Outlining the Change

We are entering into a phase in our process where, it seems to me, recruitment is the order of the day. We need the help of mission minded people to move forward, and we are seeking them from the outside and the inside. From the outside, we are seeking what you might call "suburban missionaries;" people who will be invigorated by our missional call, and will join us in the endeavor, even if it means changing homes and jobs to do so. We might consider such a call extreme in a domestic context, where missional efforts are generally viewed as secondary to our "real life concerns." But we are looking at our context as no different than a foreign mission field. Relocating and developing your own means of support is not at all unusual for someone going to another country to serve, so why should it be different here? This mission field is in great need of such people; people whose presence is motivated specifically by the mission.

The arrival of missional people from outside our immediate fellowship will, we believe, also aid our efforts to recruit from within the fellowship. The problem, in short, is that we are all way too comfortable with church as we have known it. And that has not required of us much in the way of commitment or sacrifice. Again, the objective is to retrain ourselves to think as we would if we were missionaries in a foreign place. In that context, the work of the mission is front and center. Careers, accommodations and other resources exist in service of the mission. The church as we have known it has never held such expectations of us, and has often actually encouraged us to think of ourselves and our own selfish desires before the mission. Consequently, a great many well meaning Christians maintain the notion that "once I've obtained my arbitrary markers of personal success, I will be in a position to give, serve, etc." This is a sort of American ideal of Christianity: one in which I enjoy such personal affluence that whatever time or financial resources I commit to following Jesus does not really register as a sacrifice on my part. Such assumptions, I would argue, are incompatible with mission.

Recruitment raises a challenge for us, in that it requires that we be able to communicate the mission in a relatively succinct manner. On the surface, this may not seem like that big of a problem, but I've found it very difficult, because our experience of the church as we have known it is so second nature to us that we tend to filter all our information through it. So, if I say our goal is to be more missional, religious people tend to think of mission as they've known it: "My church supports missionaries in Thailand and Bolivia, and we sponsored a community outreach campaign last year." These may be good things, but they do not capture the spirit of what we mean by the term missional. Even my unchurched friends tend to filter what I am saying through the lens of their assumptions and experience of organized religion.

So, it simply isn't enough to state what we are trying to be; we really have to contrast what we seek to become against the status quo alternative. I've done some of that already in this blog, but now I feel the need to become more intentional about it.

What follows is not, at this point, a final draft of these notions, but rather a very rough draft of our emerging mission, as characterized by pairs of opposing ideologies and methodologies. In each pair, the first term represents the church as we believe Jesus intended, which is what we seek to become, and the second represents what the church as we have known it has generally been. Some of these terms I've talked about in earlier posts. The rest I will try to elaborate on in the future. Anyway, here we go. We seek to become:

Community Focused vs. Internally Focused
Missional vs. Attractional
Organic vs. Institutional
Disciples vs. Religious Members
Christocentric vs. Denominational
Incarnational vs. Indoctrinational
Adaptive and Contextual vs. Assumptive and Legalistic

At this point, I'm thinking these seven categories might capture it, but I'm fairly certain I will change my mind about that. As I build on these ideas, I would certainly welcome questions and suggestions.

Blessings,
Doug