The Missionary Nature of the Church

November 6, 2007 | Filed Under books, dmin project, ecclesiology | No Comments

There is no other Church than the Church sent into the world, and there is no other mission than that of the Church of Christ. . . . If one wants to maintain a specific theological meaning of the term mission as “foreign mission,” its significance is, in my opinion, that it keeps calling the Church to think over its essential nature as a community sent forth into the world.

Seen in that light missionary work is not just one of its activities, but the criterion for all its activities . . . . It is exactly by going outside itself that the Church is itself and comes to itself.

- Johannes Blauw in The Missionary Nature of the Church

Re-Imagine: A Missional Church

November 3, 2007 | Filed Under dmin project, missiology, missional | 1 Comment

Here is a excellent introduction to what a missional church would look like in very practical words and images by Jonathan Dove, Pastor of Mt Albert Baptist Church in Ackland, New Zealand.

Evangelical Conversion toward a Missional Ecclesiology?

October 6, 2007 | Filed Under dmin project, ecclesiology, missional | 2 Comments

Today I finished reading a essay titled “Evangelical Conversion toward a Missional Ecclesiology” by George Hunsberger. The essay is chapter four of Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion? edited by John Stackhouse. Dr. Hunsberger is Professor of Congregational Mission at Western Theological Seminary. He is also coordinator of the Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America.

I had the privilege of sitting between Dr. Hunsberger and Dr. Lois Barrett (also a contributor to GOCN) during dinner one evening last year when the GOCN annual conference was in town. I have since grown to appreciate Hunsberger’s insight and try to keep up on his numerous writings.

Here is a extended portion of the essay where Hunsberger presents a helpful summary of the continual stranglehold Christendom has on the church in North America. He then goes on to ask if evangelicalism’s emphasis on “missions” has made it more difficult for the church to grasp the “missional” purpose of why it exists. I urge you to carve out a few minutes to read his thoughts and tell me what you think.

Hunsberger writes:

The Reformers lived in what was still a Christendom world, and they continued to think and respond to issues of the nature and form of the church with assumptions inherent in that world. It should be no surprise that they did so. But it should surprise us that Christendom ways of thinking of the church still persist in our own time. Evangelicalism, no less than any other of the streams flowing from the Reformation, bears the stamp of the reduction of the church of the church to a place where certain things happen.

What was most lost to the church in the period of Christendom was its sense of missional identity. This pervasive eclipse of mission continued to be evident in the Reformational confessions. Wilbert Shenk summarizes (Write the Vision, p. 38):

Ecclesiologically the church is turned inward. The thrust of these statements, which were the very basis for catechizing and guiding the faithful, rather than equipping and mobilizing the church to engage the world, was to guard and preserve. This is altogether logical, of course, if the whole of society is by definition already under the lordship of Christ.

The gradual emergence of Protestant missionary ventures to newly discovered parts of the world (after a couple of centuries!) does not really contradict this assessment. What is new is that missions are organized apart from the magistrate’s initiative and sponsorship. From the time of the Reformation until the eighteenth century, this official direction and support were understood to be chiefly responsible for the evangelization of new regions. More>>

The Sky is Falling

September 10, 2007 | Filed Under alan roxburgh, books, dmin project, gospel, missional | No Comments

This morning as I was reflecting on just how different the church would look if it was really shaped in terms of the missio dei, I ran across these words from Alan Roxburgh:

“Throughout Western societies, and most especially in North America, there has occurred a fundamental shift in the understanding and practice of the Christian story. It is no longer about God and what God is about in the world; it is about how God serves and meets human needs and desires. It is about how the individual self can find its own purposes and fulfillment.

More specifically, our churches have become spiritual food courts for the personal, private, inner needs of expressive individuals. The result is a debased, compromised, derivative form of Christianity that is not the gospel of the Bible at all. The biblical narrative is about God’s mission in, through, and for the sake of the world and how God has called human beings to be part of God’s reaching out to that world for God’s purpose of saving it in love. The focus of attention should be what God wants to accomplish and how we can be part of God’s mission, not how God helps us accomplish our own agendas.”

- Alan Roxburgh in The Sky is Falling

Missional Leadership

August 17, 2007 | Filed Under alan hirsch, books, dmin project, leadership, missional | No Comments

“In addition to holding a clear vision, missional leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes.

It is for this reason that Roxburgh and Romanuk can say that the role of leadership within the church is to cultivate environments wherein the Spirit of God might call forth and unleash the missional imagination of the people of God.”

- Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways

Living Systems and The Church

August 15, 2007 | Filed Under books, church, dmin project, missional | 2 Comments

Lately I have been involved in several conversations concerning the lack of interest or desire for change in the local church. Others have noted that their church has become too comfortable. Further, in the midst of this complacency they have noticed that the church has begun to decline in effectiveness towards connecting with those outside the church as well as disciplining those within the body.

Last night I was revisiting some thoughts from “The Forgotten Ways.” In chapter eight Hirsch quotes from “Surfing the Edge of Chaos” by Richard Pascale and “Unfreezing Moves” by William Easum in the midst of a discussion on learning from systems theory for the health of living organizations. Living systems theory says that:

Equilibrium is a precursor to death. “When a living system is in a state of equilibrium, it is less responsive to changes occurring around it. This places it at maximum risk.” (Pascale) This correlates to the situation in the organizational lifecycle when organizations tend to over regulate, lose dynamism, inhabit unresponsive structures, and degenerate in terms of output. In this state, they are in effect moving toward equilibrium. When the Christendom mode of church fails to respond to outside stimuli by disengaging from the liminal experience and becomes purely self-referential, then you can be sure it is on its way out.

In other words, it has lost its missional focus, which should drive it outside its own boundaries. In so many churches the mission of the church has actually become the maintenance of the institution itself. This was never Jesus’ intention. Our goal in organizing as a people is not to set up, preserve, and maximize an institution over its life cycle, but to extend God’s mission to the world. Our primary aim is not to perpetuate the church as an institution, but to follow Jesus into his mission in the world. “Christianity is concerned with the unfolding of the Kingdom of God in this world, not the longevity of organizations.” (Easum)

When we keep the mission in mind, the organic ideas about Christianity and church life will flow quite easily. When we have the institution of the church in mind, machine-like approaches are bound to follow, because its innate mechanism of responsiveness (mission) is effectively taken out of the equation. Mission is, and must be, the organizing principle of the church.

Marketplace and Missional Church

August 13, 2007 | Filed Under church, dmin project, missional | 1 Comment

“Laurie Guy, in an address to a pastors’ conference, spoke of the 80-10-10 formula. Some 10% of people in New Zealand regularly attend a church, a further 10% maintain a loose affiliation, while 80% are effectively outside the influence of local churches.

He notes that much of the evangelistic effort of churches is spent on the 10% with loose affiliation while we are largely out of touch with the 80%. The most obvious place where the committed 10% encounter the 80% is in the workplace. This observation is missional in the sense that it involves movement outwards from the gathered centre because those beyond the church mailing list rarely have an interest in coming to where we gather.”

- “Marketplace and Missional Church” from Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought & Practice by Derek Christensen

What is Missional?

August 6, 2007 | Filed Under books, dmin project, missional | 5 Comments

There are several things to like about Dan Kimball’s book ”They Like Jesus But Not The Church.” (For a complete book review check out Wess Daniels’ gatheringinlight blog.) In the introduction Kimball presents seven basic characteristics for what it means to be missional. On page 20 he writes:

Being missional means that the church sees itself as being missionaries, rather than having a missions department, and that we see ourselves as missionaries right where we live.

Being missional means that we see ourselves as representatives of Jesus “sent” into our communities, and that the church aligns everything it does with the missio dei (mission of God).

Being missional means we see the church not as a place we go only on Sunday, but as something we are throughout the week.

Being missional means that we understand we don’t “bring Jesus” to people but that we realize Jesus is active in culture and we join him in what he is doing.

Being missional means we are very much in the world and engaged in culture but are not conforming to the world.

Being missional means we serve our communities, and that we build relationships with the people in them, rather than seeing them as evangelistic targets.

Being missional means being all the more dependent on Jesus and the Spirit through prayer, the Scriptures, and each other in community.

Engaging Neighborhoods Where We Live

July 23, 2007 | Filed Under alan roxburgh, church planting, dmin project, gospel, incarnational, missional | 1 Comment

Here is a link to the latest podcast of the Roxburgh Journal interview with Pete Akins titled “Engaging Neighborhoods Where We Live.”

Roxburgh highlights a creative lay church planting movement taking place in the towns and villages in the UK. I would highly recommend taking 30 minutes to listen and be encouraged by what God is doing through the lives of His servants there. As Roxburgh states on his blog when reflecting on the interview: “I was struck by the power of what God is about in quiet, sustained forms of on-the-ground fresh expressions of kingdom life in rural England.”

The Trinity & Missional Ecclesiology

July 20, 2007 | Filed Under dmin project, ecclesiology, kingdom of God, missional | 1 Comment

In an excellent article in Word & World Journal titled “Rethinking Denominations and Denominationalism in Light of a Missional Ecclesiology” Craig Van Gelder discusses the significant developments in the past few decades in trinitarian studies regarding an understanding of mission, specifically in the area of ecclesiology. He highlights two streams within trinitarian studies that inform this conversation, and ultimately inform our understanding of the genetic code of the missional church. Here is a portion of the article: More>>

DMin Project

February 6, 2007 | Filed Under dmin project | 2 Comments

This is a new site established to act as a “clearing house” for the research and writing of a DMin project in 2007. The project will focus on equipping pastors and church leaders in leading their churches towards developing a missional mindset.

I believe churches allocate the majority of their resources on programs and ministries for the benefit of church members rather than to impact the lives of those outside of the church. As a result churches are missing opportunities to influence their communities. Therefore, participants in the project will learn how to lead a church towards developing a missional mindset by the reallocation of resources – including but not limited to prayer, people, time, facilities, finances and technology – for the purpose of influencing their local communities.

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