Thesis: Unhitching ‘Missional’ from ‘Church’

Hopefully the title got you here…if so, let me explain what this is all about:

Thesis:  The aims of the missional church conversation can be reached more rapidly and models become more effective by unhitching ‘missional’ from its inevitable ensnarement to a church culture on life support and allow ‘church’ to happen as a by-product of Christians growing in love of God and other.

The first time I heard the phrase ‘missional church’, it was 1997 and I was in Anaheim, California at a Vineyard Pastor’s conference.  Todd Hunter was the speaker, and he was trying to inject a fresh vision for L.A.W. (Life After Wimber).  As a young future pastor, I was enthralled and deeply challenged by his message.  Todd, as he would confess to me later, was simply trying to make sense of what so many of us have acknowledged over the past 10-15 years - church business as usual wasn’t going to last.  With the help of authors / scholars like Dallas Willard, Darrel Guder, Walter Brueggemann, N.T. Wright and others, Todd was in essence challenging some of the fundamental assumptions the Vineyard was founded on (that of the church growth movement).  The point of church wasn’t self-serving; whether a church lived or died was of secondary importance.  Laying hold of the particular aspects of Missio Dei (God’s mission) for a church’s context was what mattered.  Becoming healed and healing others, growing in love and loving others.

The theological basis for all this was of course, the kingdom or reign of God.  Thirteen years ago, there were only a handful of books outside of academia that dealt with the subject of God’s kingdom.  Certainly very, very few were trying to wrestle with its implications to the church and Christian life.  Thankfully, that has changed considerably, but where does that leave us now?  Is the church doing any better on finding its place in Missio Dei?  Has all this discussion about the kingdom had the desired effect?

From my perspective, yes and no.  Yes, there are churches and ministries budding up all over the country that, at least, are saying all the right things.  Thankfully the emerging church conversation has died down and allowed to be what it was - a necessary, transitional corrective.  Locally, there are people (not a lot, but enough) that ‘get it’ and I’ve had the privilege to play a small part in helping to make that a reality.  But by and large, if you were to slice a cross section through Christendom here in my hometown, I doubt you would find anything too radically different than what you saw in 1997.  People still buy into whatever Christian media and churches are plugging as the “fix of the month”.  There has been an obvious retrenchment: “What we need is more Bible study, better preaching, deeper worship, increased giving, relevant evangelism”.  Somewhere in the mix are the same questions we’ve been asking about what it means to be the church, the gospel of the kingdom, discipleship, justice, and resurrection.  I know those questions are being asked in the pastoral ranks and among Christian workers.  But most still don’t know what to do about them.

So back to my thesis.  This is more than an idea, it’s actually the basis for our work here currently.  The direction I alluded to a few posts ago fits within this thesis.  Let me briefly unpack.  If one of the aims of missional church is to help people find their place in Missio Dei and grow as lovers of God and people, converting churches and ministries entrenched in the status quo will be a serious struggle.  (Remember, my status quo in South Florida might be different than yours…so keep that in mind).  It’s not impossible, but leadership will have to be fearless and not distracted by the million other things churches have to worry about (money being the biggest one).  I’ve thought about church planting again (Todd Hunter did), but in this context it would require a significant core (and I mean significant - i.e. more than 100 to start) of people who “get it” and want to move forward into mission.  Otherwise, the church would get immediately bogged down with the mess of human blah-ness as I like to call it.  Without that healthy core, the burden of leadership would just be too great.  (You might disagree with me, but you don’t live here.)

So, our strategy is subversive, pure and simple.  We are going to infiltrate Christian culture - and the world around us - with people who get the kingdom and want to join in on what God is doing, in spite of where they go to church or what they do for work.  We will do this through forming missional communities that form around specific areas of ministry or creativity.  They will be led by emerging leaders - in most cases people of no reputation that simply have a dream and need a family around them for support and resources.  They will relate through social networking and short cut the ‘good-ole boy’s club’ of traditional ministry.  They will organize and secure funding through the help of low-bar concepts like fiscal sponsorship.  Finally, they will allow ‘church’ to spring up in their midst, not necessary as a place you go on Sunday, but as a people that love one another and support the ministry of the Holy Spirit in a community.

In future posts, I hope to chronicle the steps we are taking to see this vision fulfilled.  Right now, we are praying our guts out for help.  We might not need 100, but more than a handful would be nice.  If you are local and you want to pray too, or help in some other way, let me know!

Growth, Character and Change (or…How to Be Something Else than Just a Consumer)

I recently started reading After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters.  Yeah, I know, another N.T. Wright book.  Big surprise for me, right?  But it’s the next one in a series of smaller books oriented for “everyday” Christians and I couldn’t resist.  As always, I’m enjoying it immensely.

In Chapter 2 he tells the story of a church choir that was, well, awful.  The congregation was polite, but no one expected the choir to do much more than hit the melody once in a while, given they had no formal instruction.  One day, the church hired a choir director.  He knew he had a lot of work to do, but let them sing away without shutting them down.  ”He accepted them as they were and began to work with them.  But the point of doing so was not so that they could carry on as before, only now with someone waving his arms in front of them.  The point of his taking them on as they were was so that they could…really learn to sing!”

This is a wonderful picture of God’s grace in action and how he wants to work with us in spite of our weaknesses.  But the key is that he does want us to change, to “learn to sing” as human beings in the way he intended.  This, of course, does requires effort on our part (I feel a Dallas Willard quote coming on), with God supplying the grace to carry us through.  Sounds like a great deal…so why is it so hard?

Whether it is learning a new language or becoming more of a patient person, change that cannot come by direct, instantaneous effort is hard.  We’ve grown accustomed to believing that some people are just predisposed to doing great things, or things that seem out of reach from our perspective.  Lebron James is - and has always been - a freak of basketball nature.  Trying to learn his moves would be ridiculous, so we’re left shooting up bricks at the rec league.  In fact, it has become commonplace to resign oneself to “shooting up bricks” as part of normal life.  Why bother?  We’ll never be Lebron (or Jesus for that matter), so it’s much easier to accept who we are.

Wright talks a lot about this philosophy in his book - the pseudo-gnostic “find the light in yourself” ideal which, “tries to get in advance, and without paying the true price, what virtue offers further down the road and at the cost of genuine moral thought, decision, and effort.” We’ve all heard it, and perhaps have bought into it one way or another.  It is a consumer mentality, since being a consumer is the one aspect of modern life that requires no amount of effort or thought.  If we simply accept who we are as what we will always be, then the only thing left to do is keep ourselves entertained.  Buy stuff, eat stuff, watch stuff, experience “stuff”.

This is not another sermon on the evils of consumerism.  In fact, it dawned on me today that most of the anti-consumeristic rhetoric I’ve heard misses one fundamental point.  If people are to stop identifying themselves as consumers, they have to learn how to “grow” first.  In other words, someone who has given up on the need for change will not just magically stop their consumptive habits.  They have to learn a new way to “sing”, one that doesn’t involve buying into whatever the next quick fix is for sale.

Of course, this is all incredibly challenging to me personally.  I love quick fixes!  I avoid effort just like the next guy!  Consumption be praised!  But I also see the rewards (and joy) of laboring to do something by the grace of God that would be impossible if I just “tried harder”.  It is so cool when I recognize that I have actually changed in some area, to see the fruit of the Spirit welling up in places that were hard and cold previously.  That’s gold - mined, refined by fire, and fashioned by the Father into something beautiful.

Organic Church - Throwing Down a Gauntlet

Recently there was an article written in Christianity Today about ‘organic’ or ’simple’ churches.  Frank Viola, Alan Hirsch, and others have written about it already and my point here is not to respond to the article in the same manner.  The author makes some good points about the nature of movements and how they can quickly dissolve (or self-destruct) when outcomes don’t measure up to expectations.  Viola and Hirsch pick up on a few glaring generalizations and assumptions made by the author.  But that’s to be expected in a short article written in the flagship magazine of mainstream evangelicalism.

What I wish to challenge is the idea that organic church is populated by a bunch of young (or young at heart) idealists whose dreams will soon come crashing down under unrealized expectations.  The underlying sentiment is that eventually these idealists will face reality and return to the status quo.  After all, “Churches time and again, in culture after culture, look like they are composed of nothing but sinners. We are kidding ourselves if we think, finally, our generation will turn things around.”

Well, that’s true, we won’t be the ones to turn things around.  People will still sin and the church will never be what Jesus intends it to be until glory.  But, at least in my experience, that’s not why people are turning to organic forms of church.  Those with idealized visions of community will be quickly disappointed; Bonhoeffer taught us that.  No, organic church is giving us the chance to be human beings again.  Instead of churchgoers, or religious professionals, or ecclesial innovators, or theological radicals…we just get to be Sam or Joe or Amy.  Within our community, I’m Mike - father, husband, engineer, coffee snob - along with the ways I express the Spirit’s giftings within me as a thinker, writer, provoker, musician, pastor, and friend.  As a former religious professional, let me tell you that this reality is both incredibly freeing and the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

It’s easy to dismiss a movement of idealists and reformers.  ”World-Changers” as the author puts it.  They will repeat history and fail.  But what if there is a whole group of people that simply refuse to play by the rules any more?  Not that they ignore the commands of Jesus or diminish the witness of Scripture.  They just stop playing the game.  Those people become a little more difficult to categorize or dismiss.  The organic churches I know of mostly fit this profile.  They don’t play by the rules of evangelical expectations or try to justify their existence with the status quo.  They just go about the business of doing life as friends of Jesus.

This ‘movement’ (which Frank Viola is right…it’s not a movement in the traditional sense, but rather more like a phenomenon) will not transform evangelicalism because evangelicalism doesn’t want to be transformed.  As the author of the CT article puts it, “…look at the ongoing, normal, everyday life of the local church, century after century. It is not a bright example of evil, but merely good intentions in a coma. Institutional. Programmatic. And full of people whose lives look anything but transformed.” That’s it, that’s normal.  That will not change and no reformation movement would or could change it.  What can change is people - what we dream about and hope for, how we live and love, where we spend our time and resources, who we choose to live our lives with.  Organic church is about waking us up from the coma.  It’s about re-prioritizing the church’s values around what God is doing in the world through us, not what God is doing because our church is getting bigger or we are recognized for our theology or innovation.

‘Organic’ implies life, but it also implies death.  Perhaps the greatest death that will be necessary for some is the dream of status within evangelicalism.  Even if numerically organic churches become significant, they will always be looked at as insignificant and evanescent.  For me, that is no matter, because I no longer care about my status.  But for someone who is wanting to leaving a position of power within the established church, there is indeed a cost worth considering.

Here is the gauntlet I wish to throw down in regards to organic church - this experience can be incredibly rewarding and free you to use your gifts in ways you never thought possible.  But it will cost you everything that church has defined as ’success’ in the process.  In my opinion, that’s great news!  But like the rich man in the gospel story, many will go away sad.

This Year

I spent a few minutes this morning reading new posts from my old blog friends.  I miss that connectivity, hearing what is on the minds of people below the mundane surface.  Facebook has pretty much destroyed that interaction for me.  I now know 10 times more useless information about 10 times more people, most of whom I don’t even remember that well.  The relationships forged through blogging starting 8 years ago have stood the test of time.  Even though I don’t talk to all of them regularly, I would feel more comfortable going to them in a crisis than 98% of my Facebook “friends”.

But my point here isn’t to air grievances about Facebook.  It’s to have a space to get underneath the mundane for a few minutes…to write about what is on my mind, not what I ate for breakfast. Last year, I basically took a sabbatical from writing.  Finishing the book in 2008 was a great accomplishment, but it didn’t leave me with much energy for writing.  In reality, there wasn’t much time or much that I felt that I could write about.  In many ways I am back in a deep learning phase, experimenting and quietly thinking.  I filled up a notebook this year which is a good indication of the kind of year it’s been.  Amber and I are broadening our network and putting our energy into new community growth.  It’s been a good year for tilling new ground, but there has also been the effort and pain that goes along with that.

This week I began studying for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam.  It’s the first step in attaining my professional engineering license.  Most engineers took the F.E. during their last year of college, but industrial engineers (like me) did not.  So I’m re-learning things I first learned more than 15 years ago for the test in April.  I wanted to quit about 5 times this week…it’s brutal.  So that will be my life for the next three months, whatever the outcome.

Long story short, there will be no writing until after the test.  Will I blog again on a regular basis?  I hope so.  I do have some new things to say and maybe even another book to write at some point.  Until then, I’ll have my nose in a study book and maybe scratch a thought in my notebook once in a while.  See you in May.

The Reality of What We Do

I’m home sick today, finally succumbing to whatever virus my kids have been carrying around the last week.  Out my back window, across the canal, there sits a police car.  If you keep up with the news, no doubt you’ve heard about the 4 people who were killed by a family member on Thanksgiving day here in Jupiter.  (Here’s the related stories in the local paper.)  Amber used to teach music to the little girl that died, so we’ve known the family for a few years.  Needless to say, it’s been a surreal last few days.  Thankfully we were in Gainesville when it happened…

I’ve been thinking for a while how much my life, calling, and actual ministry has changed over the past few years.  I’m not an active blogger any more, but I still keep up with the conversation on how the church and culture are changing.  My observation is that there is still a better mousetrap out there - a new way to do church that will “fix” all the problems we see.  That, of course, is the American Way.  We believe there is change around the corner; we just need the right president in office or the right model for our business or the right piece of technology.

And then something happens like what took place a hundred yards outside my back window.

I spent some time with a good friend two weekends ago that has had a similar story to mine.  On track in a ‘ministry career’, left with huge questions, started a small faith community in a suburban area, now working out the answers for the long haul.  We’ve both dealt with our fair share of tragedies and the raw implications of sin within our communities.  We’ve seen friends die and marriages dissolve.  But we’ve also seen lost, broken people become whole.  We’ve seen those without a family find a family and we’ve seen dreams come alive that were very much dead.

But these are all things you can’t talk about on a blog.  These are stories that can’t be written about in a book and sold to the Christian masses as the answer to all their problems.  This is not the American Way.  What my friend and I are finding is that the answers to our questions - where our lives are finding meaning and bearing the most fruit - are within a context that matters nothing to our society.  The small, the simple, the un-heard-of.  Who we are cannot be written in a mission statement or expressed through a statement of faith.  There are things we know and believe, but they are ultimately just words on a page.  We are following a living Being and we have assurance of real resurrection.  Either lives are transformed and the dead rise or we are fools.  Jesus is more than a idea to a man who is able to say about his dead daughter - “I was the last one to put her to bed. So her daddy put her to sleep, and her Father woke her up.”

Here is a little encouragement to anyone who might read this who is going into ministry or has a desire to serve the church in some capacity.  Stop trying to build a better mousetrap.  Stop the theological wranglings about things you’ll never be able to live.  Stop trying to be famous.  Like a good farmer, plant seeds and care for your soil.  Like a good builder, build with the best materials.  Take your time and don’t be shocked when things don’t work out like you thought.  Tragedy shouldn’t surprise you.  Death is not the end.  As the Apostle Paul quotes Isaiah and Hosea:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

Welcoming a New Reality

I wrote this stream of consciousness blog while I was on the plane out to San Diego last month. There’s not really much explanation necessary…

The opportunity is here to align ourselves with the kingdom of God and its fullness. Asking the question, “What is church?” is actually giving ourselves permission to dream of an alternative future. The time of hand-wringing is over. The time of theological posturing is over. The house is burning, the fire alarm is ringing, it’s time to get out of our bunks, slide down the pole and go put out the fire. No one else will do it, because no one else understands what is really necessary. Those who lead the church are still not convinced the house is on fire. They believe the tide will change and their schemes will succeed. But in reality they are not prepared and never could be.

Our advantage is that we are rapidly moving into a time where our mobility and flexibility will trump an organization’s ability to create a social reality. Vibrant social networks are forming without the help of traditional institutions. Our power will be through tapping into those natural social networks and spreading the kingdom virus through those means.

Note that this will happen best on a local and organic level - not through translocal networks or associations. The emerging church failed as a movement because some tried to domesticate the necessary (but un-domesticatible) process of moving from the old to the new. Imagine if Jesus tried to ‘engage’ the Jewish religious establishment on their terms. No, he paid his ‘respects’ at the temple and then gathered nobodies around him who he empowered with a message - and Spirit - that created a new reality.

Our gospel cannot be either ’spiritual’ or ’social’. Our relevance will inevitably depend on our ability to create a new basis for community - society - to exist within the worlds we live. There is no substitute for relationship. As my wife says, “Time is the only thing we really own and relationship is the only thing we can buy with it.” Our gospel business is in relationship – John on Jesus’ breast, the woman at the well, Mary’s tears. It happens there, not within our crusades or initiatives.

There is also no substitute for Spirit. Kingdom does not work without Spirit. Mission is not accomplished without Spirit. Ecclesia does not exist without Spirit. If we refuse to acknowledge the absolute centrality of Spirit to this whole enterprise, we do it to our own demise. We will fail without the Spirit’s direction, empowerment, favor, comfort, leadership, and vision. Yes, vision. We really do see through a glass dimly. Our perspective is not just limited, it is almost blind. But that is by design so that we will keep returning to the only thing we really have control over – who we are and how we relate to others.

Read the Sermon on the Mount. Some have tried to make the core Jesus’ message economic or spiritual in nature. But the Sermon slaps you in the face with reality: If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If you hate your brother, you might as well kill him. Don’t be an arrogant ass and pray on the street so everyone can see you. The message from Jesus strikes to the heart of why church is so largely ineffective at doing what he did with 12 nobodies. We think it’s about changing the world – He knows it’s about changing us.

If we are successful at creating new community, it will be because we are taking the message of Jesus seriously and living his teachings by the Spirit. Everything else – including what happens to the world and how its problems get solved – will come out of that fountain.

New Questions

Well, since my buddy Marshall actually mustered up a few posts again, I’ll have to follow suit.  My time of late has been consumed with work, trying to sell a house, and spending time with new friends.  I haven’t even done much book promotion yet, although Jason Evans has graciously set up a reading at his house next weekend while I’m out in San Diego for a weekend with him and some other friends.

My mind has started to recharge lately in spite of everything else going on.  I just didn’t realize how much brain energy writing a book takes - obviously my blogging has suffered considerably.  The fact is, this blog was my canvas for the past seven years to work through new ideas (or perhaps old ones, depending how you look at it).  Now that I’ve published something cohesive from that work, it’s difficult to go back to dabbling again.  I start posts and find myself sitting in front of the computer trying to not write a book.  Not very good for blog production I’m afraid.

So I’ll stop apologizing and try to splat some words on the page.  Here’s what I’ve observed at a macro level over the past year (beware…mass generalizations ahead…):

-  The “Emerging Church”, whatever it was or wasn’t, is pretty much done for.

-  There are two theological camps that are now trendy to align yourself with - some amalgamation of Reformed (MacArthur, Piper, Driscoll) or some amalgamation of Social Justice / Kingdom (Wright, McLaren, Claiborne).

-  Your church is pretty weak if it isn’t Missional (TM).

-  Evangelical ministry leaders still don’t have a clue on how to lead in this context.

And some micro observations through local / trans-local relationships both new and old:

-  Those of us on the front-end of transition 8-10 years ago are pretty much either healed or off the deep end.

-  Todd Hunter was right.  Most of the groups we started during this transitional period lasted about 3 years and then died or radically changed.

-  There is an undercurrent of unrest in most evangelical churches, particularly among the 25-40 year old age group.  Their unrest is not cultural / theological / social, they are just dying for someone to authentically lead them.  They have kingdom-born dreams, but are bored out of their skulls for the most part because they have no advocates.

All of this has been leading to a question I’ve been asking myself.  Who leads those people that I described in the last bullet and how does their leadership work? If you doubt me that leadership is required, you haven’t been spending any time around typical evangelicals lately.  There won’t be another cohesive movement with evangelicalism anytime soon to replace church growth, so forget about “movement-ism” doing anything to sweep people into action.  Theological debates can be productive long term, but are pretty meaningless to the people on the ground.  The ‘missional church’ conversation is excellent for the most part, but has the tendency to be a little paralyzing when it comes to praxis.  Those of us who have been in transitional communities (house churches, new-monastic groups, or just plain outside the whole church scene) can come off way too out-there for typical evangelicals, to the point where it feels like we’re not even speaking the same language.  Finally, since we’ve adopted a much more egalitarian outlook on leadership in these communities, we’ve struggled to discern our role and what leadership is really necessary.

In the end - in spite of the challenges - I think we have a better chance at answering my question than the current batch of ministry leaders in evangelicalism.  They are, frankly, just too absorbed in crisis to deal with the question in the first place.  They’d love to do something about it, but when half your congregation is unemployed, you have to keep your priorities straight.  The problem is, many of us on the other side are dealing with our own personal crisises and don’t have the muster to deal with anything else either.  But on the whole, my guess is that our crisis will settle down faster.  Give me a little time and space (and debt relief, dammit) and goodness knows what I’ll accomplish.

At this point, I’m still a little in crisis, but I’m willing to question and dream again….

Yup. I Wrote Me a Book.

Top left corner of the page is a link to an Amazon page with my name on it.  Three years later - a bunch of Sunday mornings at Panera Bread, countless nights at Starbucks, a few long weekend writing retreats - and I’m done.  Why did I do it?  What’s it about?  Good questions.

I’ve spent a little time over the holidays updating the whatischurch.com site with some information about the book.  (Thanks to my lovely wife who found a great site that offers well-designed, low-cost templates - www.bludomain.com).  You can read more there.  Needless to say, I’m excited about seeing what happens with it.  It was written with a younger me in mind.  What would I have said to myself eight years ago to be an encouragement preparing to plant a church?  A few years into our journey, I wish I would have been able to have the perspective I do now (and the relationships I do now).  Hopefully this book will help others to see what is possible and to understand that they are not crazy.  God’s world is a big world, and his Church is a big Church.

Anyway, go grab you a copy and let me know what you think….

Your Love is Strong

Heavenly Father
You always amaze me
Let your kingdom come
In my world and in my life
You give me the food I need
To live through the day
And forgive me as I forgive
The people that wronged me
Lead me far from temptation
Deliver me from the evil one

I look out the window
The birds are composing
Not a note is out of tune
Or out of place
I look at the meadow
And stare at the flowers
Better dressed than any girl
On her wedding day

So why do I worry?
Why do I freak out?
God knows what I need
You know what I need

Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong

The kingdom of the heavens
Is now advancing
Invade my heart
Invade this broken town
The kingdom of the heavens
Is buried treasure
Will you sell yourself
To buy the one you’ve found?

Two things you told me
That you are strong
And you love me
Yes, you love me

Our God in heaven
Hallowed be
Thy name above all names
Your kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us today our daily bread
Forgive us wicked sinners
Lead us far away from our vices
And deliver us from these prisons

-Jon Foreman