What does it means to be missional?
I am reading Ray Anderson's book, An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches. I don't like his writing style. It's boring to me. But the content is fabulous. So it's a hard read, but right now it's worth it. I came across a provocative thought today.
Quoting John Franke "The move from church with a mission to missional church has significant implications for the character of theology."
When I read that I thought, It also has significant implications for practice. Perhaps the two should be related... practice and theology, that is! :)
A church with a mission goes out and does something positive in the community. They build a school. They serve an orphanage. They visit senior citizens. All good stuff that God wants us to do, right? But it's easy to keep that stuff disconnected from what the church does. Mission is something we do for them. We are glad to help. But we are comfortable with the us vs them distinction.
I think one of the most profound things the missional church movement can do it break down that barrier. So that mission becomes who we are not what we do. There is not longer an us vs them barrier. We still build a school, but we don't do it in a compartmentalized way. It comes to worship with us. It's fully integrated and wholistic.
I saw the negative side of this at the first church I served. We had a tremendous youth program in downtown Washington, DC. Hundreds of kids were involved. The "church" was older and greyer and whiter than the youth. The "church" was supportive of the youth program. They saw it as part of their mission. But (except for a few exceptions) they never participated missionally themselves. The kids were never really welcomed into the church. The few that did find their way into worship - worshipped on the churches terms. No integration.
I've also seen this work missionally. In seminary I interned at Fourth Presbyterian in South Boston, MA, USA. Burns Stanfield is the pastor. Before that internship I never really wanted to pastor in a church. I wanted to do mission work with the poor. This was my first real experience with a missional church. There was no separation between the people doing in the mission and the people being served. The people running the food closet were also it's customers. They were also members (even leaders) in the church. Fully integrated. And God smiled.
Think about it. I'm curious if others have ideas about what it means to be missional vs what it means to do mission.
Quoting John Franke "The move from church with a mission to missional church has significant implications for the character of theology."
When I read that I thought, It also has significant implications for practice. Perhaps the two should be related... practice and theology, that is! :)
A church with a mission goes out and does something positive in the community. They build a school. They serve an orphanage. They visit senior citizens. All good stuff that God wants us to do, right? But it's easy to keep that stuff disconnected from what the church does. Mission is something we do for them. We are glad to help. But we are comfortable with the us vs them distinction.
I think one of the most profound things the missional church movement can do it break down that barrier. So that mission becomes who we are not what we do. There is not longer an us vs them barrier. We still build a school, but we don't do it in a compartmentalized way. It comes to worship with us. It's fully integrated and wholistic.
I saw the negative side of this at the first church I served. We had a tremendous youth program in downtown Washington, DC. Hundreds of kids were involved. The "church" was older and greyer and whiter than the youth. The "church" was supportive of the youth program. They saw it as part of their mission. But (except for a few exceptions) they never participated missionally themselves. The kids were never really welcomed into the church. The few that did find their way into worship - worshipped on the churches terms. No integration.
I've also seen this work missionally. In seminary I interned at Fourth Presbyterian in South Boston, MA, USA. Burns Stanfield is the pastor. Before that internship I never really wanted to pastor in a church. I wanted to do mission work with the poor. This was my first real experience with a missional church. There was no separation between the people doing in the mission and the people being served. The people running the food closet were also it's customers. They were also members (even leaders) in the church. Fully integrated. And God smiled.
Think about it. I'm curious if others have ideas about what it means to be missional vs what it means to do mission.
