How to Be Missional | Mission Musings

Hi, friends.
Welcome back to our Pastor Talk podcast,
our series on what it means to be missional.
After a brief hiatus,
good to be back with you,
good to have Michael back,
good to be back considering the themes of this series as we think not just about mission,
but in a larger sense,
what does it mean to be missional?
What does mission mean in the broadest
sense for individuals and for congregations?
And today we start by acknowledging that has
been a kind of loose conversation.
There has been a lot of uncertainty.
You would think that with a term like that,
especially given how much attention it’s been given over the last
couple of decades, that that would be an easy answer.
But it turns out it’s a little more complicated.
Yeah, it is very complicated, Clint.
And, you know,
interestingly, I think our conversations thus far may have left some a little dissatisfied,
to be perfectly honest,
because there’s a sense in which we can’t immediately rush to a textbook definition of what missional is.
In fact,
if you dive into the scholarly aspect of the missional conversation,
there’s missional hermeneutics, which is a technical way of talking about a missional
understanding of how to read the Bible and the scriptural witness.
There’s sort of missiology,
which talks about that formal practice of doing mission,
and then how that is informed,
and it speaks into the church’s identity as a body of believers.
But then it goes even further
to people who work within the institutions of larger church groups, like denominations,
and how they try to live out sort of what we might call a missional identity in what’s much
more of a sort of administrative kind of ministry,
where you’re doing paperwork,
and you’re working on initiatives, and you’re trying to make strategies for how church can live out its task
in the world in which it lives,
and does so not just at the congregational level.
The point I’m trying to make here,
and don’t want to extend too far,
is that ultimately,
this question of how we
reclaim that acts movement in the life of the church,
where the gospel is lived out by its
members, that in the meals that they eat together,
in the fellowship and words that they speak both
inside their fellowship and outside of it,
that it carries with it a missional witness, that it
is a task of every person who’s living out the faith in their own life and in their own vocation.
That is,
in some ways, Clint, a simple idea,
and yet it remains,
two thousand years later, a revolutionary theology.
It requires a kind of continued conversion,
or a repeat practice of
reminding ourselves that this is our task, because,
as we’ve discussed in our conversations thus far,
there are so many rabbit trails that are easy for us to get caught on,
that are not central
to this missional identity.
And so, yes, it is complicated, and unfortunately, the complicated nature of it makes it difficult to define simply,
and also it makes it very,
very difficult to just
sort of say, this is what it is.
It requires much more nuanced thought and reflection and commitment than that.
One of the struggles with the word “missional,” I think,
is that it really comes to us
out of an academic background.
There are theologians and missiologists and professors,
professional thinkers,
who give some structure and voice to this concept of missional.
And then, as it works its way down the ladder into churches,
into congregations,
there’s a sense
of struggle with how to make it practical.
So, the academic community says it’s important for
the church to be missional.
And the church says,
“Yes, we do mission.” And the missiologist says,
“That’s not what we’re talking about.” And the congregation says,
“Well, what are we talking
about?” And the missiologist says,
“We’re talking about being missional.” And the church says,
“Well, that’s not an answer.” And then,
the kind of end result,
it seems to me,
is that we took the word
“missional,” and we started using it without really understanding it.
So, churches talked about missional initiatives.
Presbyteries started having missional workshops.
We started writing this into
mission statements.
We’re going to be more missional.
However, no one was really able to define
what that meant,
what will it look like,
and how will we know when we’re doing it.
And that’s not really anyone’s fault.
It’s just that I think the conversations,
as I experienced them,
sort of diverged onto two different tracks,
and it’s been difficult to get those groups in conversation
with one another in a way that results in some real practical nuts and bolts understanding of
what does it look like to be missional.
Part of it is,
maybe this is such a new conversation,
we’re still defining what it means to be missional and not ready to talk about what it looks like
to practice missional.
But I think that’s something that we’re going to have to sort out.
At this point, I feel like everybody knows it’s something we want to be,
maybe even need to be,
and yet there’s not a clear sense of how we become that.
Yeah, I think that we really need to slow down
here and recognize that we might answer this question differently depending upon what group
we’re talking about.
Let me explain what I mean here.
So if we’re talking about the institution of church,
and you don’t have to have a denomination that spans a nation or the world
for this to be applicable.
I mean, when you’re even thinking about local congregations,
and you ask the question,
how are we going to be missional,
the temptation of that question is to
think, what program are we going to implement,
or what mission statement are we going to adopt,
or what practice are we going to start or change that’s going to therefore make us
missional.
The problem with that in an institutional or congregational context
is that fundamentally now you’ve taken a thing that is really applicable for all of the church’s
members.
It’s really a question of identity,
and you’re now trying to make it something that is
going to produce that identity for other people.
You’re trying to take a thing that is incredibly
individualized and concrete,
and you’re trying to make it corporate.
And when you do that,
you’re in some ways already beginning to miss the point of missional.
The point of missional is
not that the church has a bigger mission trip,
or that we invest more money into one particular thing.
What’s at stake is,
are we as Christians fostering communities where people are freely
and consistently being engaged with the reality that they are called to be witnesses to the good
news that they have received.
And yes,
we can make programs,
and we can have classes,
and we can have
conversations like this one,
where we try to be reminded of that calling,
and we try to be formed
and deepened in our ability to live out that calling.
But friends,
that cannot happen by simply
changing an organization’s mission statement.
And I think that’s where we begin to struggle a little
bit, is when churches latch onto this,
and by churches I really mean both the local congregation
and even sort of that national Christian witness,
when we latch onto missional as a sort of lifeboat
idea.
That, well, if we can just claim missional,
then things will be better for us,
that we’ll have more people in our churches,
and they’ll give more,
and then we’ll grow,
and it’ll be a better world.
The promised land lies on the other side of missional.
If that’s the narrative that we adopt,
unfortunately, I think it actually turns the conversation back in on ourselves.
It makes it about ourselves again, instead of the witnessing task we’re called to have.
And so I do think it
matters who we’re talking about.
Are you talking about a local group of believers and how they’re
going to create a place where the missional identity is fostered?
That’s a different conversation than
what I think we’re largely focusing on in this series,
where we’re saying that this is ultimately your task.
Christian, this is your job to have this be formed and fashioned as your Christian identity.
That is a very much more complicated and sustained endeavor than just making a new mission statement.
One of the dangers,
as I understand the word “missional,” is that it is inherently
a practice.
In seminary, there’s this word that we use called praxis,
which is kind of the application.
It’s the,
how do you enact something?
How do you put it into life and make it real?
And this conversation about what it means to be missional is inherently that.
It is how do we
practice that at an individual level,
at a congregational level,
at a denominational level.
How do we work out in our lives and churches the full vision of what it means to pursue the mission
of Christ in the world,
in my life,
in this congregation?
And the temptation is,
on the other side of the fence,
to take the word missional and to try and make it a program and not a praxis.
In other words, to try and say,
“Well, we’ll just do A,
B, and C, and if we do that,
then somehow missional lives at the end of that.” And I think when we treat missional as programmatic and not
as praxis, as practice, then we will never fully understand the opportunities inherent in this discussion,
which at times, though frustrating,
is incredibly fruitful, potentially,
to reimagine
what we mean when we talk about having a mission,
doing mission,
pursuing mission.
This has, I think, the potential to reframe that entire conversation,
but not if we treat it as
a thing that a congregation has to do.
That reduces it to such a small part of the bigger picture
that I don’t think it’s helpful in that aspect. Yeah, I think there’s deep wisdom in that claim,
and it makes me think that we should be very,
careful with the metaphor that we use for what church is.
And so a very classic
metaphor of the church is that it’s a hospital that is all the way back to St.
Augustine. And what’s beautiful about that image is it reminds us that those who come to the place of the church
are those who are sick.
And that’s a reality that the church often forgets,
is that we are
a gathering place of those who need a doctor.
Maybe a downside of that metaphor in light of
this missional conversation is that does bring with it this idea that church is a place where
sick people go so that other people can fix them or heal them.
That you receive a service in the church,
you go to that church because it builds you up,
it makes you feel good,
it helps you give
you energy and inspiration for the week to come.
I mean, these are all good things, Clint, but if
your idea of church is that it’s a place where you come to be filled,
encouraged, and then you get to
go on with your life for the rest of the week,
it’s a middle of the week sort of shot in the arm,
then unfortunately,
and I really mean that, I think unfortunately,
you’re actually missing a
substantial part of what the church is because the church is in many ways a reformation zone.
It’s a place where you come to be reminded of who you are in Christ Jesus and to be transformed
into that identity so that when you leave the church,
you can then go about the work that you’ve
had.
So in this metaphor,
I think in many ways,
church is also like a school,
like a place where
your imagination is shaped and changed,
where you’re equipped with the tools that you need,
that when you leave that building,
it’s not that you’re quitting your institutional church
responsibility for the week.
It’s actually, you’ve now been given what you need to do your
faith work, and your faith work exists in your real life,
in your family, in your place of
employment, in the community where you live,
the social groups where you circulate.
That is the place where you are called to be a missionary.
This is the responsibility of that task,
and the metaphor matters.
If you think of church as that filling place,
you may miss the fact that the
church is really intended to be a place where we are equipped for our mission in the world.
In some ways in that metaphor,
Michael, the church is a vocational training center where
we all have a task,
we all have a “mission,” and the task of the church is to help equip us
to do that, both to identify that mission, those opportunities,
and to help us gain the requisite
skills and discernment to pursue that.
Let’s try to break that down practically for a moment.
If we take this larger conversation of missional,
and we say that in its largest sense,
mission is whatever we do that is connected to what God wants done.
If we’re going to say that
in the life of the church and in the life of an individual,
to be missional is to overlap
God’s will, God’s design, God’s direction for my life,
for the church, and the world,
and that in those places that overlap,
we are fulfilling our mission.
We’re being missional.
What does that look like at a congregational level?
How do we identify what it means for
a church to be a missional place?
Not simply to do mission.
That’s difficult enough, but I think,
to some extent, doable.
What does it look like at a congregational level to be missional?
I think that’s a difficult question,
but I think the right place to start.
Right now, bear with me,
right now,
my oldest daughter is learning to play the trumpet.
What’s really interesting as I watch her begin this process is she is inevitably frustrated by
how bad she is.
She cannot get that instrument to make a consistent repeated sound.
She hasn’t built the face muscles yet.
She hasn’t practiced breathing from her diaphragm.
She just simply hasn’t had enough time with this instrument.
She’s frustrated.
She’s a perfectionist.
She wants to do the best that she can.
She’s also a child and would love to start a thing and be
amazing at it.
Wouldn’t we all like to do that?
The reality is her job right now is not to become
a master trumpet player.
Her job is to learn the fundamentals of that instrument,
the very basic details of how you sit,
how you hold it, your embouchure,
how you take breaths,
and how you use those breaths to make sound.
The point is the stuff that you learn at the beginning is not the flashy,
fun stuff you see when your favorite trumpeter is playing.
No, it’s the building blocks,
the foundations required to play that instrument.
Well, this is the point I want to make,
is that fundamentally what this looks like at the congregational level,
when we are seeking to learn
to be missional people,
it looks like fundamentals.
It looks like the stuff that isn’t the flashy,
fun, put on your sign or on your church website or broadcasted on social media kind of stuff.
Those things will come and that they’re important expressions of our life as a community.
The point I’m trying to make is that what we need to work on today at the congregational level is the
fundamental task of hospitality.
Are we welcoming people when they come into our buildings?
And if you think that’s easy,
you’ve not tried it.
If you think it’s easy to just greet people and to go out
of your way and have a congregation who shakes hands and says,
“We’re glad that you’re here.
Hey, do I know you?
Oh, you’ve been a member here.
I’m sorry.
That’s awkward.
I’m glad that we got to meet
today.” If you don’t know,
the fundamental task of looking outside yourself to not just come to a
place to sit and to be filled,
but rather to come and connect with others and to make them feel
welcome and to encourage them to come back,
that is a radical fundamental task that the church gets to do.
And it’s a way of forming that missional identity.
That doesn’t end up in Christian
century or Christianity today as an example of a missional church,
but that’s one of those
fundamental building blocks that get us there.
Right.
And what I think matters in that,
Michael, is the conversation behind the conversation because the idea could easily be we need to
welcome people.
We need to make them feel comfortable here so that maybe they’ll stay,
so that there’s some ending that we’re looking at.
And the truth is,
this helps us see instead,
no,
we need to reach out to guests and visitors in a loving way because that’s who Jesus Christ is.
And that’s what Christ has done for us,
that God has called us to be open to the sojourner, the stranger,
the alien among us.
That’s the language rich throughout the Old Testament.
And we enact that.
We connect that to our mission when we have the opportunity to welcome people.
And one of the things I think that means for us,
Michael, is that at a congregational level,
it seems to me that a church perhaps ought to be able to locate everything it does within missional language.
Sunday school,
that would be easy,
right?
We have a mission to educate people,
to disciple people, to grow in our understanding of Scripture,
Sunday school.
Okay.
Building and grounds.
Right.
Right.
I spent Saturday with some of our volunteers pulling out bushes and trimming
hedges and cleaning up the building.
Well, what is that?
Right.
Is that missional?
Well,
yeah,
in this sense of hospitality,
in this sense of whatever we can do to eliminate barriers
for people to connect with us in the building.
Not the only place they should connect with us, by the way.
But if we take care of what we have,
that’s a practice of stewardship,
which is an expression of our mission.
We’re called to be good stewards of what we’ve been given,
of what is ours to keep, to care for.
And I think this isn’t new,
but I think by and large,
the church in my
experience has not really done that.
It treats building and grounds or worship or education as separate entities.
And I think one of the great values of this missional conversation,
this missional idea, is to create a thread that not only runs through all of those various things,
but binds them together,
draws them together, and connects them through a single unified theme
of part of our mission as church.
We don’t take care of the building just because we like the building.
We don’t be nice to people, welcome people well,
just because we hope they’ll stay.
We do those things because that’s what it means to seek to be people changed and guided by Jesus Christ.
And it perhaps doesn’t sound significant.
It maybe even sounds semantic,
but it is significantly different in my experience.
That’s exactly what I was just going to say,
that these words are quick to come off the tongue,
but the impact and gravity of them is substantial.
So I know of some congregations by way of friends
who went to seminary with,
they’re in different churches.
And one way that some churches
try to live into this missional identity is that they start an evangelism committee or a
missional committee.
And they try to task a particular group of people,
we want to be more
missional.
So you lead the charge.
And that’s a very good intention.
And I think the heart
behind that is golden and laudable even.
But what you find very quickly is the task of having a few
try to do a few community outreach kinds of things or try to encourage the church to think of having
better signs for guests or visitors who were coming or we need to have a nursery so that when
young families come, there’s a place for their kids.
These are important things and I’m not playing them.
But that is of a completely different level of difficulty than every
committee in the church asking that unified question.
How does the task that lays on our desk,
how does it connect to our requirement as a body of faith to live out our missional calling
as those who are witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ in our mission,
in our worship,
in our building and grounds,
in our Christian education,
in our communication ministries,
in our you go down the list,
our connection to other churches of many different kinds.
How does each one of these things respond and how is it changed by that fundamental question?
That requires leadership,
it requires intentionality,
it requires painstaking work
to ask questions about why we do the things that we do and should we continue to do them in that
way.
And that’s just a difficult task for all of humanity.
It’s certainly a difficult task in the
midst of a church with so much tradition and meaning and theology behind what we do.
This requires showing up and being humble and transparent and I would even say courageous.
And if churches are willing to do it,
then yes, that golden thread that should live within every
part of our church’s life,
that can then become this missional identity.
But hey, listen, we’re talking about it right here.
Living that out requires blood, sweat, tears,
failures over and over again and just missteps.
But the reality is this is the goal.
This is the calling that we’re
called to.
This is what missional requires.
It is easy, I think,
to return to the question,
what does this have to do with us?
So a congregation easily slips back into,
how does this help us?
What does this have to do with our work?
What does this have to do with our place?
And I think those are natural questions.
I think they’re easy questions.
But I think
the bigger question, the more impactful question is what does this have to do with the Kingdom?
And when we focus on ourselves in the small way,
we like having nicely trimmed bushes and a clean building, of course.
But when we do that,
we miss that opportunity to have the bigger conversation.
What does that do to the Kingdom?
How does that connect us with the God who calls us to stewardship, to hospitality?
What is our role in being an ambassador of Jesus Christ in this work that we
do?
Whether it’s our stewardship, our education,
our custodial, whatever it is.
And in my own life,
whether it’s my vocational life,
my family life, my personal life,
the bigger question of what this
has to do with the Kingdom and the missional work of God is the right question.
Not generally the easier question,
and often not the clearest question,
but I think it’s the right one.
And I think the missional people have really done us a service by helping us put that question back
front and center.
I think through the struggle of congregations,
that got shuffled.
You know, in the Presbyterian Church,
we live in a season of decline.
And in a season of decline,
it’s very easy to allow that to put the blinders on and say,
“We’ve got to pay attention to us.
What do we need to do?
What bills need paid?
How do we get more people here?” Et cetera.
And it’s not unimportant,
but it’s often not the most helpful.
Because when we lose sight of that
bigger picture, we become potentially,
at least the threat is,
we become disconnected with that larger Kingdom conversation.
And when we do that,
we put being the church in jeopardy.
And I think
one of the things,
practically speaking, that congregations can do is to evaluate everything
they do through that lens of what does this add to the Kingdom?
What does this do that connects
with this much larger sense of the universal work of God through Jesus Christ?
And it’s a new way
for many Christians to think.
It’s a new way for some congregations to think.
But as it tends to be
in the faith, it’s actually not new at all.
It’s just rediscovered.
The early church was driven
by this question, and we learn much from their example.
So the question that we’re responding
to right now, of course,
to remind us, but make sure we’re all on the same page,
is, what does this really look like?
What is the practice of this look like?
And I think another
thing that we really need to spend a little time with,
you’ve already mentioned in passing,
Clint, this idea of the leadership of the church.
This does have real ramifications for how church
leaders seek to be faithful in their context.
And I think a temptation of being a leader in a church
context is to think that it’s all about what you do,
what you teach, what you preach,
your pastoral care.
There’s this real feeling that you’ve got to show up and do it right,
and there’s a lot of self,
which is just natural to any human task.
It’s not necessarily good or bad unto itself,
it’s just the reality of wanting to be faithful and doing a good job.
What I think church leaders
often fail to recognize, unfortunately,
is how substantial the entire work of a church really is.
It is not infrequent that I’m surprised to hear about,
well, one church member who’s talking to
a guest or another church member who met someone in the community and was helping someone through
a difficult time or encouraging them or encouraging them, “Hey,
you know, maybe you should reach out
and get help for this.” It’s amazing how much ministry happens in the bleachers at the high school,
in the aisles of the grocery store,
at coffee shops all around the nation, right?
The people just doing the stuff that people do end up ministering to other people.
And one of the things
that the church leadership needs to recognize is our job is to equip,
to encourage,
to inspire,
to whatever extent we’re able to do that by the help of the Holy Spirit,
so that when people end
up in those circumstances,
they feel confident enough to know that God is with them and God will
equip them in that moment to do that ministry,
to do that encouraging,
to do that uplifting.
And when we recognize that,
we suddenly feel the burden of ministry being shared.
It’s not just about great church leaders with beautiful,
charismatic sermons and the perfect prayers all the time.
That’s not the goal.
But the end goal is that a church leadership will create a
context and setting in culture in which the minister members of that church will be equipped
for whatever task will be demanded of them in their ministry that week.
And if we can change
our vision of leadership away from that sort of central model where the pastor does the professional ministry,
Clint, I think then we’re going to begin to see this missional identity
lived out in a more authentic form than in a very professionalized sort of ministry model.
One of the slogans that’s come up over the last couple of decades is “Every Christian is a
theologically defensible idea.” I would argue even the right idea.
The problem with it is
that we took a word that we’ve already used.
We took this label missionary and now we said everybody is that.
Instead of redefining the idea of missionary,
we tried to expand it to people who
already thought they knew what it meant to be a missionary.
So now when we say you’re a missionary,
you can go to the grocery store and be a missionary.
Somebody hears,
“Well, I have to go to the grocery
store and preach.” No, not at all.
What we didn’t do,
and I think what we’re learning to do,
is to redefine what missionary is.
Missionaries are not professional Christians who go far away
and do amazing things.
They are regular Christians who go to places and do Christian things.
You might be a regular Christian who goes to a regular place and does Christian things,
and that by definition makes each of us a missionary.
There is something very powerful
here, but we’ve not yet fleshed it out.
I think one of the struggles will be,
how do we communicate this idea in a way that is helpful rather than intimidating?
I think sometimes that label of missionary,
that idea that every Christian is connected to a mission,
the mission of Jesus Christ, is sometimes scary for people.
And I think one of our tasks in the church will be translating.
To be honest, that’s part of the impetus of this podcast,
to think about these
ideas in such a way that each of us begin to see our role in the whole,
and to move away from this
idea that there are missionaries,
and then there are the rest of us who support them.
No,
we are all involved in mission,
and we support one another in various ways.
And you may never
get on a plane and go to a foreign country to serve Jesus Christ.
You may do that where you live.
You may do that in your house,
and at your church,
and at your job,
and in your community.
That’s not different.
The practices of it are different,
but the nature of it is not different.
The experience of it may be different,
but the mission behind it is not different.
And I think the church is going to need to improve the way that we communicate.
I think a podcast like this
comes from that hope of being able to put some flesh on these ideas,
to be able to make this
practical in a way,
and to maybe help it be accessible to people.
Because there’s
some real potential here, Michael,
and if the church can figure out how to tap into it,
I think we will be blessed by it.
Just to admit,
as we try to make this really concrete,
it gets difficult.
It really does, to talk about a thing that should be shaping our identities,
and to be talking about it in
very concrete, practical ways.
It’s as diverse as every context in which we live.
But there are some very simple practices that this, I think,
transforms,
and I’ll just name two of them.
How you read your Bible and how you pray.
Let’s start with the first.
How you read your Bible.
Ultimately, I want to encourage you,
instead of thinking of your Bible as an ancient
book which is hard to understand and to translate into modern life,
what if you came to the Bible
with the overarching question and belief that this book was written to equip you to be a witness to
the good news that is communicated in that very book.
That within these pages is an account of
all of the people whose lives are witnessing to God’s faithfulness.
When you read about Jacob and Joseph,
and you read about Abraham and Moses,
and then you come and you read the New Testament about
all these people who are healed,
demons cast out,
supernatural miracles where entire crowds are fed.
These suddenly become examples of people whose lives point us to the good news of who
Jesus Christ is.
Just like your calling is for your life to point others to Jesus Christ.
Suddenly the scriptural witness becomes accessible and has an inherent meaning.
It’s not just about
what you should and shouldn’t do today.
It’s about,
“Lord God,
how can I be a witness
in my own life to the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the very gospel we see written in
these words?” That then becomes our prayer.
“Lord God, help me to see and know and understand and
celebrate, but then ultimately point others to the very story that you’ve worked with us.”
It is maybe simple in its framing,
but it is deep in its implication that fundamentally we can come
to God and ask,
“God, help us be mirrors of your faithfulness to the world.” We know that we’re
sinful.
We know we don’t always get it right.
This isn’t about us being hypocrites.
This is about us,
to whatever extent we’re able,
pointing a finger to the one who is not a hypocrite,
who is always faithful,
who has never ever,
ever let anyone down.
That is the one that we seek to point others to
with what we do and what we say.
That can be as simple as how you open your Bible and how you turn
to pray every day.
Do you frame it from an individualistic view or do you ask,
“God, make me a missionary today.
Help me point others to the good news I know I’ve received in you.”
This is a simple way for us to accept and participate in that transformed identity.
I think there is a tremendous freedom in that.
There’s an upside in that.
One of the things the
church struggles with is that we tend to think that we set our own path,
that the church figures
out what it should do,
that a congregation evaluates all the various things and then makes
decisions about what to do.
One of the things I like about this conversation is that if our task
is simply to discern and participate in the mission of God,
then it doesn’t come from us.
We don’t make the decision.
We make discernment.
We seek to understand what God is inviting us to do,
rather than to decide what we’re going to do.
Again,
it sounds simple, but that shift of focus,
that shift of understanding,
that the church is not about what do we think is best.
What do we think is the most sound financial plan?
What do we think is the best Sunday School curriculum?
Those things are not unimportant,
but they’re secondary to what do we think God is calling us
to do right now?
How do we think God is calling us to behave and exist and minister in the world
in which we live,
in the place in which we exist?
I think that’s just much more exciting.
It’s a deeper conversation.
It’s a more profound.
It’s not an easier conversation,
but I think for me, at least, Michael,
this is what I hear in this idea of becoming or pursuing missional.
I think I hear in it a reminder to locate our directions,
to locate our decisions,
not within what is good for us,
but what is God calling us to do and be?
What is God already doing in the world,
and where and how does God want us to join that?
And I think,
as we continue to sort out what missional does and doesn’t mean,
I think for me,
that’s one of the real inspirational and attractive ideas,
pathways that I hear in it.
It’s easy to talk about missional and make it sound like it’s effortless,
and the reality is it’s difficult.
It’s really, really challenging work,
and that’s true in our own place.
That’s true here at First Presbyterian Church in Spirit Lake, Iowa.
We are
leaders in a real congregation with real people trying to live out our faith in concrete ways.
We just had to pick a new Sunday school curriculum.
We’re just having conversations about,
“Hey, what are we going to do for youth ministries on this night as opposed to this night?” Right?
So, I want to make it very clear,
the practical, on-the-ground questions and challenges of being
a congregation do exist and will always exist.
That’s the reality of being church.
But that’s not an excuse to not engage in these important and transformational questions.
And that’s also happening here,
asking questions in the midst of our mission committee about how we
can not only give resources,
but we can connect those ministry relationships with the lived lives of our members,
having conversations about how can we engage our youth in this missional identity
so that they understand that what they do at school is a reflection of the good news that they heard in church,
or that the times when they hear that,
“Well, Christians are just hypocrites who
point out the wrong in other people and never accept it in themselves,” that part of being
missional is recognizing honestly and transparently how much we need the good news that we seek to reflect.
Right?
All of these are ways that this church continues to seek to live out its faith
on top of those fundamentals of being a hospitable place,
of making it easy for people to engage
their gifts and ministries here.
I mean, all of this is important,
and all of this is essential
to our identity as Christians,
but it is not going to exist.
No good task is going to be done
with 100% clarity and with 100% success.
And that too is true here,
where we try new things,
where we discover what does and doesn’t help our church as we seek to live out this missional identity.
And it is often painful.
It’s often difficult, yet that is what any good task requires.
Excuse me, and I think that’s where we find ourselves today.
Yeah, so if you’ve been trying to follow this conversation,
you find yourself thinking,
“Love the idea of missional,” or “Maybe I don’t understand the idea of missional.
It sounds good.
Is it different?
How is it different?” We will fully admit that you’re in the right place.
We have not been able to solve that either.
And so if it still feels a little loose,
that’s okay.
I think that’s where the conversation is.
And I think both Michael and I would admit
that we continue to struggle in our own minds and our own practices.
How do we incorporate this
thing that sounds powerfully,
that it sounds as if it has a powerful potential to help the church
and to help Christians?
But how do we access it?
How do we connect with it?
And fortunately, Michael,
fortunately, probably for our listeners,
but for ourselves as well,
we have some help in that.
And over the next couple weeks,
we get the opportunity to include some other voices that
we hope will be very helpful,
not only to us,
but particularly to those who listen to us.
So our next conversation will be hosting Amghad Bablawi,
who is the missional coordinator for our
presbytery, our group of presbytery and churches.
And we’re going to have a really,
I think, hopefully interesting conversation where we get to engage with some of the past missional
conversation.
And then we get to look at,
from his vantage, overseeing many different churches,
we’ll get to see what missional looks like as a larger body of Christians is trying to navigate
these very difficult waters.
And so that’ll be a great conversation.
And then we’re excited to get
to have a conversation with Dr.
Darrell Guder,
who in many ways is,
if not the really spark that
lit this flame, this missional conversation, he certainly fanned it.
And he’s the one who has
advanced in the Western church,
this reality that we need to cope with this missional identity that
we’ve always had and in many ways lost.
So our conversation with him,
which will then be in two weeks,
we look forward to engaging where are the sticky spots and the challenges of the church
seeking to be missional into the future.
There’s literally no one I can think of who would be better
positioned to help us engage those questions.
And so we’ll be blessed by that time with Darrell.
I think those will be fascinating interviews because in Amghad you have a person who spends
an inordinate amount of his time thinking about how to help congregationals pursue
missional.
And with Dr.
Guder,
you have a person who at the highest level thinks about what it
means for the church universal to be missional.
Really, I think you’re exactly right.
I mean,
Dr.
Guder is a pioneer of that conversation and thinks about it in the largest sense.
So we will, in those two weeks,
be able to talk to someone who is trying to work at the practical level of churches,
particularly churches even in our area, in our context,
and someone who literally
speaks at global conferences and is connected throughout the world to people asking the larger
questions of what it means to be missional.
And I think between those two experiences,
we should have a great number of opportunities to think about these things for ourselves,
to be challenged by them,
to be educated by them,
and to be, I think, drawn deeper into this conversation.
Listen, we can promise you two things.
One,
you’re going to hear some really
insightful people speaking about a really deep and challenging subject.
And you’ll get a little
of a break from just us.
So I count that as a win-win.
So we look forward to joining you next week
as we get to host these conversations,
first on God and then Dr.
Guder.
And then we will continue
on with the conclusion following that,
where we get to tie some of these themes together.
But we’re glad for today that you would join us for this conversation,
where we try to engage that
question, what it means to be missional.
How can we be missional?
And we hope that there’s been
something good for you in it.
Thank you for listening.