We have been going through a six-part series called The Nature of the Church. You may recall when I started the series I said that there were basically three aspects that help give definition to the church. I said the church was Christ initiated. The church is a spiritual community. The church is missional. Then I took it and made one definition of the church. The church is a Christ-initiated, spiritual community on a mission with God to reconcile all of his creation back to him. A quick refresher for those of you who weren’t here and missed some of the series. When I speak of the church being Christ initiated, it means exactly what it says. It means that Christ initiated the church. After Peter had spoken those great words of faith where he said “I believe Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God”, Jesus looked at him and said “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.” The main takeaway being that it wasn’t our church. It is not any denominational church. It is Christ’s church. Then I talked about the idea that the church is spiritual. The church was created by the spirit 2,000 years ago in that house where the spirit showed up and filled the disciples with a feeling of himself and then went out into the streets in boldness proclaiming the word of God. The church was created by the spirit. Last week, I talked about the church as a community, a really unique community, unlike the community you would find around here or online. A community of called-out people that have been called out to the world called together into relationship and called to be the body of Christ on earth.
Today, I want to address the idea that the church is missional. I imagine that most of you have heard the term missions. The idea of missions is just the idea of sending people out with the good news of Jesus Christ. Historically, this means sending people out that have abandoned their homes and lifestyles in America or wherever and going off to foreign and desolate places. Over the years, missions has expanded to include a variety of things. Things like medical missions, missions to the poor, missions to the homeless, missions to schools and universities, and all sorts of local, regional, and global missions. Although the face of missions has changed, one thing really hasn’t changed and it is the belief that all churches should really be involved in missions in some degree. Thankfully, as many of you know, we belong to a church, Bellevue Christian Church, that is a big supporter of missions. Some of you may have seen those blue laminated cards in your pew. Those are the missionaries we support. In fact, 25% of every dollar you give goes to some form of missions. We can be proud of that. Not only do we support missions with finances, we also support the sending of short-term mission teams. Over the past ten years, we have probably sent about a dozen different short-term mission teams. Many of you have been part of those mission teams that have really been life changing for the people that went. Not only do we send missions out, we also give what I would say pulpit time to the various missionaries who come and visit. Three weeks from now, we will be hearing from Mike and Joanne Noel who will share about their ministry in Tanzania. You can say that the church supports missions. We manage that support through a group that we call the Missions Committee. It is a group of people that meet about once a quarter to share updates about the missionaries in the field, to talk about their needs, or just simply to pray over the missionaries. If missions is something that the church does, and Bellevue Christian Church does missions, then missions is something that we can basically check off our church to-do list. Unfortunately, that is the way many churches view missions.
But our idea is not simply to be a church that supports missions but rather to be a missional church. A missional church understands that although all those things I just mentioned are good, the financial support of missionaries, giving them time up front, and sending out short-term teams, but really a missional church understands that missions is not something that you just check off the church to-do list. Missions should lie at the very heart of a church. In many ways, the church exists for missions. A missional church understands that being a missionary is not confined to a specialized person who goes off into a foreign country to convert the heathens. They understand that everyone in the pew is a missionary. Everybody in the pew has a responsibility for carrying the good news of Jesus Christ in the world whether it is overseas or our own back yard. In case you think I am making up this idea of missional, if you have some time just go on the internet and type in the word missional and you will get bombarded with all sorts of websites that support this idea of the missional church. This has been going on for about ten years or so. It is the idea that somehow the church has lost its missionary focus. The central idea that supports this notion is that God himself is a missional God. If we serve a missional God, then the church should be missional. If God’s will is to reach all the world, then we as the people who carry out God’s will should also be missionary. We could go through scripture after scripture in both the Old Testament and the New and see all these passages that support the idea that we serve a missional God.
Obviously, we just went through a one-year series on The Story. Through the story, we saw passage after passage that supports this idea that we serve a missional God, a sending God. I don’t have time to go through those Old Testament passages but a quick recap of what was going on back there is we see back in Genesis that God created the world in all its splendor. His crowning touch on his creation was the human being, man and woman. He created man and woman and gave them the opportunity to have dominion over all of creation with the only stipulation being that they would worship God and be obedient to God. We know that man has turned his back on God. So much so that he began to introduce things like violence and greed and poverty and immorality into the world. So much so that if someone was to look at the world, they can’t help but say this doesn’t seem like the way things should be. The reality is it is not the way that things were meant to be. God created a paradise for his people to dwell, and for his people to dwell in relationship with each other, relationship with creation, and a relationship with God. But basically they blew it. God being a God of love and mercy like a good father put on a missional cap and went out to go after his lost and wayward children. He did this by sending people out into the world. Starting with Abraham and going through Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Jonah and a lot of different prophets. He sent these people into the world so that they would basically give the message that God wants to call the people out of their squalor and back into a relationship with him. That is really what the Old Testament is about. God constantly pursuing his people and calling them away from their idols and all the squalor that they got themselves involved in and calling them back into relationship.
We know man has collectively turned his back not only on God but on the messengers that God sent. But again we know that God is a God of love. This is how God showed his love among us. John 3:16 reminds us that He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is the missionary character of God. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. If you are familiar with the gospels, especially the book of John, you see that Jesus understood himself as the sent one. As one that was sent by the father for very specific work. If you just looked up the word sent in the gospels, you would see all these different passages where Jesus constantly identified himself as the sent one. One example is where the disciples were worried that Jesus didn’t seem like he was eating enough food so they said here is some food. Why don’t you eat it? Jesus gave this weird reply. He said in John 4:34 that “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” We know that the work of Jesus included all sorts of things, but it also included the work that would be completed on a terrible wooden cross. We know that there was this connection to Christ’s work and the cross because shortly after he was given some bitter wine to drink off a sponge, Jesus’ final word was “‘It is finished.’ With that he bowed his head and gave his spirit.” His work was finished, but the disciples work had just really begun.
Right after the resurrection the disciples were in confusion and chaos. They just saw their Lord crucified so they hovered in some sort of an upper room in fear of the Jews. Out of nowhere Jesus shows up and says in John 20:21 “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” They don’t know what that means. A few weeks after they would know exactly what that means. As we learned in the book of Acts, Jesus told them to go back into a house but this time not to hide but to wait. He goes on to say “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” A witness. What is a witness? It is just someone who gives testimony about something. A witness is really what a missionary does. A witness is going to go off and give testimony to the works of Jesus Christ, his death, his burial, and his resurrection.
Those are only a few passages that give us clues into the missionary nature of God. If we were to string them all together, we would see a very clear pattern. We would see that the Father sent the Son, the Son sent the Holy Spirit, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sends the church. Very clearly, the missionary intent of God. By nature, the church is supposed to be missional. In other words, the sent ones. The ones that are going to carry the good news of Jesus Christ into the world. Whatever world that might be. Some of you may be thinking that is all well and good. You made a decent case for that, but you might be asking what happened. Why does it seem like that is really not a priority in the church? How did things get off track? To give any justice to that question, I would probably have to spend about ten weeks in a church history class showing you basically what happened and how we got off track from this missionary focus. But in a nutshell, it is really quite simple. We became inward focused. We became focused on attracting people to the church and basically keeping them there in a metaphorical way. Rather than seeing the church as an outpost for missionary activity. A place where the missionaries would come in and receive nourishment and training and support and prayer and that sort of thing and then be sent back out into the various contexts of their lives, the neighborhoods, the schools, and the workplace to carry on God’s work. The church became focused on attracting people to a building. Attracting people to a church. In order to do that, if you really want to attract people to a church, then you learn from people who know how to do it. The business world. You go into the business world and you read books about marketing and the best practices in business and marketing. You are trying to learn how to appeal to the consumer-driven tendencies of the people. So in about 30 years or so, people, pastors, church planters figured it out. Build a nice building. It might not even look like a church. Then make sure you fill it with a great worship team and maybe some drums and different instruments and make sure the music is cool and relevant. Make sure you have good teaching. Make sure you have programs that appeal to the little ones. That you have a great youth ministry that is going to attract the kids in and of course great adult ministries. If you can, try and make the service more seeker friendly. Do away with the churchy sounding words. The marketers found out that if you do these types of things, if you build this type of environment, the people will come. It is what I call the Field of Dreams methodology. Some of you know about Field of Dreams. It was a Kevin Costner movie. He had a vision to build a baseball field and if he built it, they would come. Sure enough, the ghosts of players past came and the crowds showed up and they came. That is what the church does only the church gives it a different name. It is called the attractional model of church growth. There is a name for it. That is how you grow a church. You make it attractive. There is something to be said for that. To a certain degree, we have fallen into that trap. We have created an attractional church and people have come to that. The question that has been plaguing me lately is is the growth of Bellevue Christian Church a result of doing the will of God that is to make disciples or of catering to the consumer-driven tendencies of our target market? Those are hard words but those are what are plaguing me lately.
As a side note, I had somebody this week tell me we have one of the most successful churches in Bellevue. A little bit of pride came up and then I felt just terrible. Numbers isn’t all what it is about. It’s not about building a big church. It is about building big people. Don’t get me wrong though. The stuff we do on Sunday what we refer to as the gathering and what goes on the rest of the week in the small groups are important things. It is good to have a nice environment to worship. It is good to have a good worship team. It is good to have good programs for children, teens, and adults. That is the gathering. But that is only half the formula. The other half is the scattering. What do we do when we leave here? Remember we started off this series talking about what we are as a church and the nature of the church should flow out into what we do. What we do can be boiled down to two things. We gather and we scatter. That is all what we do. The gathering is what happens here on Sunday through the worship, the music, the communion, the baptisms. All this stuff is part of the gathering here. The scattering is what happens when we go out into the world in the various contexts that we find ourselves. The neighborhoods, the schools, the workplaces. Really, how well we scatter determines whether or not we truly are a missional church. Whether we really understand what it means to be a missionary. The first thing it means to be a missionary is to understand the culture that you are going into. As some of you know, the American culture has just gone weird. Everything seems to be upside down in our culture. Greed overrules generosity. Hatred over love. Hurriedness over peace. Sexual immorality over fidelity. That world is upside down. It is upside down because it is contrary to what we have learned in the Bible about the kingdom values. That is why we are going into the world. We have to go into the world because 90% of the people aren’t going to come in no matter what we think about the Sunday gathering. If we think our church is the coolest thing since the iPhone it doesn’t matter. They don’t think that. Look at how many people are here today. How many people are still laying home in their beds getting ready for the Super Bowl? How many thousands of people? We think we are a successful church. We are by statistics but really we are not because we are missing 90% of the people. People don’t care how cool our church is. They don’t care about our events. They don’t care about what we are doing for the kids. They have no idea. They really don’t care because they are in their own little world where self rules. Where the Super Bowl is the primary focus for today. Not going to church. There will be kids at home from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed sitting in front of a computer screen online doing God only knows what. A place where people are gluttonous, overwhelmed with greed, self-satisfaction, and desire. That is the culture as missionaries that we are called into. We are called into that world.
Contrary to what some people might think, we have to change our methods. Back in the 80s and 90s it was all about memorizing certain proof texts the Romans wrote. If you could just memorize the right Bible verse and draw the right diagram and present that out and everybody is just going to come to Jesus and run into church. That might have worked in the 80s and 90s. Now they just think you are annoying. You say the Bible is the truth. They say what truth. I have a friend who is a Muslim and he says the Koran is the truth. I have a friend who is a Mormon and he says the Book of Mormon is the truth. About that time we are kind of stumped because the reality is most people can’t make a big defense that the Bible is the truth. The good news is you don’t have to make a case that the Bible is truth because the people nowadays, especially the younger generation, they don’t want to hear that the Bible is the truth. They want to see the truth in your life. Worked out in your life. That is easier than memorizing a bunch of Bible verses because the key is all you have to do is learn how to be like Jesus. We know from the Bible stories that Jesus didn’t need a bunch of big programs and big events and big budgets and a bunch of volunteers to get people to follow him. There was something that was very attractive about Jesus. Not physically but there was something that was very attractive about Jesus so that everywhere he went people followed him. He just walked through life and made observations about culture and saw how people were living in a way that was counter to kingdom values. He would stop and correct them, and then he would invite them into living an alternative reality that he referred to as the kingdom of God. That is how we are supposed to approach missions. It is really not that hard. You have to learn to walk through life with your eyes open instead of just focused on yourself in your own little world. If you open your eyes and begin to make observations whether it is watching the evening news or talking to people or just sitting at a bus stop paying attention to people, you will see all sorts of mixed messages. All sorts of messages coming at them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Messages that are contributing to and reinforcing everything from broken finances to broken relationships to broken homes to broken lives. All you have to do is pay attention. Ask good questions. If the opportunity arises, which it will, where you hear somebody having a really bad life and you have an opportunity to speak to them just say things don’t seem to be working this way. I can present to you an alternative to the way you are living. I am not an expert on the Bible, but I know that when I apply some of these principles to my life, things get a little better. Then if the opportunity presents itself to invite somebody to the church that is fine. Do it. If you can, invite them to church. But really what is most important is that you learn to invite them into your life. You invite them into your life so that they begin to see that truth worked out in your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your finances, your work ethic or whatever.
That is all I have to say for now. We will say a lot more about this in two weeks. But really the point that I want you to walk away with is that the church is missional. The church is missional. Missions is not something that you farm out to a committee or an organization. Missions is not something that has to do with building an attractive building and filling it with a great worship team and relevant music. Missional is a mindset of every Christian in the pew. A mindset that understands that they, by the very nature of being part of the body of Christ, are a missional people. A people on mission with God as he reclaims and reconciles all of creation back to him. Let us pray.
