Missional Church

We use the term 'missional church' around The Bridge all the time. We are about to use it a lot over Labor Day retreat and in the Sept. 13 sermon on "Where does The Bridge go from here?" We have defined it before, but I found this definition on Jonathan McIntosh's blog and it does a better job than I could, so here you go:

A pastor told me the other day, “I realize that we are not a missional church.” What did he mean?

Simply that, at some point, the church let something get in the way of actually bringing the transformative message of the gospel into contact with people.

Mission drift happens when a church lets something else take over: a building project, an unstated theology of “people should come to us,” or sometimes simple laziness. Often an unspoken attitude hangs like a cloud over the entire church; an attitude that those who don’t look like us, dress like us, vote like us, have the same skin color, or come from the same socioeconomic background are not really welcome here.

And the church stops. Reaching. People.

People.

Real, living, sweating, broken, sinful people.

People need hope. They need God. They need the light of the gospel. Please, for all our discussions and books and conferences and postulating and sermon prepping, let us not forget this.

And we won’t forget if we understand something simple yet surprising: God was a person (and still is!). The incarnation – God as a person – helps us understand and relate to people.
The cross provides the framework for our theology (what we believe about and how we relate to God). But it’s the incarnation, that provides the framework for our missiology (what we believe about and how we relate to culture).

The cross is our message.
The incarnation shapes & informs how we communicate that message.

And what do we see in God as a person?

We see Jesus.

And we see him loving people. Spending time with people. Sharing his life with people. We see an outcast ministering to outcasts. We see grace offered to a prostitute. An adulterer. A tax-collector.

And he looks out at them and he is absolutely moved with compassion because he sees that they are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” And he says I am here. I am here to “seek and save that which is lost.”

A missional church sees that people and culture are not enemies of the church, but broken treasures that God is restoring.

Because of this, a missional church is committed to:

• Cultural exegesis – becoming humble students of the varied people & cultures surrounding the church.

• Faithful contextualization – communicating gospel truth in ways the culture understands.

• Producing missionaries instead of consumers – equipping people to live out the gospel through their daily lives and work.

• Building a great city, not just a good church – the goal being more than a full church, but a transformed city.

• Social justice – healing real wounds and righting injustices in the community around them.

• Church planting – multiplying to new towns, cities, states and countries by starting new local churches.

Interestingly, however, Philippians 2:5-8 indicates that God came in human form so that Jesus could humble himself “by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” The man who was God was headed somewhere. The cross.

It is not enough simply that God lived among us. He also died for us.

Being “missional” is not enough. Mission fails if it does not point to the cross. The message that we are translating for culture must be “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

Of course, many churches that supposedly “get the gospel” fail to properly live out that gospel for their context; for them it is gospel in theory, not gospel in practical reality.

Because Jesus’ death has bought us life, we are now messengers of a new reality. We will faithfully proclaim and lovingly incarnate this new reality: to tell & live it for the hope of the world around us. This is the essence of mission.

So, as you can see, missional church is vastly more than just sending checks to some missionaries or even just being involved in international mission trips. The Bridge is committed to whatever it takes to be missional. HE is worth IT!

Reality

I am sitting here at MAC looking out at my beautiful surroundings and focusing on the parts of God's creation that are healthy for me to look at. I head to Farmington prison to speak tonight and I am contemplating what I can tell those men that might make a real difference in their hearts and minds as they go through their days inside the fence and then what will happen when they come back out. I will probably do what I always do -- give them the real truth about the condition of their hearts as Jesus looks at them. I will give them reality. I will tell them that they have same spiritual heart that I have (had) -- wicked, deceitful, and evil. And the only thing that can make that wicked heart righteous is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. It is difficult to make that believable and be very sweet. It also will only work if I make a connection with those men -- if they think I am real and I care. I will attempt to do so by showing that I have the same heart that they have. The only difference in us is that I have been law-abiding as I sin against God.

Just a few minutes ago, I finished reading an article in USA Today about why television had to shift shows away from "Leave it to Beaver" toward "Sex and the City" and "Grey's Anatomy." Everyone thinks it is because our society has gone to 'hell in a handbasket' in morals which may be a PART of it. But, the basic reason is that all post-boomer generations have no interest in their fiction showing a phony perfection. They require authentic; they require real. If "the Beav" was going to be redone today, it would never make it out of pilot unless we sense that Ward is struggling with the things that men really struggle with -- affirmation, fulfillment, proficiency in career, sex, and relationships. June would need to show her weaknesses as she fights the demons of aging and raging hormornes, not vacuuming in high heels and pearls. And Wally and the Beav would be considering dark thoughts as they were accepted or not by their peers.

These generations want the same things from their church. They do not have any interest in being a part of place that does not express authentic leadership and community. It is no accident that these generations respond well (I think) to my teaching, preaching, and leadership. I have always been one to lay out the whole package in everything I do. Should we not teach (including humor) about all subjects and not just the 'comfortable' ones? Should we not preach the perversion of the community at Corinth (Christians Gone Wild next summer maybe) as it relates to the current American culture or not preach the sexual intensity inside marriage from the Song of Solomon. I think we should and I am not afraid to. But,that feels weird to folks who really think that there are just some things that should not be opened up in public. So, on occasion, there are folks who think I go overboard in humor or subject material. They are probably right, but the "Leave it to Beaver" church almost destroyed the American church because it drove sin underground. Let's get it to the surface, so that we can truly 'repent and believe the Gospel.' Let's create authentic church, so that these generations may be saved.

A Great Teacher?

It is interesting as you encounter people from other cultures and other religions that they consider Jesus a 'prophet' or a great moral teacher. Well, the prophet thing always goes away when you point out that the definition of a prophet is 'one who speaks for God.' I had two Muslim basketball players from Bosnia that backed off of their 'Jesus is a prophet but not the son of God' stance when learning of the definition. I have been thinking about the 'great moral teacher' one today as I have been working on the Sermon on the Mount. These passages of Scripture from Matthew 5-7 are where people always think Jesus qualified himself as a moral instructor. This is just another cop out of avoiding his deity. While there is moral instruction to the SOTM, that is not its purpose. Its purpose is to drive a man or woman to the Kingdom of God as defined by God himself.

Let me give you an example. The general public thinks that the so-called Golden Rule found in Matthew 7:12 (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is maybe the great moral teaching ever uttered. While that may be true, that is not the main purpose of the passage. Due to our wicked, selfish hearts, it is impossible to perform the teaching, so its purpose is to show us our need for Christ. It is impossible, so it condemns us. Only being indwelt by His Spirit would allow us to be able to truly fulfill this command.

But, the Lord did not issue the command for his people to comment on it; he issued it for it to be carried out.