Someone asked me the other day “what are the things that make a person ‘missional’ and how does one become missional”. Well, I have thought about it a bit, and here are my musings in task list form...chuckle.
1.) Leave the cycle of trying to find another way of doing ‘Outreach Events’. Instead focus your imagination on finding ways of connecting with people where they are.
2.) Unwrite the internal script that casts evangelism as a one time sniper hit on a target with a preconceived outcome. Awaken your imagination by seeing mission as part of regular daily, weekly and monthly life rhythms. That our job is not to take Jesus to people, but open their eyes to the reality that He is already at work in their lives.
3.) Rethink the strategic ministry model of building multiple use buildings, as if by building a gymnasium on the church campus, we will bring people into the orbit of the church. Could we engage the questions about resources that honestly asks us if we should build less third spaces, and maybe inhabit more the ones already there?
4.) Lets be clear that one-on-one evangelism and the techniques associated with such apologetic persuasion are hit and miss at best. Can we direct imagination at inhabiting places in two’s or three’s or more? Hospitals, recovery centres, the school systems, the park districts … truly believing that two or three lovers of Jesus together become an undeniable force in any environment when they are under His Lordship?
5.) Gently reject the Sunday morning gathering as an evangelistic event, for it cannot be that in the new post Christendom cultures. Can we truly imagine the spiritual formation that comes from a communal(together) encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ?
6.) Release the expectation that coercive persuasion and argument are our predominant or most effective witness. What would it look like for the people of God to be seeking “one person of peace” (Luke 10) among the lost of their neighbourhoods?
7.) Repent of the presumptuous postures of power as we live our lives among those who do not know Christ yet. Can we personally engage the way Christ always enters the human situation in humility? Can we learn to come to our neighbours humbly and in need? And instead of only offering them a meal, find ways to participate in a meal with them?
8.) Stop surveying the neighbourhoods – learn how to exegete the neighbourhood. Surveying looks at the neighbourhood as a place to market a church. To exegete a neighbourhood requires inhabiting the neighbourhood. Actually fully living there...discovering where the hurting are and where the unjust structures are...and becoming a voice of reconciliation and justice from within.
9.) Take the focus off of strategic planning and place it on thoughtful preparation. We really don’t know the future…but we know that the Spirit is birthing His kingdom among us as we respond faithfully day by day. There must be some merit to finding the rhythm of owning our brokenness on a daily basis...and discovering how to live in the joy of His grace. In doing so we learn how to be humans again, not caught in a state of denial as though we are no longer a people of need. Billy Graham described the journey like this, “I am just a beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” The thoughtful reflection and preparation that needs to be central to the life of a true disciple prepares us for the unexpected ‘suddenly’s’ of God. Leslie Newbigin warned us that, “the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decision about the mobilizing and allocating of “resources” [rather] the significant advances have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge.” (The Open Secret)
J
