew went to live for six months in Zambia. We have a sister congregation there, Chawama Presbyterian Church. The Lord is at work among our Zambian brothers and sisters in powerful ways, but Lusaka, the city where Chawama is loocated, is not Longmont, and Zambia is not Colorado. It is a dangerous place, especially the part where Drew is living. Yet he felt called. And he went. Living with the pastor of Chawama and his wife, Drew is helping in the church school. He's also teaching 70 Zambian children the Gospel of John.
Drew is writing a blog of his experiences (you can read it here: http://drewzambia.wordpress.com/) and, in reading it, you can trace the workings of the Holy Spirit not only in Drew's life but in the lives of the people with whom, daily, Drew is living and working and worshiping. Drew is discovering what it means to live a missional life, and not because he's a "missionary" in the traditional sense, not because he's left behind life in the West to live and work in a desperately poor, desperately desperate Third World country. He's living a missional life because his life, daily, is an expression of the Good News of Jesus Christ. He's living God's call to be a blessing to the nations. He's living what is, in fact, the real work of the church.
I've not been reading Drew's blog. Not reading it and not responding to it, thereby not saying to Drew, "We care about you and the work you're doing." The fact I haven't been reading and responding isn't intentional, isn't the consequence of thinking, "I really should read Drew's blog" and saying, "Nah..." I haven't read it because I haven't made time to read it because I've been too busy doing church work. Despite all my re-thinking of just what, indeed, is the "real" work of the church, I've been so caught-up in the habits of day-in, day-out church maintenance--the old habits that die hard--that I've overlooked the fact that here, one of our own is not just talking about being missional but is actually being missional, doing what is, in fact, the "real" work of the church.
I'm now reading Drew's blog. And responding to it. The reading and responding may help Drew but, even more, it helps me. It holds me accountable. It reminds me what the real work of the church truly is.
Physician, heal thyself.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Missional Cynicism
My wife Terry and I attended the Sentralized missional church conference in Kansas City the end of September. It was a challenging, exhilarating experience. But in one profoundly significant way, it was also disturbing.
Part of the attraction of the conference for me was the heavy-hitter keynoters, among them Alan Hirsch, Hugh Halter, Neil Cole...and Michael Frost. I single out Michael Frost because, frankly, he was the big draw for me--the big draw because, unlike the others, I'd never heard him speak in person before and because presentations I've seen him make via YouTube have been, well, stunning. And, like so many of us who've embraced missional/incarnational church, I've been heavily influenced by Michael's writing.
He didn't disappoint. His presentations were as edge-of-your-seat as I expected. Michael Frost has to be one of the most gifted communicators I've ever encountered not just of missional ecclesiology but the Gospel. What I didn't expect--and what I ultimately found so disturbing--is, by his own admission, how cynical he's become.
At one point, after saying, well, yes, it's good if you're doing mission, and it's good if you've got church members volunteering in the community, he jabbed his finger toward the audience and shouted, "Don't tell me your church is missional if you can't tell me the people in your community you've been called to serve!"
You know, I get it. I appreciate the concern of many who have been on the frontlines of the missional church movement, blazing the proverbial trail for the rest of us, being concerned that missional will be co-opted--domesticated, if you will--by well-meaning churches and denominations who don't fully understand what being missional means. But cynicism doesn't help. Many of us, especially those of us working to figure out how to move mainline attractional congregations to a missional/incarnational paradigm...those of us who aren't planting new churches where we can create a missional culture from the get-go...we have to move a step at a time. And the steps typically are small and not without pain. It's true: in the congregation I serve, we aren't at the point we could tell Michael Frost or anyone else the specific people within our community we've been called to serve. If that means we aren't missional yet, so be it. But we're a lot more missional than we used to be.
So--no, cynicism isn't helpful. But what disturbs me most is not the cynicism but what I'm fearful the cynicism may be pointing to: that missional will become idolatrous, that in some twisted way, missional will itself become attractional. The hit on attractional has always been that it keeps God's mission in service to the church rather than the other way around. I don't want us to take God's mission and put it in service to missional. It's useful, of course, to identify characteristics and practices of missional church. But when we start to suggest that unless you're doing X--whatever X is--you're not missional, we set up achieving a missional identity rather than participating in God's redemptive work in the world as our primary task. And that smacks of idolatry.
Isn't it possible that the God Who has called us back to a missional/incarnational way of being church might also call us to different ways of being missional and incarnational, such that to suggest a given congregation must be X or it cannot be missional is not that different from those human-imposed strictures that define many attractional churches, the very strictures we're trying to leave behind?
Part of the attraction of the conference for me was the heavy-hitter keynoters, among them Alan Hirsch, Hugh Halter, Neil Cole...and Michael Frost. I single out Michael Frost because, frankly, he was the big draw for me--the big draw because, unlike the others, I'd never heard him speak in person before and because presentations I've seen him make via YouTube have been, well, stunning. And, like so many of us who've embraced missional/incarnational church, I've been heavily influenced by Michael's writing.
He didn't disappoint. His presentations were as edge-of-your-seat as I expected. Michael Frost has to be one of the most gifted communicators I've ever encountered not just of missional ecclesiology but the Gospel. What I didn't expect--and what I ultimately found so disturbing--is, by his own admission, how cynical he's become.
At one point, after saying, well, yes, it's good if you're doing mission, and it's good if you've got church members volunteering in the community, he jabbed his finger toward the audience and shouted, "Don't tell me your church is missional if you can't tell me the people in your community you've been called to serve!"
You know, I get it. I appreciate the concern of many who have been on the frontlines of the missional church movement, blazing the proverbial trail for the rest of us, being concerned that missional will be co-opted--domesticated, if you will--by well-meaning churches and denominations who don't fully understand what being missional means. But cynicism doesn't help. Many of us, especially those of us working to figure out how to move mainline attractional congregations to a missional/incarnational paradigm...those of us who aren't planting new churches where we can create a missional culture from the get-go...we have to move a step at a time. And the steps typically are small and not without pain. It's true: in the congregation I serve, we aren't at the point we could tell Michael Frost or anyone else the specific people within our community we've been called to serve. If that means we aren't missional yet, so be it. But we're a lot more missional than we used to be.
So--no, cynicism isn't helpful. But what disturbs me most is not the cynicism but what I'm fearful the cynicism may be pointing to: that missional will become idolatrous, that in some twisted way, missional will itself become attractional. The hit on attractional has always been that it keeps God's mission in service to the church rather than the other way around. I don't want us to take God's mission and put it in service to missional. It's useful, of course, to identify characteristics and practices of missional church. But when we start to suggest that unless you're doing X--whatever X is--you're not missional, we set up achieving a missional identity rather than participating in God's redemptive work in the world as our primary task. And that smacks of idolatry.
Isn't it possible that the God Who has called us back to a missional/incarnational way of being church might also call us to different ways of being missional and incarnational, such that to suggest a given congregation must be X or it cannot be missional is not that different from those human-imposed strictures that define many attractional churches, the very strictures we're trying to leave behind?
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