Here’s a process to help a community get their heads around what it means to be missional. This gives the opportunity to examine the heart of mission - being sent by Jesus. As we walk through different rooms in a church complex we stop to reflect on a period of Church history.
Concepts explored here can be found in David Bosch’s book, Transforming Mission, and Loren Mead’s book, The Once and Future Church.
Early Church
We begin in a room. No chairs. People sit on the floor. No front. Conversation flows around the room.
We’re inside John 21, with the first disciples of Jesus. Jesus is with us speaking. “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” So says Jesus to his disciples before he breathes the Holy Spirit into them.
The disciples are gathered in a locked room in Jerusalem, discovering that their world has become so much more dangerous. Before they were followers of a Jewish rabbi. Now they’re renegades, spreading the word on a subversive movement centred around the crucified and risen leader.
Where do they start? No point in just hanging a shingle out the front door and hoping ‘church goers’ will turn up. They have to get out of the room and build an incarnational presence where people are. Some will go fishing. Some will hit the road. Some will stay in Jerusalem. They’ll need to meet in homes, in public places, in Jewish synagogues, in the Jewish temple.
The ‘Apostolic’ paradigm begins with a strong sense of core membership. These are the followers of Jesus, an unknown, unpublicized Jewish sect. As time goes on persecution will lead to an urgent call to clarify who is in and who is not. As the Jesus movement becomes more and more culturally varied, there will be a call to clarify what is central to following Jesus universally and what is negotiable for each ethnic expression of the good news.
Christendom Community
We move into the church building, sitting in the pews facing the front, imagining our way into the hamlet of Saxenberg, 1412. The lectern at the front indicates that there is an established leadership structure. We reflect on the likelihood that many in the room take key responsibilities in the ongoing life of the local township. Many of us would have met yesterday at the beerhouse with our families.
When we reflect on Jesus sending us as he was sent we’re not too sure what to think. Our weekly life is marked by stability and predictability. We count on nurture and loyalty to pass on the Christian way of life to each generation.
The challenge we face together is one of integrity. It is only when we have people from outside our context arrive in our village that we are likely to re-examine our everyday lifestyle, in the home, in the town hall and in the market. Change is slow.
We are vaguely aware of people beyond Christendom who need to hear the gospel and respond to it. Perhaps there are missionaries who will travel to those places to establish the kind of village life we have here.
Over the next few decades people in our region will face the turmoil of the Reformation and industrial revolution. However the Christendom model will be retained somehow through the establishment of national church structures as well as denominational structures that supersede national identity. Within those frameworks we will attempt to have the stability and established order experienced in Christendom.
21st Century Australia
We move into the hall and find chairs to sit on. We have the choice about where to sit. We’re now in a circle and expect people from around the circle to speak to one another rather than to the front.
How do we respond to Jesus standing here telling us that as the Father sent him, he sends us.
Everything is negotiable. Nothing can be taken for granted. No longer can we rely on loyalty based on a denominational tag, the attractiveness of a staff person, or a building and plant. No longer can we ‘build it’ and expect that people will come. We’ve noticed the changes even in the last fifty years. What worked in a cohesive community in the 1950s is difficult to achieve in our splintered communities today.
Unlike the early church, here in Australia we generally do not face a hostile world. As members of the Uniting Church we experience good will from community members, often because of a strong heritage of service provision. There is a danger of course that we’ll be seen as service providers rather than as a community of everyday faith. Some people see us as a community of Sunday worship only.
We’re aware of the fluid nature of our community. People come and go. They travel long distances to be with their friends and family. People sample community, trying out different churches, clubs, shopping centres. We need to find a way of being committed at the core, open at the edges.
We face the challenge of how we relate to a society in which one of the highest values is that of individual choice and freedom. While encouraging personal responsibility and celebrating diversity of cultural expression, the people of Christ live out the good news of community in which people of all backgrounds can genuinely love one another.
We face a the temptation to develop a safe environment, a parallel universe, in which Christians are safe from the ‘outside world’. However it is no easy task to simply enter existing networks in the community, particularly when our mobile lifestyle lead to people building networks with friends and family that have little connection with where people live.
Let’s not overlook the breathing in of the Holy Spirit. We too readily discount the impact of Jesus’ action because of our concern to distinguish ourselves from the Pentecostals, or our discomfort with the thought of being breathed upon! Jesus’ action counters our tendency to over-intellectualise what we are doing. We desperately need the continuing inspiration of God, the time to draw close to Jesus as a community and be strengthened for mission.
I have been involved in responding to the call to mission for some years. Currently I am particularly interested in spending time in my neighbourhood with people who don’t normally get given the time of day by others. For example, I go on a regular picnic to catch up with some isolated people. Through knowing them I get the opportunity to get involved in issues they face around housing, friendship, employment or abuse. It’s been great exploring how to include our friends into a local church community too.