Here is another small section of chapter one of my dmin project. This portion follows a discussion on the marginalization of the church in America, as well as part one shared in the previous post.

To achieve a move from treating the church as a vendor of religious services to being a body of people sent on a mission there must be a renewed emphasis on the nature of the church and its missionary encounter with a post-Christian society. Hunsberger provides one way of framing the necessary transitions that must take place in the beliefs and practices of the church. He believes there are at least three practical shifts that can lay the foundation for sound theological and missiological “rethinking” in the life of the local church.

First there will need to be a shift from program to embodiment. “It makes a difference whether a church is oriented toward producing programs and services for potential consumers, or whether it is committed to cultivating habits of life that help us be faithful to the gospel together.”[1] Programs are not necessarily wrong; they simply need to be subservient to the purpose of the church, which is to be an instrument of God’s mission. Programs are not for the simple consumption of church members but are for the purpose of growing members so they can be sent out into the world to participate in what God is already doing in the lives of people. Mike Erre in Death by Church speaks to this transition when he writes:

The church was birthed out of the mission of God, and not the other way around. This means that we don’t take Christ to a region or people group, but we instead show up and pay attention to the work that Jesus is already doing. We have to move away from the current mind-set about church, ministry and mission and think again about our participation in the ministry of Jesus in the world. This change is difficult for us because it means we are no longer the initiators or sustainers of mission and ministry. Instead, we are focused on discerning the movement of God’s Spirit as we week to join Him in what He is already doing. This involves waiting, asking, seeking, knocking – disciplines and activities that cannot be mass-produced or consumed.[2]

The second shift that Hunsberger believes must be embraced by the church is a shift from being clergy dominated to being laity oriented. In other words, the emphasis must shift from the “professional Christians (clergy), who are center stage in the gathered church, to Christian professionals who are ministering in the world and in the workplace.”[3] Martin Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers was that all Christians were called to carry out their vocational ministries in every area of life. Every believer needs to be encouraged to fully understand how their vocation plays a central part in God’s redemptive Kingdom.[4] Mike Regele speaks to this dynamic of vocational ministry for all believers when he writes:

If the local congregation is the primary unit of mission in the twenty-first century, then the individual members of the local congregation are the primary agents of mission. We have the opportunity to again image the lay person as playing not just a supporting actor role but a lead role in the mission of Christ’s church in the world. The Pauline notion of being ambassadors for Christ takes on renewed meaning, not just for those who enter into “full-time Christian work” but for those who work, period. Each one of us must be captured by the vision of playing this role in every activity we undertake.[5]

The third shift, which is perhaps the most crucial in assisting the church in the development of a missional mindset, involves a shift from recruitment to mission. Hunsberger rightly contends that the two words, “recruitment” and “mission” move in opposite directions. “Recruitment is the orientation inherent in the vendor church, which tries to attract people to be regular and committed consumers of its programs and services – that is, to be satisfied customers. Mission moves in an opposite direction. It moves outward. It is concerned about giving the gospel away, not getting people in.”[6]

Robert Warren in Building Missionary Congregations makes a helpful addition to this third shift by highlighting the point that when the church moves its emphasis off of the needs of the church and on to the needs of the world, the typical pastoral role will also change:

A church effectively engaged in mission will see that participating in the missio Dei will involve shifting emphasis from a focus on the life of the local church, and a concern to keep everyone happy (which too easily passes for ‘pastoral concern’), to a concern for the world in its needs, joys and struggles. The work, for example, of engaging with the sick, the grieving and the dying, as well as with the moral issues of such roles in society as those concerned with wealth creation or medical ethics, is indeed pastoral. It is the shift form the maintenance and ‘keeping people happy’ mode in which the church all too often operates, into engagement with these situations that will bring the church into the pastoral-in-mission mode of operating. [7]

Conclusion

While religious interest remains strong in American culture, people are increasingly examining alternatives to Christianity to supplement their religious beliefs and behaviors. In a chapter titled “Post-Enlightenment Culture as a Missionary Problem” author Lesslie Newbigin argues that the missiological dilemma is not reaching a secular society, but more troubling, reaching a society that is thoroughly pagan. Newbigin writes, Western society “is a pagan society, and its paganism, having been born out of the rejection of Christianity, is far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism with which cross-cultural missions have been familiar. Here surely, is the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.”[8]

Scottish missiologist Andrew Walls further emphasizes both the gravity and urgency of the challenge when he writes:

It is now too late to treat Western society as in some sort of decline from Christian standards, to be brought back to church by preaching and persuasion. Modern Western society, taken as a whole, reflects one of the great non-Christian cultures of the world. There is one department of the life of the Western church that spent centuries grappling with non-Christian cultures, and gradually learned something of the processes of comprehending, penetrating, exploring, and translating within them. That was the task of the missionary movement.[9]

The church in America must once again engage in the task of the missionary movement of which Walls speaks, however today those same missiological efforts of the past must be directed towards Western society. It is essential that the church in America recognize that it is now living in a mission field which requires sound missionary thinking and activities. Furthermore, it is necessary that the church gain a clear understanding of the missio Dei,[10] the mission of God, and see how it, the Church, is to be sent into the world to actively participate in what God is already doing. Instead of being shaped by mission statements, business models, or marketing and church growth techniques; the church must be shaped by participating in God’s mission. Ed Stetzer writes:

A proper understanding of the biblical and theological basis of being on mission begins with an understanding of the nature of God. He is a missionary God – in this and every culture. . . . The missionary posture is the normal expression of the church in all times and places. The theological concept of missio Dei, the mission of God, recognizes that God is a sending God and the church is sent. It is the most important mission in the Scriptures. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of that mission; the Holy Spirit is the power of that mission; the church is the instrument of that mission; and the culture is the context in which that mission occurs. . . . The source of missionary identity is located in the nature of the triune and sending God, and is connected ontologically with the very existence of the church. . . . The church needs to realize that mission is its “fundamental identity.”[11]

What does this imply for the church in America that faces the challenge of doing ministry in a post-Christian, pagan, pluralistic context? First and foremost it means that the church must recapture the missionary nature of God and His church, and as a result see, as Stetzer states, that mission is its fundamental identity. It is essential that the church once again become a missionary people who move beyond a Constantinian model, that presumed a churched culture, to an apostolic, missionary approach intent on penetrating the vast unchurched segments of society. It means the church will “need to be turned inside out in order to bring those outside in. It will not suffice to simply invite the seeker to come to us to hear the gospel on our turf. Instead the church will have to be the church in the world – gathering for worship in order to go out in mission.”[12]

In the final chapter of Foolishness to the Greeks, Newbigin provides a clarion call to the church to activate its missionary calling as God’s instrument sent into the world on His behalf, when he writes:

The church is the bearer to all the nations of a gospel that announces the kingdom, the reign, and the sovereignty of God. . . . It is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God’s kingship.[13] (emphasis added)

The contemporary church is in desperate need of a self-understanding that will empower it for ministry in this changing world. That self-understanding, however will come only when the church fully embraces the reality that it is in fact a called people – but as Newbigin states, it is called for the unmitigated purpose of being sent.

2. Mike Erre, Death by Church (Eugene: Harvest House, 2009), 136.

3.  Hunsberger and Van Gelder, 345.

4.  Gene Edward Veith, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2002)

5.  Regele, 220.

6.  Hunsberger and Van Gelder, 345.

7.  Robert Warren, Building Missionary Congregations (Glasgow, Scotland: Church House Publishing, 1995), 26.

8.  Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 20.

9.  Andrew Walls, “Western Society Presents a Missionary Challenge,” in Missiological Education for the Twenty-first Century, ed. J. Dudley , Charles Van Engen, and Edgar Elliston (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 19.

10. For a brief history of the concept of mission as missio Dei, see David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 389-93.

11. Stetzer, 78.

12. Gibbs, 236.

13. Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 124.