Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

missional church

On Wine and Wineskins

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One of the things I look for in people is their ability to embrace a both/and reality, an ability to hold two things together that most people keep separate. For example, one of the things I have always appreciated about Mike Breen and the organization he leads, 3DM, is that they very intentionally embrace two things that are often kept separate in many people’s thought and practice: God’s power and strategic thinking.

It seems that some people are very serious about our need for God’s power to accomplish God’s mission, but they tend not to worry too much about structure, method, or strategy. They think if we can just get people in a room and see a few miracles, the world will be changed.

Others are always thinking about how to better organize things, thinking strategically about structure and method, but rely very little, if at all, on God’s power as a factor in their practice of mission. They think if we can just get our method right we’ll change the world.

But what if we really need both?

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Is Missional Church a Fading Fad?

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Is missional church just the latest church fad? Or is there something more theologically substantial at work here?

You can probably guess what my answer is, but I still encounter my fair share of people who are suspicious of it for one reason or another. Some people feel threatened by the inherent challenge in missional church to inherited forms of church structure. Others simply don’t want to get taken for a ride by marketers looking to make a quick buck.

I think Jonathan Dodson hit the nail on the head, though, in his recent post examining the dangers of transitioning to a missional church paradigm and practice.

People often adopt or reject the concept before they have properly understood it. This creates a bandwagon effect, uncritical early adopters who adopt an idea, jump on the bandwagon, without depth of understanding of what they have committed themselves to. Alternatively, there are the hypercritical naysayers, who naysay missional church as a fading fad. Ironically, the hypercritical naysayers commit the same error as the uncritical early adopters. Both responses fail to adequately investigate just what “missional church” is.

He presents a really helpful chart to talk about the difference between Church WITH a mission and Church AS a mission.

Church WITH a Mission Church AS a Mission
What You Do         (Task) Who You Are       (Identity)
Optional                  (Elective) Essential               (Core)
Extraordinary       (Elitist) Ordinary               (Everyone)
Project Focus        (Event) People Focus       (Disciple)

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Got Good News?

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Sometimes in our efforts to distance ourselves from the insensitive and ineffective “evangelism” methods of the past, we forget that the gospel of Jesus Christ is, in fact, an announcement of great news. That is has content. That’s why I liked seeing this definition of the gospel from John Dickson (ht):

The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed his kingdom and opened it up to sinners through the birth, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day return to overthrow evil and consummate the kingdom for eternity.

Of course it’s not simply verbally announcing this message. Dickson goes on to say that we must “promote the gospel with more than just our lips,” but I think the other ditch is also a danger: that we end up trying to “embody” the gospel without ever announcing anything. That we’ll keep a clear conscience, but but won’t have a comprehensible answer to give when people ask us about the reason for the hope we have (1 Pet 3:15-16). That we’ll do our “good deeds” but no one will end up glorifying God because of them (1 Pet 2:12, Matt 5:16), because we were too scared to communicate words about Jesus to people.

It’s also pretty important to think through which words we use to communicate the good news of Jesus, too. That’s why I am really enjoying following Jason Coker‘s weekly guest-author web series called “3 Questions About Jesus.” In 300 words or less, he is asking several people to imagine explaining Jesus to someone who really knew nothing about Christianity. The specific questions are, 1) Who is Jesus the Christ? 2) What has he done? and 3) Why does it matter?

In the realization that we need to be living this out instead of just talking about it, we can’t forget that it’s really important to keep talking about it, too. Because we need both the music and the words. We need service and witness. Proclaiming and promoting. Embodying and communicating.

Missional Shmissional

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As Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Some people, when they use the word “missional,” have in mind a robust ecclesiology drenched in God’s redemptive purposes for the world. Others use it as a catch-all term to lend credibility to what they happen to be doing. After all, who wouldn’t want to be missional? It sounds like a good thing to be.

One of the things I loved about Dallas Willard’s contributions to the Ecclesia National Gathering this year was that he never once said the word “missional,” yet everything he said resonate so deeply with what I think about when I say “missional.” He wasn’t caught up in the terminology, but was focused instead on the realities of what it means to be God’s people in the world.

And this is the trouble with words generally: it is so easy to use the latest terminology to simply baptize whatever we are already doing as legitimate, instead of deeply examining the assumptions, prejudices and pitfalls of our current system/model/theology. This oftentimes happens with this little word “missional.”

For some people, being “missional” means sitting at home and reading the right kinds of blogs, and nothing else. For other people, being “missional” means being a good neighbor or helping people out when they need it, but never really being part of a Jesus-centered community where they can live together on mission. Others add a component to the church programming and call it “missional,” and others change nothing and simply use “missional” as the new way to market the current church programming.

David Fitch recently asserted that we care far too much about our pet terms for the church being co-opted by other groups, and it reveals a basic insecurity about what it is we’re participating in. If it is truly a move of God’s Spirit, then we don’t need to worry about others using the word “missional” wrongly. If it’s just a faddish term used to sell books, well then we don’t need to worry about that either.

Ultimately, whether we use the word “missional” or not, all of this stuff has to be about Jesus. Maybe a good question to ask is, “Do I love being ‘missional’ (however you define it) more than I love Jesus?” If we do, I think we’re in trouble. If living missionally is not rooted in humble worship of and consistent discipleship to Jesus, it’s just the United Way with a cross in the logo. (By the way, nothing against the United Way at all. Just saying the church is something deeper than a social action organization). In being “missional,” are you driven by your love for Jesus or your anger about how churches “don’t get it”? Do you look forward to worshiping with the church, or just to those activities that make you look “missional”?

This has turned into a bit of a rambling rant, but one more paragraph: I like how Alan Hirsch, in his book The Forgotten Ways, roots the missional church in the gospel: the foundational principle in his framework is “Jesus is Lord.” You can’t be truly “missional” without specific reference to Jesus, because it’s his mission we’re participating in. And has we move forward in mission together, we find we are surrounded by the church: the worshiping community of God filled with students of Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the good news in word and deed. And you don’t have to call yourselves “missional” to do it. Just get on with it.

Reflections on the Ecclesia National Gathering

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Last week I had the privilege to attend the Ecclesia Network‘s National Gathering near Washington, D.C., along with around 200 others. It was a really rich and meaningful time; so much so that I have had some difficulty putting it into words. I don’t think that I can adequately “summarize” the gathering in one post, and it was so much more than information transfer, so I imagine that the implications of the gathering will continue to percolate and come out later as blog posts in the future.

One of the most precious aspects of being at this gathering was connecting and re-connecting with amazing, beautiful people who are proclaiming the gospel, making disciples of Jesus, and planting churches all over. Since we got connected with the network nine months ago, many of these people are becoming great friends and mentors in ministry for me. I count it an honor and privilege to be on this journey with the others in Ecclesia. These are quality people who are living it out. If you’re a church planter (or thinking about planting a church), consider Ecclesia. Contact me and I can get you connected with the right people.

So… a little bit about the gathering itself.

The main presenters were Dallas Willard and Bob and Mary Hopkins (Todd Hunter was unable to come for understandable reasons). Willard’s writing and speaking have been a huge influence on me. His book The Divine Conspiracy literally changed everything for me when I read it in 1998, so it was a tremendous privilege to be able to hear from him “up close” and be able to engage in some dialogue (one of the advantages of keeping the size of the conference under 200 people). I had never heard of Bob and Mary Hopkins, but apparently they have been on the cutting edge of missional church and European church planting for over 30 years. The Willard/Hopkins combo brought a unique convergence of the theological and the practical that reflects one of my favorite values of the Ecclesia Network as a whole.

I will offer three very general themes that impacted me at this gathering, and will likely expand on these and tease out implications in future posts.

1. Making disciples of Jesus is the key to everything

At one point Dallas said, “The only hope for the world is that Christians become disciples of Jesus Christ.” This is one of the main themes of everything Dallas says, and it’s not really “new” for me, but it is amazing how easy it is to get distracted from it when working in and with the church. “We fuss over so many things in the church that just don’t matter,” Dallas said. I have found that to be sadly true for me, and I am repenting.

You can have the most brilliant programs/classes/liturgy, but if people are participating in those things as consumers, they are completely useless. The means of discipleship only make a difference if they are engaged in by people who have a compelling vision of what it looks like to follow Jesus and an adequate intention to actually learn to do the things Jesus said to do. I realized I need to spend less time crafting the means of discipleship and more time casting a compelling vision of life in the kingdom and calling people to an intentional life of following Jesus, not just attending services, participating in programs, and attending classes.

2. The power of the Spirit is not optional

Of course it’s not, most Christians would say. But I think it’s mostly lip-service. We do so much “risk management” in the Christian life, engaging in only what we think we can accomplish in our own strength. What’s scary is that there’s plenty of good, religious activity we can engage in without needing to depend on the Spirit at all. The only way to learn to rely on the Spirit in the kingdom is by doing something you cannot do in your own strength. “Stretch out your hand,” Jesus said. “Take up your mat and walk.” Impossible! Yet they did it through the power of the Spirit. “Do what you can’t do,” Dallas said, “and you’ll find you can, because God was with you.”

I am learning to depend less on my preparation, my natural gifts and abilities, and more on the Spirit, who alone can accomplish the really good stuff. He’s the one who saves, transforms, heals, teaches, guides, blesses. I am learning how to leave room for the Spirit in ministry, which is a scary and exhilarating experience. I also believe that living in the power of the Spirit will look a lot different than it has in the recent past.

3. God moves outside the boundaries of the expected

Bob and Mary Hopkins shared story after story of God moving in such unexpected and surprising ways that I almost laughed out loud several times. Through the work of grassroots missional communities in Europe, they are seeing the gospel reach into very “difficult” places. There were stories of all kinds of people starting to follow Jesus, from Iranian Muslims to Slovakian gypsies.

I have been asking God to expand my missional imagination, to pray and work toward the good news of Jesus running amok in my context, outside the “boundaries” I typically (unknowingly) put on the Spirit.

There were also many presentations given by people within Ecclesia that were marvelously helpful and formative. I loved that we got to hear from so many thoughtful and faithful practitioners (men and women – another aspect of Ecclesia I love, that I’ll need to blog on later).

Also, here are a few others who have posted reflections from the gathering: