Why Everyday Mission?

In September of 2006, I received an email from a missionary in Peru, Mike Styron, who had recently begun reading some of my articles from our website http://www.whatischurch.com/. Mike lives in Arequipa, Peru with his wife Chenoah and their three children. They have partnered with another missionary, Lee Williams, and have been ministering to pastors and among churches throughout southern Peru and northern Chile. The focus of their ministry has been to announce and demonstrate God’s Kingdom to a Church crippled with legalism, unhealthy leadership, and denominational infighting. As a result of their work, they have often been criticized by other missionaries and church leaders for questioning the status quo. Yet, they have been able to develop relationships with many leaders who are eager to see God’s Kingdom come among their communities and have been working to help them as their churches make difficult transitions. When Mike first contacted me, they very much felt alone and were in desperate need of encouragement.

Since that email, I have traveled twice to Peru both to spend time with Lee and the Styron’s and to provide additional support for their ministry. In June, myself, Amber, Mike Bourque, his son Johnathan and daughter Jessica spent a week there. We met Jorge, a pastor from Arequipa who has been rethinking his role as a leader and shepherd. Jorge is a former police chief in a culture that understands and respects authority. He has been trained to “rule” his congregation, but he is discovering a new way. Jorge is learning how to support the people around him, not to advance his vision, but to help them discover their own place in God’s mission to the world. Lee and the Styron’s are some of the only people in Jorge’s life encouraging him in this transition.

After our trip, Amber and I began discussing how we could be more involved in supporting our new friends. One of our dreams since being married has been to travel with our family for extended periods of time in order to see what God is doing in different cultures. Both of us hold dear the short-term mission experiences we had in the Czech Republic, Amsterdam, Russia, and Cuba. However, we feel that it is our calling to move beyond short term trips and pursue deeper relationships with families “embedded” as we are in a specific context for the advancement of God’s Kingdom. For this reason, we have arranged to spend five weeks in Arequipa starting in early February of 2008.

During this time, we will help host a large group of pastors and leaders from Peru and Chile for a week long conference on the Kingdom of God. Both Amber and I will have the opportunity to speak and minister alongside several others, including members from the band 100 Portraits who have written some of our favorite worship music. After the conference, we will be able to have follow-up visits with these leaders and hopefully visit some of them in their own communities. Finally, during our last week, we hope to be able to spend a day with the 5-year-old boy we are sponsoring through Compassion International.

Our children will continue their schooling while we are in Peru and I will be working remotely part-time. This idea is experimental and a bit unusual, as we are not being backed by a missions organization or denomination. Of course, breaking new ground is nothing new for the Bishops, and we are thrilled for the potential opportunity. Can a middle-class, suburban family with limited resources impact other families and communities in another part of the world by virtue of a relationship sparked by the internet? We not only think this everyday mission is possible, we think it is precisely the kind of thing Jesus is imagining for the spread of his Kingdom in the 21st Century.

In coming weeks, I will continue to post on why we are doing this, some thoughts on the Kingdom and mission, and different ways our friends can help. If at any time you feel led to give financially, I have included a button on the sidebar with a link to the Styron's paypal account. Please note all donations to the "February 2008 Conference". Of course, we covet your prayers, questions, encouragement, and posting about our adventure on your blog:)

By the way, I am still hosting this blog at the same address as before, but it can also be reached at http://www.everydaymission.org/.

Shaun Groves in Africa

Shaun's posts from Africa with the president of Compassion International are worth a read...and some reflection.

Part 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Uncovering an Ethos - Part 5

Returning from a short break, I want to finish the discussion of our little group’s ethos. In the last post, I mentioned four aspects that are traditionally given a tremendous amount of energy (and consternation) over that I believe are more fairly treated by placing them in their proper context. They are leadership, structure, commitment, and money. I discussed the first two last time and will continue with commitment and money in this post.

Starting sometime around the 1950’s, there began a considerable amount of hand-wringing regarding what it meant to be a member of a church. Before that time, folks just assumed if you said you were a Methodist or a Baptist, your name was on the membership roll of a local church and you participated in that church’s activities. However, during the cultural explosion that took place after World War II, people began to understand that they had options as consumers. They were no longer tied to what their family did or the expectations of their neighborhood. The suburbs created brand new opportunities to play the religious field, and this attitude naturally led pastors and leaders into the Church Growth movement of the ‘80s and ‘90s. In many ways, church membership these days looks more like brand loyalty than it does a conscious engagement with a group of people.

One response to this situation has been to clearly define the parameters for who is “in” or “out” of an organization. This can be done by encouraging allegiance to a leader, various doctrinal stances, or traditions. Another path has been to establish a step-by-step pathway for someone to move from an “attender” to a full-fledged participant in the organization’s vision and mission (see the oft-imitated Saddleback bases for example). But where these methods have been successful in attaching consumers to particular organizations, have they addressed the deeper question of how someone becomes a true disciple of Jesus among other disciples? It should be obvious that in the context of a faith community, commitment should mean more than you have taken the required classes, can recite the right dogma, or have bought enough of the pastor’s books and tapes.

Over the years, our community has at various times reestablished that the primary rallying point for what it means to be “committed” is to declare “I want to be (and continue to learn how to grow as) an apprentice of Jesus.” What this has meant, in short, is to intend to live a Jesus kind of life, as if he were we. This is not a side project, Sunday-morning-best kind of spirituality. This is full-body Christianity; no holds barred wrestling with God about every detail of our sinful in-need-of-redemption lives. It also means that we are forced to deal with each other as we really are (not how we would like to present ourselves at a worship service). This, of course, is a scary prospect, and not one entered into lightly. If this commitment cannot be made for whatever reason, there are no hard feelings or ill wishes. If it takes someone years to make a decision to pursue Jesus in community, that is perfectly acceptable from the community’s point of view. However, it has been our experience that over time an atmosphere is created where people voluntarily give their love and allegiance to one another. In this atmosphere, it becomes natural (or at least possible) to bear one another’s burdens, rejoice in each other’s triumphs, and grow in deeper obedience and passion for Jesus.

Of course, one of the areas affected by apprenticing yourself to Jesus is how you deal with money. Building on the entire ethos as I’ve described it up until this point, it should be obvious that we probably look at money a little differently than what is stereotypical for the church. First of all, money is not a tool God uses to beat us into submission. We have rejected the idea that the church needs money to function, for us to be what God intends us to be in the world. Rather, we have been captured by the reality (and promise) that the full resources of God’s kingdom are at our fingertips – both monetarily and otherwise. As Americans we believe that our money is a pretty powerful thing, but as Christians we should see that our money is about as worthless as monopoly bills compared to God’s resources. That being said, we have seen that God can use even our pocket change to do some pretty amazing things – from sponsoring Compassion kids to helping out a single mom who is having trouble paying her mortgage. The goal is to detach ourselves from being too enamored with our money or stuff. As we are freed from those idolatries, we become free to serve financially in whatever way God sees fit and champion causes that otherwise become buried in our consumer culture.

So this is the end of my series on ethos, but it is not the end of how our community will continue change its definition. Every person we journey with as a companion will bring something to help redefine another facet. As raw and as ugly it seems at times, God has promised that he will make something beautiful. But as with anything beautiful, he doesn’t promise that things will come quickly or easily.

In 2002, about eight months after we started this group, a friend of mine from Gainesville sent me an email asking how things were going. This was part of my response:

“Remember the movie "The Shawshank Redemption?" Tim Robbins' character escaped prison using only a tiny sculpting tool. He did not use explosives or incite a riot (which would draw lots of attention and failure could mean death). He did not decide to escape and then make a quick, unplanned attempt the next day (which would increase considerably his chance of failure). But, he also did not throw himself on the 'mercies' of the parole board hoping (wishfully) to be released early. Instead, he chose a path that required the one thing he had plenty of...time.


Patience is not a wimpy virtue, it is a subversive weapon. It can destroy enemies that seem overwhelmingly massive and strong, and it will go undetected. If we are determined to find "freedom from our sinful self-life," individually and corporately, then we must determine to stick it out with Jesus for the long haul. Our prisons of addiction, greed, lust, anger, etc. are more impenetrable than Alcatraz ever was. But as ones who are determining to submit our entire life to the kingdom of God, we have the advantage of time, each other, and the Creator of the Universe. Pretty cool, huh?"