Last week we started a new series called an elemental church. We looked at God’s dream for a church and talked a little about the dreams that we have for our community.
In the past few years, the word missional has picked up some steam and become somewhat of a buzz word among pastors and authors. It is now in the titles of books and articles, whole conferences are devoted to it, and there are a ton of blogs dedicated to this idea. Many people feel that this is just the latest fad, something new that will last only a few years, so we can ignore it and continue business as usual. I don’t think that is the case, as we will see today, the idea of being missional has been around for thousands of years.
If you have your bibles, you can open them to the book of Genesis chapter 12. I always put the passage I am using up on the screen, but I would encourage you to bring your bible, so you can follow along and put some notes in your bible or underline something you want to remember.
Let’s read together what it says in Genesis 12, starting in verse 1: Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
A lot of times we look at the story of Abraham, and think, it makes sense that he picked up, followed God and moved. After all, his story is only 2 chapters after the story of Noah and the flood. The problem with that though, is that these two stories while only separated by 2 chapters, they are separated by over 1000 years. The Jewish nation did not exist, we aren’t told whether Abraham even knew about God. Assume for a moment that he didn’t know about God, and he just picks up. So many questions come from that: why would he pick up and move? Had he heard about God? Was it common for people to pick up and move when they hear a voice?
That is one thing about being missional, when God calls we pick up. Even when that option makes the least sense. Remember what we said last week, followers of Jesus look at things differently than others. We look at our possessions, the life we live, the life we have “built” differently.
A lot of times as Christians we focus on the fact that God called Abraham out, set him apart from other nations. As a special privilege. And we look at the verse that says, I will curse those who curse you and bless those who bless you, almost as a right. Which sadly, some Christians have taken as their badge of honor, God will curse you if you curse us. But look at the last line, “in you all families of the earth shall be blessed.” Some translations say, “through you.”
In the old testament, the central act of God is what is called the Exodus, the freeing of the nation of Israel from slavery to the nation of Egypt. All the stories in the Old Testament point back to this story.
You can turn over to Exodus 19. God has led the people of Israel out of Egypt and Moses is told to go up to the top of Mt. Sinai. Here is a picture of Mt. Sinai, so you can get an idea of what it looked like. So Moses goes up the mountain, here is what it says in Exodus 19, verse 3: while Moses went up to God. The LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel."
God is saying, there is something different about you as a nation. I brought you out of Egypt for a reason. So often as Christians, we focus on the fact that God saves people, or in this case, a nation. He does that, but not so we can sit on our hands, or so that we can say, “I am so glad God saved me, let’s wait til he comes back.” There are a lot of books that almost proclaim this idea, that the world is getting worse, so we need to hold tight and just wait for Jesus to come back and rescue us. I don’ think that is God’s plan for his creation.
But that is what we have boiled salvation and evangelism into, we have made it into getting people out of hell and into heaven. That is only part of it, but if you ask most Christians, why did God save them? Why did Jesus die on the cross? Because he loves me and wants me to spend eternity with him. So we become Christians and just wait. What kind of a plan is that?
Think about this, when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and it was taking government workers a long time to get there. Christians and other organizations stepped in and helped those people, do you remember the big deal news programs made about the church being there. It should have been expected that we would be there, instead it was, look at all these Christians, like all of a sudden we were created and here we are.
Missional Christians are glad that God loves them and saved them to spend eternity with him, but they are also focused on living in the kingdom now. Think about that word and idea for a minute. The kingdom of God. Let me ask you a question, where is the kingdom of God, when does it happen? (get feedback)
For most of my Christian life, I thought of the kingdom of God as heaven. Something that happens after I die. We have all kinds of best sellers in the Christian culture that promote this idea.
Is that the idea that the Bible promotes? Look at what it says in Matthew 4:17: Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Luke 10:9: The kingdom of God has come near to you.
Luke 17:21: behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. Some translations say, in you.
While the kingdom of God is referred to as heaven in the Bible, there is also this sense that the kingdom of God is here, in us, among us. So the focus is not only populating heaven, but living in the kingdom now, expanding the kingdom in the lives of those around us.
Flip over to 1 Peter chapter 2. Peter is writing to the early church, which involved Jews and Gentiles. He says this in verse 9: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
What does that sound like? Exodus 19. Peter is connecting the dots, saying, it is the same thing. Peter is saying, there is this overarching theme throughout the scriptures, you have been chosen for a purpose. You were not chosen to sit on your hands, or to be grateful that you were saved and others aren’t. Your calling and job is to bless others, to live out the kingdom in front of others.
Some of you might be thinking, is this just another way of talking about evangelism? For many of us, evangelism is not something we like to do. I think within the church, we have made sharing our faith so difficult. We have created questions to ask, to get to a certain place in a conversation. So we stand there talking with a friend, but what happens if you get through all the questions and don’t know where to go next?
Think about it this way. We talk about what we love. If you talk with me, it won’t take long for me to tell you about Katie and Ava; or to tell you I am a Steelers fan. If you are around a grandparent, how long until they are pulling out pictures of grandkids and telling stories? It is basic to humanity to talk about the things that we love.
I believe that if you have met God, then that will come of out of you in the most natural, freeflowing, authentic ways. You never think, I don’t know if I should tell them that I am married, they might find that offensive. You just tell about the one you love. It just comes out of you.
I think we have lost something in the church with all the training that we have done. We have convinced ourselves that evangelism is for a few “smart” or “gifted” people. And we have moved it from being a natural part of who we are, to a sales pitch.
I don’t want to go too far on a tangent, but I think this gets at the heart of the missional conversation. Being missional, living a missional life is natural. It is me, being me in our world. And in the process of being in that world, we are making it better.
Here is how I think this fits in the larger scope of God’s story. God has been writing a story from the beginning of time, his creation is ongoing, and from the beginning God has been missional. Looking for people to play a part in this ongoing, unfolding story, he sets apart a nation, a royal priesthood. This becomes the church in the new testament. To this day, God is setting people a part, not to be part of an elite club, not to just get out of hell and into heaven, but to bless creation, to bless the world. To walk through the world and to have those around us know we had been there because of the beauty we brought.
I have been told that during this transition time, some people brought up the question, if beginnings church ceased to exist, would the community notice? That is a missional question, that gets at how we are doing at living out the mission of God.
I want to close with something I found on the internet this week. I got these two lists from the website friend of missional, but I also added a few. You can find these lists on our blog discussion site. This is what a missional church is not:
• A missional church is not a dispenser of religious goods and services or a place where people come for their weekly spiritual fix.
• A missional church is not a place where mature Christians come to be fed and have their needs met.
• A missional church is not a place where "professionals" are hired to do all the work of the church.
• A missional church is not a place where the "professionals" teach the children and youth about God to the exclusion of parental responsibility.
• A missional church is not a church with a "good missions program." The people are the missions program and includes going to "Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
• A missional church is not about a new strategy for evangelism.
• A missional church is not missional just because it is contemporary, young, hip, postmodern-sensitive, seeker-sensitive or even traditional.
• A missional church is not about big programs and organizations to accomplish God’s missionary purpose. This does not imply no program or organization, but that they will not drive mission. They will be used in support of people on mission.
• A missional church does not focus on a benefit oriented faith that assumes Christianity automatically promises a better marriage, better portfolio, greater meaning, and more certainty
• A missional church is not involved in political party activism, either on the right or left. As Brian McLaren wrote, we need "purple peoplehood" — people who don’t want to be defined as red or blue, but have elements of both.
So what is it, here is what a missional church is:
• A missional church is one where people are exploring and rediscovering what it means to be Jesus’ sent people as their identity and vocation.
• A missional church will be made up of individuals willing and ready to be Christ’s people in their own situation and place.
• A missional church knows that they must be a cross-cultural missionary (contextual) people in their own community.
• A missional church will be engaged with the culture (in the world) without being absorbed by the culture (not of the world). They will become intentionally indigenous.
• A missional church understands that God is already present in the culture where it finds itself. Therefore, a missional church doesn’t view its purpose as bringing God into the culture or taking individuals out of the culture to a sacred space.
• A missional church is about more than just being contextual, it is also about the nature of the church and how it relates to God.
• A missional church is evangelistic and faithfully proclaims the gospel through word and deed. Words alone are not sufficient; how the gospel is embodied in our community and service is as important as what we say.
• A missional church will align all their activities around the mission of God.
• A missional church seeks to put the good of their neighbor over their own.
• A missional church will give integrity, morality, good character and conduct, compassion, love and a resurrection life filled with hope preeminence to give credence to their reasoned verbal witness.
• A missional church practices hospitality by welcoming the stranger into the midst of the community.
• A missional church will see themselves as a community or family on a mission together. There are no "Lone Ranger" Christians in a missional church.
• A missional church will see themselves as representatives of Jesus and will do nothing to dishonor his name.
• A missional church will be totally reliant on God in all it does. It will move beyond superficial faith to a life of supernatural living.
• A missional church will be desperately dependent on prayer.
• A missional church will gather for the purpose of worship, encouragement, supplemental teaching, training, and to seek God’s presence and to be realigned with God’s missionary purpose.
• A missional church is orthodox in its view of the gospel and scripture, but culturally relevant in its methods and practice so that it can engage the worldview of the hearers.
• A missional church will feed deeply on the scriptures throughout the week.
• A missional church will be a community where all members are involved in learning "the way of Jesus." Spiritual development is an expectation.
• A missional church will help people discover and develop their spiritual gifts and will rely on gifted people for ministry instead of talented people.
• A missional church is a healing community where people carry each other’s burdens and help restore gently.
I hope those things are the things that beginnings will become, the things we will strive to live out.
Missional requires that we be captured by God’s heart. That the things that break his heart, those are the things that break our hearts.
Author Stanley Hauerwas said, “God’s truth is credible to the world only when it sees a community shaped by the truth…If the gospel is to be heard, it must also be seen.”
So where are we as a church? Where are you? Do you see places where you are living missionally? What things do you need to do to change your perspective, to see yourself and us as ones who bless and change the world around us for the better? In your relationships, are you living missionally? Are you living a life like we said last week, where our friends might say, “I don’t believe in God, but I can’t explain you.” That is a missional life, that is what the missional church is.
