Concluding Questions | Mission Musings

Hello friends and welcome back to the pastor talk podcast.
We are now concluding our
Mission musings series.
We’ve been blessed in the last couple weeks.
We got to share conversations with I’m God beb Lowry and with dr
Daryl gooter each of them offering different advantages perspectives on this missional conversation and today
As we now come to both kind of wrap up those conversations
We simultaneously are wrapping up the larger conversation about what it means to be missional and
one of the struggles of
Attempting to do that and this just comes by way of confession from the very start is that in many ways this conversation?
I think raises more questions than it answers it in some ways helps hone
And frame what questions are the right questions?
It doesn’t necessarily make answering those questions easy or I would even go so far as to say possible
And so I got to confess you we’re not going to come with a nice summary bow
We’re not going to wrap this all up and and it feel like it’s been resolved.
That’s not the intention
We’re in some ways going to just confess
This leads us to ask what next and I hope that you find yourself invited into that conversation because ultimately
If there’s any case we’ve made throughout this series
I hope one of the things you’ve heard is is that you’re invited to this missional identity.
And so it’s Natural then or it just follows that all of us might be left in these concluding
Conversations to ask well,
where am I and what does this mean for me?
And if that’s you you’re in exactly the right place and and I hope you sense that you’re surrounded by good partners in that
I think you’re exactly right.
Michael.
I think one of the struggles is that missional isn’t
A conclusion.
It’s not a repair.
It’s a kind of
Corrective it’s a series of questions and thoughts and interactions
That help lead us
To some new ideas some new ways of processing some new questions
To ask in response to the first round of questions and draws us deeper
into the idea
Of what it means to pursue god’s mission,
but it’s not something that can be easily summarized
In fact, I I would caution that if anyone thinks that it’s possible
Maybe they have not fully understood
The depth and breadth of the conversation there there are things calling themselves
Missional that are packaged as programs and quick fixes and and I would say they miss the point
Completely in my experience
This is the challenge to evaluate where we are
To think about how we got there and to think about whether where we are is where we need to be
It’s just part of our ongoing evaluation of what it means to follow.
Jesus christ and as such
this is not the kind of series we come out of with
A B and C and what it means for you and for the church it is much more complex than that
But really the intention isn’t to give us easy answers.
It is to put the idea of mission
as who we are
Back on the center of the plate for us to consider
Yeah,
we can pick out a few
themes that have
Gone through our conversations and I certainly think that one of those themes
Is that mission is not checks that we write but rather an identity that is formed in jesus christ and
That particular theme applies both to congregations and it applies to us as individuals
To some extent I think our conversation with om god shows that it’s also complicated if you’re trying to envision what that means
In the large connectional church sense church with a capital c the church that extends around the world to have a missional
identity in the midst of cultural differences
And geopolitical realities all of this is incredibly complicated nuance.
It’s not clear
which
Road one needs to take and and necessarily even
What side of the road or which you know forks the road will take it’s far more nuanced than that yet
It is clear that if we think of mission and our part in mission is only
A thing that we export outside of our own
Circles that we’ve missed the full breadth of who we’re called to be as those who’ve received the good news and I think
Dr.
Guder’s conversation if i’m gonna be honest about the biblical interpretation and some of the really sustained conversations about that clint
One of the things that that reminded me of in my time with him in class was
How often he returned to this idea that we need to come back to the scriptures asking?
Not just what do they mean?
In their original context,
but rather what do they mean as they seek to form us as people in the faith and and that move
away from the scriptures as a
Thing external to us that we learn that we get in our minds
To the idea of the scriptures as a place where we are formed
As those who understand the good news of jesus christ and how it transforms our life that kind of shift
Is substantial and if that alone is what you get out of the missional conversation?
It will have been worth the price of admission.
I think
It’s really challenging to ask those questions
from in
from in the midst
Of our context.
Um, I once heard a pastor
Try to get at this idea by saying how could you talk to a fish about what it means to be wet?
And and if you think about that idea that culture is the water we swim in
It becomes very hard for us to question some of the basic assumptions of how we’ve learned christianity
In the western world for instance, there are maybe
Let’s say 50 of dickens county and i’m making that number up michael,
but let’s say there are 7 500 christians
In dickenson county.
There are
20 church buildings right and none of us question that assumption
We simply take it for granted as a fact of western christianity american christianity
That if you want to be christian
You go to a place you go to a building in fact not just a building
But one of 20 buildings in our case and you pick the kind of christianity that works for you
What’s helpful in this larger conversation is that we’re learning there are
People of faith in other parts of the world who have different assumptions and it helps us to back up and to say wait a minute
There must be ways to be christian without a building
Having a building may not be as important as we thought that it was historically
Having a building may have some very very deep
Upsides, but it may have some downsides because it makes us think of our faith as a thing that happens in a place
And we think of mission as people things that people do in a different place
And and we don’t always make this bridge between when we support those people
We are doing mission as well and the the complexity of it is sometimes lost when we aren’t able
To question our assumptions,
which is hard to do from the midst of them.
And I think one of the
real benefits
Potentially in the future is that this missional conversation
Is global it’s multinational
And it involves people who have very different perspectives getting together and saying
What does not only what does the gospel look like where you live?
But what does the gospel say?
To where you live and how you live out the faith that may be challenging if you have been
part of all of these conversations up to this point this may sound
Of repetitive and I apologize for that
But I think it being repeated is necessary to emphasize how important it is Is that fundamentally?
Don’t make the mistake do not make the mistake of thinking
That missional is some sort of marketing program that’s going to help churches that are struggling
Suddenly succeed like it’s the magic key that fixes all of the problems.
It is not that it is not a
Book that can be written and put on your bookshelf that will contain the answers
The reality is if we’re honest,
we live in a context,
especially The mainline church in the united states
That is struggling and I would say it’s not an exaggeration to say in many ways in many places
Collapsing the institutions that were used to the privilege that we have taken for granted
The sort of public voice that we’ve always expected that we should and could have is no longer relevant and to whatever extent that we
Both are aware of that and to whatever extent it is true
The missional conversation does not fix those problems rather
It gives us an invitation to consider that what may seem to us to be
Nothing other than sheer grief and collapse and destruction can unto itself be actually an invitation
To a new way of understanding ourselves in the faith and that is not easy
I’m not going to pretend that that is going to be met with celebration
There are times in which really we just need to be honest and say things are not going well
The missional conversation doesn’t keep that reality for being reality what it does though
And you said this in a previous conversation clinton
I think very helpfully is that it does give us the opportunity
To choose to see what is happening around us both because of
Choices we’ve made and things happening in culture and we can choose for that to be an opportunity
For us to grow in our faithfulness
There is this real sense in the church right now that what is happening to us is happening to us
And that we have nothing that we can do the missional conversation.
I think invites us to ask
What can we do as faithful disciples of jesus christ?
We don’t need christenedom in order to be faithful
So then what is necessary and that question is empowering if not sometimes incredibly difficult
I would take that even maybe one step further michael and say that not only
does engaging in the conversation and the struggle to determine our
Missional identity not fix our problems.
It probably brings us some new ones
It probably makes some things even harder
We have to ask some very difficult questions about where we are and how we got here and whether
Our way of living out the church is in fact the most faithful way that we can be doing that and
Because we are fallen people that answer will always be no
And that’s a frightening thing when we look at the church as we’ve known it
The church that we’ve been married in and baptized children in and buried loved ones in and and have to admit
There are some places we’re missing
We’re there are some places we’re getting it wrong.
There are some things
in the scripture
That we haven’t heard
With the kind of sensitivity we need to there are some ways that we haven’t partnered with others
There are some ways that we’ve accepted division.
There are some ways that we’ve
bowed down as dr.
Guder mentioned last week to
Wealth and political power and the idea of control
And they’ve heard us they’ve heard our witness
They’ve heard our practice of the faith and we have to come to terms with that in order that we might be
increasingly set more and more free to pursue what is our true mission which
is whatever god lays in front of us and calls us to do in those moments and
That is a journey that that’s not something we get to in a meeting.
That’s a lifetime
worth of humble and prayerful
Confession and worship and seeking to be faithful and
It is exciting.
It’s frightening.
It can be scary.
I think to
To untether yourself from some of what you think of as your anchors, but it is
Freeing and the only way that you perhaps catch the current to a new place when I was young I used to
find jesus’s
Invitation he said, you know take my yoke
as it is
light and
I always took that as an invitation to like oh great
I get to throw away all of my anxiety like like it would be easy to let go of the weights that hold us down and
I think as as i’ve experienced more of life i’ve discovered how hard it is
To let go of the things that we’ve been carrying because in reality
We’re carrying it because at some point we decided it was worth carrying
we decided that for whatever reason this grudge or
This poor self image or this commitment to this particular way of living we decide that this was necessary
And so that’s why we strapped it on our back
And so when jesus invites us to let go of the things that burden us to carry his cross
Part of the struggle is yes accepting a burden that’s different than our own with different values
With a different call and a different vocation and identity in the world in which we live that is of course a struggle
But I think I underestimated in my youth the real struggle of letting go
Of the things that we have claimed for ourselves and that is certainly true as it applies to missional theology at some point
Missional theology calls us to take a hard appraisal of what
Has come to be the most important thing for us and as we make that honest appraisal
There are going to be some things we have to let go of whether that be practices in our church fellowship
Whether that be our commitments that we have made that we must support this particular
mission or program
whether that be
That we need to only read this one translation of the Bible
It could go in a thousand different directions wherever we have decided that this is a thing that needs to be
Missional theology is going to ask us have we reframed the conversation of faith to be about us?
And have we therefore lost the central message of the gospel,
which is to be witnesses
lights
image bearers Ambassadors the new testament is chock full of these images
Are we those people reflecting to the world the truth of something that is not ours to possess?
Right,
and if that is true then to whatever extent it’s true
It’s both by the grace of God and also it’s a reflection of that work that’s been done to us and for us
And that’s what missional theology.
I think at its heart is trying to instill within us It’s very
interesting michael what that brings to mind is
The kind of comparison that in some sense
What we might be able to see at the congregational level is an example of what may happen
at a global or
church-wide
Scale in the coming years and here’s what I mean by that.
So in the church
We begin doing something we
Start for good reason we say we want to educate kids and so we start doing
Sunday school and it’s a certain way or we do vacation bible school and we do that as a
Pattern we do it for a while and then we become wedded to the thing we do
Instead of the reasons that we started doing it.
And so then the thing itself
Becomes a kind of symbol and and at worst,
maybe we could even use the word idle
For what the church’s mission and ministry is when the reality is it’s that intention behind it that matters most
So when it’s time to stop doing vbs
You have people who say we have to do vbs
No, we have to try and educate children.
We have to try and teach children the gospel
We don’t have to do that with vbs.
That’s how we’ve done it in the past
It may or may not be the best way to continue to do it
But the task is not vbs
Vbs was the tool we used to try and do the task and the question before us is
Is it still the best tool or is it not and if it’s not let’s find a new tool
But it’s it’s not the thing that we have to continue
It’s the reason that the thing existed and in my experience in the congregation
One of the most painful struggles is when those tools lose their effectiveness
To put them down to put them away to say it that thing served its life cycle
It did really well in its day
But it’s now not working and it’s time to do something else and I find that we are overly connected and committed
To the tool that we built
Rather than motivated by the the task behind the tool.
I don’t know if that makes sense
I hope that it does,
but I think in a small way we see that that happens in congregations.
That’s happening
Globally particularly in the western world where we feel like we’re losing
The most or perhaps we find that the tools that have used
That we’ve used successfully in the past right seem less
Um
Effective now than they did and so we have this repeated experience of going back and saying
Gosh, I love that tool
I want to keep using it and it just isn’t working the same and I and I think
At some level we see the bigger picture in that small version of it.
So clint.
I think that raises
Two things for me that I think have been consistent themes in these conversations.
The first is
Wherever there is missional theology.
It is likely that the task is difficult
And that is a really tough thing
To not just get your mind around i’m not sure that intellectually it’s that difficult
I think it’s spiritually hard to recognize that fundamentally what that means is we can no longer rest upon
How we have always done it
and that is Just a natural part of our human experience of the world.
We’re so used to that as the model
How did we do it?
Let’s do it again
If we had run a program or if we had a ministry that looked a particular way it needs to continue
I’m not going to lie to you.
It is
Unbelievably difficult work as a community
To return to those first order questions about how are we living into the goal that we began this thing with that takes work
It takes extra work
It’s not just like we need to get a volunteer or we need to fundraise for this it
It requires sitting down with blank pages and asking the question if we were to do it again
Would we do it the same way and would it meet the same goal that we started with that?
Is a challenging kind of work that that over time?
Does feel like you’re really pushing a rock up a hill and you’re hoping it doesn’t come back down on you
But that is part of what I think it means to be missional and I think the second thing that your comment raises clint is
unfortunately
This is unbelievably hard
To speak clearly and simply as we define it in congregational life and we’ve said this before
If if you ask the question,
what is missional for a congregation?
I would love to tell you that I have a simple concrete example of this is what it is in every context
But I don’t think that’s true.
I think that fundamentally
The missional conversation invites us to come into our own context.
Whatever it is Here where the congregation in spirit lake, iowa northwest,
iowa midwest That’s going to look different in new york city or in texas or in california or in portugal or in
France or in asia right as these
Conversations disseminate around the world what I think we will discover
Is that fundamentally we’re called to be faithful in the place where we’ve been put and and that we are called to ask
Questions humbly and bravely and if we ask them in faith
God will inevitably answer them not by our merit but by the grace of the spirit and
That’s the trust that we have engaging in this kind of conversation.
Not that we come to an answer
that on its arrival
seems to answer all of the
Unresolved doubt but rather that in asking the question we’re being faithful and that god will be present to us in it
So having said that friends we understand that
You may
Be scratching your head thinking,
you know Missional sounds great, but i’m still not sure I get
What it means and and by all means we want to continue that conversation
And I want to put an asterisk on this and say that michael and I
May be completely wrong in this next section of the podcast
But in the spirit of being practical I I want for a moment us to offer you
Some guesses as to what missional may look like in congregations in the coming years.
In other words
What might be some of the practical impact of this kind of missional?
theological conversation
On the life of a church
like first presbyterian church spirit lake, iowa and
It would be very interesting to see if any of these hold true.
They may all be wrong
We may get none of them,
right?
But let’s offer you some ideas
About what they may mean as we move forward in our life together in congregations
And the first I would say that it seems to me that the missional
Conversation is going to encourage the church to be more global to be less
Locked to its context we live in a time in which we can easily trade information and experience we can travel
We can do it without traveling.
We can do that online
And so I think that the missional church of the coming era may be more global in its impact
I think we’re going to find ourselves more influenced
By the christian experience in other parts of the world.
I think we’re going to be more aware
of some of the successes and difficulties of our brothers and sisters in
Far-off places.
I think that the church is going to find itself maybe in its reading its resources its hymnody Its worship styles.
I think there’s going to be a greater sharing
of christian experience With parts of the world that aren’t native to us
Yeah, I think so and i’m gonna twist that around
And say I think there’s another sense in which the church will be even more local
And what I mean by that is I think that churches will as time goes on recognize how necessary it is
for each of its members to conceive of their work in their local community as
engrafted into part of the congregational
Witness and mission so in other words if you work at a bank or you work at a school or you are a dentist or
If you are a janitor for a company or if you’re on an assembly line
when you
Leave the sanctuary on sunday
It is likely that your church in the future
Is not going to be representative of the total population of your town that it will it in lots of places churches will be smaller
And in lots of places when you go out of that sanctuary
You will be functioning as a in some places
Really one of the sole witnesses to jesus christ in that area.
We see even in the united states
Missional theologians talk about places where there are there’s not a strong christian presence and because of that
Christians and our conduct what we say and what we do and how we interact within our local communities whether you
Find yourself in positions of civic power like school boards and city councils or whether you simply find yourself in relational
Context with other people you may find yourself to be really representing for others
The gospel when they have never seen it before we used to assume that people
Knew what hymns were and that they’d been to church services
There are already places in the country where that assumption is no longer valid and there will be places
That will that will continue to be the case.
And so I think the local
Mission and connection and service of churches will become even more important for those reasons
I agree, and I think an aspect of that that may be a difficult one for those of us who live
under the umbrella will be that that
missional church of the near future will likely be far less denominational the labels
of
methodist and
Presbyterian and lutheran and even catholic to some extent are already
Meaning less than they used to and I think that is likely
To continue as we interact with a culture that is increasingly
less
Saturated with the ideas of religion
or christian faith
as we navigate the kind of
Losing of the cultural language that echoes our own christian language.
I think we’ll find ourselves
Far less concerned with the big picture of denominations.
I I think that we will
Likely be as connected to churches of various strains in our own area
Then we will worry about our big national
Organizations.
I I simply think
That for the near future
The denominational pattern the denominational overhead the denominational system is unlikely to prove
Incredibly helpful as we navigate some of these issues.
Uh, I just want to
Ditto that.
Yes, I completely agree.
I was going to say something much similar to that
So I I think that’s accurate and I would add clint that I think we already see this tension happening
in both Congregations and maybe even more clearly in sort of national church gatherings right now
But there there appears to be
Our kind of fork in the road as we respond to some of the cultural religious institutional
Realities of the moment in which we live
Some seem to take the tack where they turn outward and become aggressive towards culture where they
they really sort of
Seem to sort of want to fight to take ground or sort of stand a line and say this this is we’re unwilling to give up
this particular privilege or voice or
In some cases churches can become and christians can become
Very aggressive as sort of respond to what feels like a decline
I think another road that we see and I think the the missional conversation highlights
Is that fundamentally even amidst the sort of collapse of what we might call?
institutional Christendom We see in that an opportunity for the reductionism that we heard dr
Guder talk about in our previous conversation and and if you haven’t listened to that
I highly recommend that you listen to that it provides a foundation for a lot of today’s discussion
But that reductionism as it goes away,
I think will actually lead the church
To a place where those who are connected to the faith will have a very deep connection to that faith
As it becomes less culturally beneficial to be christian
in the western world
It will be for those who choose the faith and find the gospel and its compelling message of forgiveness and redemption and resurrection
For those I think it will be life changing in a way that it may be difficult to
To embody in the culture that we have seen and the lives that we’ve taken for granted
I I think you’re going to see churches thrive.
Yes, there will be difficulty.
There’ll be hard conversations
there will be even times when churches feel hemmed in by the places and the problems that surround them but
You know, we’ve seen historically the church thrives in difficult times in difficult places
That it is those who need the good news that the gospel
Explodes within them and animates them by the power of the spirit.
So
Though there is grief and sadness with what appears to be the things happening around the church
I think that there should also be cause for faith and trust and hope because god will be at work in the midst of it
One of the marks of that I think michael is that we will see
Eventually a decrease in the importance of labels
the idea of
This kind of christianity or that kind of christianity again at a denominational level.
I think We already begin to see that but I think even labels like
conservative
liberal
Fundamental pentecostal.
I I think some of those labels are going to be less important
I think they’re just going to functionally mean less
Now the bad news is that it seems to me in order to get there
They’re going to be more important
until then that that as we
lose some of our
Footing we’re going to instinctively reach for those things as tools.
I I would say that’s already happening
I I would say that in the
Conversation you hear now it is often one kind of christian against another kind of christian and to me
I think that’s a signal
I think that’s a sign
that
We’re making that transition and I I think ultimately
That’s going to be our reality for a while
But I hope that on the other side of that
There will be a moment in which those labels are far less important than our oneness our unity in christ
so if you think of a letter like carinthians where paul says look some of you are saying your your
um or galatians
Various places in paul where he says some of you say you belong to this guy or your paul’s kind of christians or peters kind
of christians or paul’s kind of christians and and
and already they began from a place of comfort and affluence to begin separating and paul calls them back to unity and
The the bad news is I think that’s going to take some knockdown drag out battles along the way
But I think that we may get there which ultimately will be good news
Yeah, and the missional conversation
Is one such that it is
Hard to pin down and and I think fundamentally that is going to be a struggle for the church
I think you’re going to see the missional conversation
Explicitly named
In lots of different places in context and I think many of them are going to
Be different some are going to be completely
antithetical to one another I think
There’s a kind of looseness in this framework in which we’re called to ask questions
That allows the questioner to come to very different answers and I I would submit to you
That we like to have control
Humans like to have it all buttoned up and we like to believe that we’re the ones with the answers and I believe that
This is going to require us of us a certain kind of humility to recognize that ultimately god’s spirit
Will be the orbiter of truth that ultimately god will have and lead god’s church
Into the place where god wants it to go and where we over invest our identities in a thing that isn’t ours to start with
The missional conversation is going to bruise us a little bit because I mean ultimately it’s about god’s mission god’s at the center
To whatever extent it is.
Our identity is the identity given to us by god.
So We can’t as christians
believe that we own any conversation and I think that’s one of the challenging aspects of this is we must be humble enough to ask the question
and trusting enough to recognize that god will lead and
There will be circumstances clint there will be times where we will
Think that we discerned rightly and will go wrongly and it’s going to require humility
And even courage to say that was wrong
We need to change course and we should we should practice that that’s not an easy task,
but it’s a necessary one
Yeah, I think there are some directions that the church may go that will be difficult um I think
you know, they may be
A product of some struggles in some case they may be forced upon us in other ways.
We may find our self there
Kind of at our own direction.
I I think a couple of things that may happen in regard to congregations like first press I think
Long term you may see buildings becoming less important.
So less building centric churches building centered
um the the primary
Investments the primary energies of the church may not be toward keeping and building a space that may
That may evolve in a new way and along the same lines.
I think some of those churches and fellowships are going to
um
by
By default and I think by intention in other cases
Be less pastor driven be less pastor centric.
I think congregations are going to
stand to take greater
direction greater
Responsibility for the life of the church rather than the idea that there are a couple of people
Who are in charge of that?
I think that that understanding
is going to be
um, maybe a return to that new testament model where
There really is a shared leadership among the people and though there are shepherds
It’s not the shepherd’s jobs to do things and um,
I I want to
I want to just put an asterisk there and say
I think we
We do a decent job of that at first press
But I think on the whole one of the moves we may see in the missional era
could be a
A little less importance on the office of pastor
Yeah, in fact, uh the language that dr
Guder uses and his understanding missional theology is that we should be
Having teaching elders and his idea is that the primary goal is for
The teaching elder to teach so that the church can be the pastors that the church can in their own lives and vocation do that work
Which is a very reformed understanding.
I mean through and through but the the point I think for this conversation
and I think you’re exactly right clint is that
Ultimately,
we have taken for granted as churches in the last hundred years
That we can use our resources
and equip those who will do ministry that that they can professionally
engage time and talent in a way that then
Really remove some responsibility from the congregation both for good and for bad
I’m, not sure that i’m gonna weigh into any of the values of that
But I but we have largely made assumptions that our pastors will do the visitation
They will do the teaching they’ll do the worship leadership the preaching that all of these different things
we conceive of as pastors doing and
What I think we’re going to discover
Is that the the lay person of the church and their leadership and their witness?
Is far more important than what we have emphasized in the past and we’re going to not only
Reclaim that but we’re going to begin to rely upon it and I actually
In a world in which churches and pastors clint we talk all the time about well
It’s hard to get volunteers people don’t seem invested in the church anymore
I think there’s actually a reverse reality that once people discover how rewarding and impactful doing those ministries are
That I think there’s a sense in which people will become far more vested in them
I think when you discover that no i’m a witness that my life and my story and god’s work in my
Life actually matters and that it is a witness to this larger story
That is so compelling that I think that there will be a sense in which the church is reinvigorated to do that work
And that people will find it less of a chore that I have to sign up to do because it’s my turn
But rather an opportunity for you to to really put your hand at an important spiritual work
I hope so michael and that would
I I think in some ways
Go with what may be my last thoughts on
Some sort of prediction and that would be that that
The missional church of the near future may be less
Programmatic now don’t get me wrong.
The church will still do things
but it will
Have less interest in those things attracting people
In other words the programs won’t be the bait to quote unquote get people to come here
Whether that’s worship or whether that’s nursery or whether that’s preschool
Or or whatever it is the idea won’t be that the people are drawn to the program
The idea will be that we do those things as part of our mission and people through those things
Are drawn to christ and and what that means?
For each of us is that we function less as volunteers
And more as ministers
We function not as people
making a thing happen
But as people who are living out our mission
Through doing that thing and it
Practically, would you know the difference looking at it?
I don’t know that you would
but
I believe this fully if you are inside of it
You will see the difference you will feel the difference.
It’s the difference between walking into a church
Where the gospel is alive and walking into a church that is desperately hoping to survive
There is a difference of feel and people I think resonate with it and and I think we will worry less about
programs in the coming years and more about
Mission as we’ve had as we’ve tried to define it in this conversation
And I think it will be a very interesting transition and I think there is a lot
Of potential for all of us in it.
I think my last thing i’m going to contribute here clint is I
And i’m going to expose my bias here.
This this may be more michael goecky than it is really any
Faithful prediction, but but I do think you’re going to see the missional church
Engaging and claiming more and more of a unique vocabulary
Moving forward
I think what we experience now in a lot of our churches is a lot of crossover where we bring into our churches a lot of
Cultural and political language, you know, i’m
I’m this or i’m that or you this or you that we find all of these creative ways to label one another and I think as the
Church is reshaped and as culture changes and as these things are all worked out.
I think the church is going to
Return much like they did in the reformation when they came back to the scriptures with a different lens
They asked different questions and they came with some very generative responses that the scriptural witness came alive in a new way
I think that the missional church is going to
Not see things that weren’t in the scripture
But things that we did not see with the kind of clarity and bright vivid color that is actually there
And I think as we do that
things like grace and
reconciliation
and Once again resurrection.
I think we live in a time where the church is
Experiencing death in a meaningful way and I think we’re going to rediscover resurrection life in a meaningful way that that this
Theological scriptural frame is not just metaphor.
It’s not just nice words in a dusty bible
But rather I think the missional church is going to rediscover a rich vocabulary a kind of theological
Bedrock that will be for it a sustaining force moving into the future and I think that will be a good thing that may be
Coming from a person who overvalues intellectual and the tradition that that overvalues thinking
So that may be the bias that I bring to that conversation
But I I do think there’s an opportunity in the missional church and in the missional conversation
to reframe Some of those sunday school words and and understand them in a way that’s far deeper than maybe what the church has in the past
Yeah, so there are some guesses.
Uh, if you’ve thought to yourself,
what will it look like?
What does it look like?
There’s some guesses as to what that might entail we again
Could have missed it completely
None of those may end up panning out.
It may go a completely different direction
But whatever direction it goes
We will get there by focusing on the work of jesus christ the person of jesus christ not on what we want
Primarily, but what god calls us to making the church making the gospel
about that mission that god is calling us to rather than
What we want to do with it.
And as we do that, I think
Our faith tells us we trust that we will be drawn in the directions
That god seeks for individuals and for the church together
So wherever we go we get there by keeping our eyes on christ as we always have
And we look forward to being a part of it in this place in some small
Uh shape or form.
Yeah, the the title we had for today as you see concluding questions
I think the ultimate missional question is what is the mission of god?
And and that encompasses
All of these things and then ultimately how can the people of god participate in in that work?
These are the meta questions that hang over all of the other questions
And if we were to live all of our lives asking god,
what is your mission?
We will never reach the depth of what that is and we will never fully
Have encapsulated or accomplished the work that we are called to be participants in so friends
Let us engage that question boldly.
Let us trust that god will be with us even as we make false steps forward
And if we can have that faith in the god who is already at work
Then I think we can be confident that wherever that journey takes us
He will be with us and we will see things and um get to participate in things that today
We couldn’t even ask or imagine absolutely and we want to thank you for being part of it in this small journey with this podcast
We have enjoyed asking these questions.
We hope you have enjoyed engaging them at some level
We hope you’ll continue to listen as we continue to work through other series and other podcasts
We are grateful for the time and attention you would give these ideas and that you would give us and we are thankful to be in this uh
Evolving journey toward Jesus with you
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You are watching or listening to this today
We’re glad that you take time to be with us
Look forward to seeing you next week when we kick off off our newest series here at the podcast
But until then friends be blessed