From the Newsletter: Missional Church - Part 2

We live in a mission’s field. The day has passed when the mission’s field is “over there” somewhere across the sea. It is here. New England is a mission’s field by just about any imaginable standard, and that means that we need to start thinking of ourselves as missionaries, and it also means that we need to shape our church and our life around the mission of God, and seek to be a church and people that live on mission for God as missionaries here in Medfield and the Boston metro. We have to. As Jared Wilson has noted that  "The need for Gospel- Centered Missional Churches throughout New England is Dire. We have to. And that brings us back to the subject of the missional church.  

Last month, I started to talk about the subject of the missional church. I noted that throughout the church world, there has been a lot of discussion about the missional church. What it means to be a missional church, and how to be missional, and I looked at two questions. What is leading the missional church discussion? I noted that what was driving the discussion is that we no longer live in the world of Christendom, where the culture helped “Christianize” people. Now, we are people living in a pluralistic, pagan society, where we must see ourselves as missionaries, rather than people in a converted culture. Second, I asked “what are the theological motivations for missional church? I tried to show some of the theological foundations for the argument that the church should be shaped around mission, and I noted that God is a missionary God. He is the ultimate missionary, and we are sent, as the father sent the son. This month, I want to look at two more questions. What is a missional church, and how do we become a church that loves and serves our community missionally?
 

First, what is a missional church? What exactly does it mean to be missional? What does a missional church that is sent to the world look like? In short, it’s a church aimed outward. It seeks to point its nose outward rather than inward, and incarnationally serves the world, as the Son served the world, because it’s shaped by a love of community. It sees that God loves people, we are made in His image, and that means we are shaped by a love of the community, not just the landmarks, but the people in it.

Different writers give different lists, all with big overlap. According to the Gospel and Our Culture Network, one of the original team of missional thinkers, there are at least 12 hallmarks of the Missional Church: 

• First, The missional church proclaims the gospel. It contextualizes the gospel (Contextualization is about making the church as culturally accessible as possible without compromising the truth of Christian belief), but it does not skimp on the gospel, or compromise the gospel. 
• Second, “the missional church is a community where all members are involved in learning to become disciples of Jesus”. It is reproductive by nature. It seeks to grow people in the gospel. Since it understands that those involved are missionaries on the front lines, it seeks to train people as Disciples of Christ who are prepared to live on mission for Christ.
• Third, “the  Bible is normative in the Missional churches life”. It has authority and shapes the life of the church. 
• Fourth, “the missional church understands itself as different from the world because of its participation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ”. 
• Fifth, “the missional church seeks to discern God’s specific missional vocation for the entire community and all of its members”. It goes into the cultures and learns who is in its community and culture, and seeks to minister there. 
• Sixth, “a missional church community is indicated by how Christians behave toward one another”. 
• Seventh “a missional church is a community that practices reconciliation”. It doesn’t just talk about repentance and reconciliation, it practices it. 
• Eighth, “People within the missional church community hold themselves accountable to one another in love”. We call our brothers and sisters on their sin, and seek to push each other towards holiness. 
• Ninth, “The missional church practices hospitality”. Not just the occasional meal, but really practicing hospitality, getting in each other’s lives often. Tenth, “worship is the central act by which the community celebrates with joy and thanksgiving both God’s presence and God’s promised future”. Eleventh, “The missional church community has a vital public witness”. It is visible to the community. It doesn’t hide in its church. 
• Finally, “There is a recognition that the missional church itself is an incomplete expression of the reign of God”. This world is fallen, and will remain fallen till the day that Christ returns. It can’t be put right by us. But someday, Christ will make it right, when he comes to rule and reign in glory.

Now, if you’re like me, none of that seems all that radical. But let’s take a look at what Keller highlights about things that mark a missional church. Here is where the ante goes up. 

• First, discourse in the vernacular. In Christendom, there is little difference between the language inside and outside of the church. For instance, the documents of the early U.S. Congress, for example, are riddled with allusions to and references from the Bible. Biblical technical terms are well-known inside and outside. But in a missional church, however, terms must be explained so that all understand what is being talked about, The missional church avoids 'tribal' language, stylized prayer language, unnecessary Christian jargon, and archaic language that seeks to set a 'spiritual tone.' Furthermore, the missional church seeks to avoid talking as if non-believing people are not present. Keller argues that “If you speak and discourse as if your whole neighborhood is present (not just scattered Christians), eventually more and more of your neighborhood will find their way in or be invited”. This approach has a great deal of respect for people who do not believe. It understands what it like not to believe, and allows this understanding permeates every aspect of ministry.
• Second, Keller says, we need to enter and re-tell the culture's stories with the gospel. “In "Christendom" it is possible to simply exhort Christianized people to "do what they know they should." There is little or no real engagement, listening, or persuasion. It is more a matter of exhortation (and often, heavy reliance on guilt.). In a missional church preaching and communication should always assume the presence of skeptical people, and should engage their stories, not simply talk about "old times." To "enter" means to show sympathy toward and deep acquaintance with the literature, music, theater, etc. of the existing culture's hopes, dreams, 'heroic' narratives, fears. The older culture's story was--to be a good person, a good father/mother, son/daughter, to live a decent, merciful, good life. Now the culture's story is-- a) to be free and self-created and authentic (theme of freedom from oppression), and b) to make the world safe for everyone else to be the same (theme of inclusion of the 'other'; justice).” So what does it mean to retell the cultures stories? “To "re-tell" means to show how only in Christ can we have freedom without slavery and embracing of the 'other' without injustice.” 
• Third, we need to theologically train lay people for public life and vocation. This is big. In 'Christendom' you can afford to train people just in private world skills- prayer, Bible study, evangelism -because they are not facing radically non-Christian values in their public life--where they work, in their neighborhood, etc. but in a missional' church, the laity needs theological education to 'think Christianly' about everything and work with Christian distinctiveness.  
• Fourth, we need to create Christian community which is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. In Christendom, 'fellowship' is basically just a set of nurturing relationships, support and accountability. That is necessary, of course. In a missional church, however, Christian community must go beyond that to embody a 'counter-culture,' showing the world how radically different a Christian society is with regard to sex, money, and power. We understand that because of the gospel, everything is different; we have a different mindset, and different approach to all of life because of the gospel. Furthermore, he argues that “in general, a church must be more deeply and practically committed to deeds of compassion and social justice than traditional liberal churches and more deeply and practically committed reaching those that don’t know Christ and leading them to saving faith than traditional fundamentalist churches. This kind of  church is profoundly 'counter-intuitive' to American observers. It breaks their ability to categorize (and dismiss) it as liberal or conservative. Only this kind of church has any chance in the non- Christian west.”  
• Fifth, it practices Christian unity as much as possible on the local level. He argues that we need to focus on what unites us, and seek to co-operate where we can with other churches.

These are a few of the different attempts to define what a missional church looks like. As you can see, it’s faced outward, but it’s also deep, because it’s preparing missionaries, and not consumers. As I’ve thought and read, what I’ve seen is that these things just scratch the surface of the picture. Let me get at some of the things that I closer to the ground.

• First, being mission involves having lives shaped by the gospel, and recovering some of the personal spiritual disciplines that have shaped Christian life, for centuries. Personal spiritual disciplines, both internal (such as meditation on the word, prayer, fasting, and study), and external disciplines (such as simplicity and frugality, stewardship, holiness, submission, service, solitude, evangelism, hospitality, and chastity), and corporate spiritual disciplines (such as prayer, the preaching of the word, confession, worship, service, hospitality and fellowship, guidance, and celebration). In all this, there has to be a commitment to having the DNA of the individual and the church shaped by the gospel, and then continually growing deeper in our understanding of the gospel and its implications, rather than the values of our community and culture (such as success and standing, , career and money, hobbies, or even family) 
• Second, being mission includes asking what God is doing, and how can we be a part of it? Where is God working, where are the needs, where is the brokenness, and what is God calling us to do in that place? 
• Third, being mission involves becoming people who actively analyze as missionaries. Missionaries think before they act. This means we need to analyze our culture and the people around us to really understand who they are and what makes them tick. It also involves analyzing the media, and entertainment that we see, and rather than just enjoying it, think about what it is saying to us. What message is it communication, and how is it shaping us, and those around us? Should we accept that message, reject it, is it redeemable? We need to actively think through everything we can. 
• Fourth, being mission includes radical service to the world around, as we seek to incarnate the gospel to the world around. We should not expect that people will just be drawn to church. Non Christians will not just walk in and decide to follow Christ. The reality is that the world has changed. This is not 1955 or even 1975. Most of our neighbors have already decided they will never ever step foot in our church buildings as long as they live, which means that if we want to see people come to Christ, we must get out of the building for as long as possible, and serve them, and paint a picture of the Christian life for the world to see. Most people need to see a picture of the Christian life before they will be willing to consider the gospel, but if they do, it can be transformative. The biggest things that led to the growth of the early church was the way they served the world around and painted this picture. One Caesar lamented that the “Impious Galileans” didn’t just take care of their poor, needy, and hurting, but also the poor, needy, and hurting of pagan Rome as well, and that built incredible standing and credibility for their message. We need to do the same. We must go, and serve, and incarnate the message, and to take the gospel to the watching world.  
• Fifth, being mission requires that we seek to make disciples, rather than grow the church. When we try to create or grow our churches, we rarely get disciples. That's because disciples don’t just happen. Disciples are formed, loved, invested in, sacrificed for, raised up and sent . . . to do it all over again themselves. And that raises a question I was confronted as I have thought through the missional church material that I am getting from the denomination, and from my reading. How many of us have been discipled? I mean, like Jesus discipled the Disciples? Have you been? If you are one of the few rare followers of Jesus who have been, you know that in the time when that occurred, you grew more as a disciple than in all your other years combined. The early church got this, but we’ve forgotten it. And the result is that we’re not growing reproducing disciples, which is leading to the death of countless churches. We need to be seeking to make disciples for the sake of Christ, rather than building our church, because ultimately, it’s not about our church, but about God, and seeing people know and worship God. “Mission”, John Piper said, “exists, because worship doesn’t”. Building our church is a fading glory, building disciples who know God and live for his glory and honor, and then build more disciples, who build more disciples, is what we should be seeking… it’s not about getting people into church, but out of the church, so that we can take the news of the gospel, and evidence of the kingdom of God before the world continuously. 
• Sixth, being mission means that we need to grow deep community. Our community must be more than countercultural, it must be deep. It has to go beyond just saying hi at coffee hour, but involve actively being in people’s lives, helping each other, serving each other, living lives that say we care about each other. Think acts 2:42-47. This will involve laying down rights and privileges, and not seeing ourselves as autonomous, self made, self focused individuals, but as people living in community for the sake of Christ. This also includes loving each other deeply. One of the statements about the early church was, “see how they love one another”. They practiced forgiveness and reconciliation, and hospitality, inviting the friend and the stranger into their homes, and so must we. We must practicing these things as we seek to show that we care about each other because of the gospel. And here’s the thing, community is key to making disciples. As people see the community, and see the lives of the members of the church community, they are attracted (or should be), that allows them to talk about what’s going on, and process the gospel within community. As I’ve thought about Dennis coming to Christ, it started with him getting dragged to church, where he got introduced to people, and then as he came into community, and got to know people, he heard about the gospel from multiple people, and he heard preaching from me, and others that were recommended to him, and eventually, he came to trust Christ. Ultimately, the introduction to people in the community and building of relationships leads to the sharing of the gospel in a much more organic way that so much of what has passed for evangelism does, which makes deep community all the more important.

Will moving in this direction be easy? No, it will be messy and hard, what is easier by far is coasting along unchanged, affecting nothing. Satan would like nothing more than a church that just coasts, I promise you that. But that’s not what God is calling the church to do, and the call to missional church is a call to see that we are the gathering of the redeemed sent to participate in the work of Jesus in this world. It’s not to huddle together for warmth. It’s not to just pour most of our time, energy, money on serving ourselves or our loved ones. It’s to go out as sent ones. I’ve been seeking to paint this picture for awhile, because I believe that we need to see ourselves differently, not as a club, but as a community of people whose very purpose is to be people who go as “the sent ones” into our communities to be salt and light. The call of the missional church, the call that has been grabbing at me, and I hope you, is that we need to be shaped by the need for reaching the world rather than the comfort of those in the pews, because the church is not primarily about us, but about God’s mission in the world. 

Now, let me be clear, this all feels like it will be a massive deconstruction of how the church approaches things. It may even feel like a deconstruction of the institutional church. it’s not. Some say that deconstruction is the right road. But I don’t, and neither do any of the serious and best missional thinkers. Instead, this is a critique of the approach that hangs up a shingle, and waits. It’s is a critique of the seeker sensitive movement, it a critique of the fact that as Christendom ended, and it’s a cry, led by people who love God and love church, that we need to get in gear, and reach those around us. It’s a scream, for us to recognize that we are missionaries, and to start thinking like missionaries, learning to understand those around us, learning how to serve and care for them, and love them, because God loves them, and wants them to know him and then grow as his disciples.

Ultimately, being a missional church is not about being one style of church or another. It’s about galvanizing into distinct movement, understanding that you are sent into an irreligious world to live as a Christian and to lift up and proclaim the good news of the Gospel. It’s about seeing that every believer is sent on this mission by God just as Jesus was sent on this mission (John 17:14-16, 18; 20:21). It’s about seeing that if the people outside of the church will not relate to anything we are currently preoccupied with protecting, we need to shift. It’s about being a theologically-formed, Gospel-centered, Spirit-empowered, united community of believers who seek to faithfully incarnate the purposes of Christ for the glory of God. 

The mission of the church is found in the mission of God who is calling the church to passionately participate in God's redemptive mission in the world (Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8).

Remember that this goes so much deeper than just having a missions program, and being “missions-minded” A missional church is a church that sees mission as being not just one part of what the church does, but instead, finds that the church’s mission shapes and forms its identity, lifestyle, strategy, priorities, spending, leadership, structure, and decision-making and has a focus on missional outreach. This mission is based upon the life and mission of Christ. Every member of the church is “sent”. It’s not about “sending and supporting” missionaries. It’s about “participating here” rather than having someone “represent you there”. It’s not a program – but the very essence of the church.

So, how do we become a church that loves and serves our community missionally? How do we become what might be called a missional church? We don’t do it to be cool, but to be faithful. So how do we get there? Honestly, that’s where I’m the weakest, in large part, because that’s the 64 million dollar question that everyone is trying to figure out. It’s pretty clear, that with culture as diverse as it is now, it’s not one size fits all. There is no church in a box, silver bullet solution. If there is one thing that I have found out as I have read, and read, it’s this.

As I have indicated, I think it starts with shifting our thinking. We need to understand that this is not a program, slap it on, and we’re good to go. Ultimately, being missional is about how we see ourselves, and that requires a change of mind, asking, ourselves, are we people who see Christianity as one ball to be juggled, or as people who are shaped and defined by the gospel, and then live out of the gospel in every area, as we seek to bring the gospel to the world around. And are we doing it because we want the church to grow, or because we want people to know the savior who has radically transformed our lives.

Second, I think it includes dealing with some things. We have rifts that need to be healed. It occurred to me, as I reflect on my time here, that there have been countless skirmishes and battles, and that we do not love each other the way that we should. Division has marked my time, and that saddens me. But then I reflected more deeply, and realized that this is the history of the church. We need to repent of our sin, especially when it comes to our rights, and expectations, and selfishness (remember that one part of those founding First Baptist were driven by not wanting to pay taxes, that strand of selfishness is still in our DNA), and ask for forgiveness of those we have wronged, and those places where we have insisted on our rights, and really seeking to love one another with deep Christ-like love, so that the town of Medfield will say, “see how they love one another”. Then we need to be in each other’s lives, showing that we care about each other.

Third, I think it requires that we stop lamenting the end of Christendom (I’m talking to myself as I say that). Christendom made the church a cultural captive. Because it was the arbitrator of culture, it couldn’t call culture on its systemic sins, it could only confront the private sins. But if Christendom is gone, and that releases us from cultural captivity, allowing the church to not be the arbitrators of the culture, or even the cultures morality, but to call people to run against the grain, and live lives marked by the gospel and the disciplines of Christina life.

Fourth, I think it includes understanding that this will take time, and is dependent on God. This is more of a process, like growing a garden than starting a machine. It’s not church in a box. Furthermore, only God brings revival. I can’t promise that we will succeed in anything we try; only God grows the fruit. I plant, Apollos waters… God makes it grow.

Fifth, I think it includes really connecting to those in our community, and getting to know our neighbors, and really seeking to know them. And asking what are the challenges people are facing. What are they struggling with? What’s happening in their lives? It also involves asking, where can we find ways to bless our town, in Jesus name, because we want to love them as Christ loved them? It starts with finding ways to partner with others in our community, to serve Medfield, and Metro-west, and meet its needs, simply because God loves this community.

Furthermore, I think it includes thinking theologically, biblically and missionally about how you live, and how you can be someone whose live is a powerful witness to what God has done in your life.(Acts 4:32-34). It includes regarding yourselves as “Ambassadors” of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17-20), and guard your heart against syncretism (worshiping things other than God- looking to what Keller calls counterfeit Gods) and sectarianism (huddling away from the community). It includes looking at everything we do through the prism of the gospel, and not visa-versa (Acts 10). It includes loving God, His mission, and His people, and having your own life shaped by the gospel. It also requires that we do everything we can with excellence, in a way that says, we care about the community, and that includes even the little things like taking care of the building. The list is endless.

But there is one more thing that we can do as we seek to become a church with this missional instinct. The Boston Southwest Association has invited Glynis LaBarre, one of the denominations few missional thinker (as best I can tell), to lead any churches that are interested in a “missional church learning experience (MCLE)”. It’s not a perfect program, but it’s designed to allow our church to work alongside other churches, and try to take baby-steps in serving our community and incarnating the gospel.

Ultimately, this will require everyone working in the same direction, and learning together I’m going to admit upfront, I can’t turn make this shift happen on my own. I can’t save the church, as many hope that I can do. Furthermore, I think that we need to stop worrying about saving the church, and reaching Medfield with the gospel. We need to understand that success is measured in people knowing Christ, not saving the institution. And for this, I don’t have a complete roadmap for success. I’ve got suggestions, and lots of thoughts. I have freely barrowed from many sources in putting this together (If you would like a list of some, email me, and I will provide you with some things to chew on), but I don’t have a ten point plan (intentionally). I don’t want to present you with a top down plan of, here is how we do this. Instead, my hope for all this, is to jump start a conversation about how we can reach our community and region together.

I know it will require sacrifice, and that we might be tempted to reject the task because of the cost. But I also truly believe that we all want to obey God and see lives changed by the gospel, and that’s the reason to go through what looks like a daunting transition (daunting even for the change pastor). In the end, it all comes down to the desire to further the kingdom. To see people know Jesus, and become his disciples. To obey our king, serve our king, and follow our king. To be sent, as He was sent. We know that the world is changing, that Christendom is past, and we face a new paradigm for ministry. We know we’re not alone in feeling like the world has turned upside down. We know we’re one of a hundred churches that feel the same way, just in the Boston area. From seminary presidents, to denomination officials, to pastors and church leaders, and church members, everyone is struggling to find the answers. We’re going through the biggest cultural shift since the reformation and enlightenment that led to the rise of modernity. Everything is out of balance; we’re all being bombarded with change that is requiring personal, systemic, and cultural transformation inside and outside of the church. And yet in this, God is acting, and we need to be working together to see lives changed by the gospel.

So how can we bring the gospel to people in such a time as this? What is he calling us to? Lets spend the summer talking about this. If He is a sending God, how can we be living on mission together in a way that reaches Medfield and Metro-west and makes disciples? That’s the conversation I hope to get you all involved in. As I ponder this, I know that I am still a relative newcomer. This was your town and region first; all of you know this community and region far better than I do. I have no doubt that you see things I miss. Reaching our community is going to require all of us working together, and I need your help, as together we seek to hear from God and follow God, and live for the glory of his name. Consider these last two articles. Consider the Mission field of New England, and of Medfield and Metro-west, and consider what that requires of all of us, together, as we seek to live as people sent on mission. My hope is that wherever God is taking First Baptist, and the greater church community, that we will go through this change well, and that that the result will be that the kingdom of God is furthered, and that people connect to the gospel, grow in the gospel, becoming mature disciples, serve from the gospel, share the gospel, and that all are truly changed by the gospel.

From the Newsletter: Missional Church- Part 1

We live in a mission’s field. The day has passed when the mission’s field is “over there” somewhere across the sea. It is here. New England is a mission’s field by just about any imaginable standard. And the New England church, by and large, is not reaching New England as missionaries.

So how do we approach the community that we live in, and seek to be salt and light? How do we minister in such a way that we bring the gospel to bear on people’s lives and make disciples? It starts by seeing ourselves as missionaries, by seeing ourselves as people who have been sent on mission, and by shaping our lives around this reality. But it also includes shaping our church culture around this reality. And this brings me to the subject of the missional church. Throughout the church world, there has been allot of discussion about what it means to be a missional church, and how to be missional, and so I just want to look at four questions, two this month, and two next month. What is leading to the missional church discussion? What is the theological motivation for missional church? What is a missional church? And how do we become a church that loves and serves our community missionally?

So first, what is leading to the missional church discussion? The motivation for missional church is that Christendom is failing, and the church has by and large, failed to adapt to the new reality on the ground. For nearly 1000 years, the west has lived in a world where the culture, was known as “Christendom”. The Church and the society where fused together, and “the institutions of society Christianized people, and stigmatized non Christian behavior”. The problem, notes Tim Keller* in his article Missional Church, is that “Though people were "Christianized" by the culture, they were not regenerated or converted with the Gospel”. In this culture, the church's job was then to challenge people to come to a living, saving faith in Christ. There were huge advantages and huge disadvantages to 'Christendom' that existed side by side. The advantage was that there was a common language for public moral discussion, which allowed society to debate and define what was ‘good’, and ‘not good’. “The disadvantage was that Christian morality without gospel-changed hearts often led to many problems, severe cruelty, and great hypocrisy”. Many people who claimed to be Christian lived lives that were anything but. Furthermore, “under "Christendom" the church often was silent against abuses of power of the ruling classes over the weak. For these reasons and others, the church in Europe and North America has been losing its privileged place as the arbiter of public morality since at least the mid 19th century”.

The decline of Christendom began to accelerate significantly after World War 2. Tim Keller observers that in 1950, the British missionary Lesslie Newbigin went to India, and while he served there, he was involved with a church living 'in mission' in a very non-Christian culture; when he returned to England some 30 years later, he discovered that now the Western church too existed in a non-Christian society, but it had not adapted to its new situation.          

Though public institutions and popular culture of Europe and North America no longer 'Christianized' people, the church still ran its ministries assuming that a stream of 'Christianized', traditional/moral people would simply show up in services, taking what some have described as the attractional “if you build it they will come” approach. Some churches certainly did 'evangelism' as one ministry among many, notes Keller, “but the church in the West had not become completely 'missional'--adapting and reformulating absolutely everything it did in worship, discipleship, community, and service--so as to be engaged with the non-Christian society around it”.

There are many reasons for this, but a big one, according to Missiologist Ed Stetzer, is that North America (and Europe) was not and is not seen by the Christians that live there as a missions field, or it is seen as a reached field only in need of an evangelism strategy. The problem with this, Stetzer argues in Breaking the Missional Code, is that we need to realize that we there is a core difference between evangelism and missions. “Evangelism is telling people about Jesus; missions involves understanding them before we tell them”.

Most American churches, and certainly most New England churches, aren’t there. We still assume that the average people outside the church thinks as they did under Christendom, and are looking for a church, and know they should belong to one. But by and large, they don’t. And we still struggle to get that. The result is that the church, rather than being salt and light, is a smaller and smaller minority that seeks to survive and outlast the onslaught of changes in our culture, while lamenting that we no longer have home court advantage. In this environment, many churches are just happy to be alive, the mantra of a group of people who feel incapable of relating to the changing environment becomes “We’ve stayed alive another year, praise the Lord”. 

Add to that the fact that many have become consumers of church, retreating into the comfort of our sanctuaries, encouraging one another, helping one another, hoping that what is going on in our little boxes will attract those on the outside, and the fact that we have all been infected by the seeker mentality (A seeker mentality that is fiercely pragmatic and consumer driven, that starts with the assumption that the church is a business that produces goods and services to a market and therefore, the demands of the market determine the message and ministries and even the mission of the church), and you can see a problem. Consumerism was met with a product sold by churches whose goal was a larger and larger market share. The old attractional model was put on speed. But the problem was that often, the seeker churches often just pulled from other churches, while not reaching the un-churched and secular society around with the gospel.

In the face of these dynamics, the church has failed to develop a 'missiology of western culture' the way it had done so for other non-believing cultures. This is sad, and ironic. The church has put innumerable hours into thinking about how to reach the world around us, but has not thought long and hard about how to reach our communities. We assume that if we do a little evangelism, then everything will be all right. But the result, notes Stetzer, is that “many churches fail to reach people in the shadow if their own steeple.”

Now, in some places, the church is still thriving, especially evangelical churches. In the Deep South, and in many and places in the Midwest, it has not experienced the same massive decline as the Protestant churches of Europe and Canada, in large part because of the remnants of the old 'Christendom' society. There the informal public culture (though not the formal public institutions) still stigmatizes non-Christian beliefs and behavior. But those places are slowly disappearing, and even there, most traditional evangelical churches still can only win people to Christ who are temperamentally traditional and conservative. The reality is that this is that every church will have to learn how to become 'missional'. If they do not, they will decline or die. As one writer, Scott Thomas, put it, “Since Christianity is a minority voice in the postmodern culture, the church must adopt an approach to ministry learned from the foreign missionaries who communicate and relate in understandable ways to the godless inhabitants in their respective cultures (1 Cor. 9:22).”

So the situation is bleak. We get that. Is that enough? What’s the bible say? The call that you are making is that we should aim at being a church that is mission. Why? What is the theological motivation for missional church? The reality that God is a God on mission. The missional church is a church that is shaped by the fact that God is a God on mission, a God seeking and saving of the lost, making of disciples, and displaying His glory over all the earth. From the very beginning of scripture, we see that God is a missionary God how propels himself out as the Ultimate Missionary. In Genesis he sends out His Word and creating. He creates the world. Later, He creates Israel, choosing a man and making a covenant with him, and declaring that though this man He was going to bless the world.

Throughout scripture, we see that God is constantly sending himself. The history of Israel is a history of God’s “sentness” Israel’s great discovery was that God does not live in a temple. They encountered God in Babylon, Nineveh, and bottom of the ocean. The Sending One is always moving outward after His people.

For over 20 years, an ever-growing movement referred to collectively as the Missional Church Movement has been make in call for churches to re-orient themselves from their own wants, needs and desires, to the agenda of mission, arguing that the mission of God, the Missio Dei, should be the organizing principle around which all other things are organized. The starting point for the missional church movement is that man is not the center that needs to have a program for every felt need, but instead, understands that God is on a mission for His purposes, and that the churches mission is to become enlisted in that purpose to the world. David Bosch writes in this book, Transforming Mission, that “The term mission presupposes a sender, a person or persons sent by the sender, those to who one is sent, and an assignment.”

The very doctrine of the Trinity bears this out. Scripture makes clear that God the Father sends God the Son to redeem a lost world. In Luke he declares that he came to “seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10), and in John, we see repeatedly that he was sent, He says "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to accomplish His work." (John 4:34), “I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. (John 5:30)” “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. (John 6:38)”. Jesus was sent. This sentness is the thing that sends us as well. After the resurrection, Jesus comes to his disciples and says, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, even so, I send you.” His sending becomes the basis for our sending. Being missional is a response to the fact that God is a sending God; it’s an imitation of His impulse as a sender, and an acceptance of the fact that we were created and chosen for His missional purposes. Jesus said, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He may give to you" (John 15:16), God is the one who sends us on mission, we didn’t choose the mission, God chooses us for the mission, and we are invited to take part in the mission He chooses for us. Mission is not something we do, it’s not a program, it the essence of the church, our central mission is God’s mission, to “seek and to save what was lost”

The sending of Christ gives us the how of the mission as well as the reason for the mission. “As the Father sent me, even so, I send you”. The way that we are to go, is shaped by the way Christ went. As people who are being conformed to His image, we are to carry His image out the same way that He carried God the Fathers out. We are to live as He lived, love as He loved, pursue what He pursued, as we seek to accomplish His purposes. So how did Christ come? Speaking, declaring, sharing, but also loving and serving. He cared for the sick and the needy. He touched hearts and minds, and brought healing, and He served humbly, not because He got anything out of it, but for the blessing of those he ministered to.  And He spoke. He proclaimed the gospel. Boldly. When we look at Christ, we get a sense of how our own mission is shaped.

Now, none of this is new, and that’s the point. The early church was shaped by this kind of mission-mindedness, and the proponents of the missional movement make clear that what they seek is a return to the mission-mindedness of the early church, a mission-mindedness that many churches have at their beginning, but lose as they became more inward-focused and move “missions” to a separate category altogether. But being missional is not an extra for the church, it is the church, and it’s about bringing the church and mission back together and seeing the mission as the core, overarching, motivating logic for all that we do. The church exists neither for itself nor its parishioners, but for the kingdom and mission of God. As Jurgen Moltmann, the German theologian notes, "It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the Church." There is Church because there is mission, not vice versa)… the Church is participating in the mission of God. The church's mission is a subset of a larger whole mission.

Next month, we will come back to this subject, and look at our final two questions. But for now, I ask you; think about what it means for us. If God is a sending God, what does that look like for us as individuals, and as churches?

*NOTE: I have quoted freely from many sources. Sometimes I have attributed, but not always. This was originally a newsletter article for the church, not a research paper.

J.D. Greer on 5 Tests to Determine If You Church Is Truly Gospel Centered

In light of God's desire is to see gospel movements around the world, J.D. Greer, a Pastor, Blogger, and Author of  Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary put up a great article recently entitled 5 Tests to Determine If You Church Is Truly Gospel Centered. It's absolutely worth checking out. Also, since it was a talk before it became a Blog posting, here is the link to the full talk. Enjoy!

Acts 2:41–47 gives us 5 “tests” of gospel-centrality. If we are preaching the Spirit-anointed gospel, these 5 things will be the result in our churches, just as they were in the very first one:

1. Evangelistic effectiveness AND doctrinal depth (Acts 2:41-42, 47)

Acts 2:41 tells us that in one day 3,000 people were saved and baptized, and verse 47  reports that God added daily to their number those who were being saved. The first church grew in a hurry. At the same time, the people were “devoted to the teaching of the Apostles” and were possessed by a great sense of awe over God’s glory.

I often hear church depth place at odds with church width. The early church clearly did both. In reality, the one is impossible without the other. Churches that grow wide without growing deep are not creating “sustainable” width, only generating a little temporary excitement. Churches that don’t grow wide are probably not nearly as deep as they may think. Gospel depth almost always produces gospel fruitfulness (Mark 4:16-17). Understanding the gospel gives you a sense of people’s lostness. You understand the wrath of God against their sin, how imminent His judgment is, how great His grace is towards them. Understanding the gospel gives you humility, because you realize how lost you were before God saved you. Understanding the gospel gives you the faith to believe God for great things, because the gospel reveals how willing and able God is to save. You show me someone characterized by a sense of urgency, humility, love and the boldness that comes from great faith, and I’ll show you someone who will be an effective evangelist!

Healthy churches do both (Col 1:5-6). Certain churches within the gospel-centered movement are suprisingly unconcerned with, or ineffective at, evangelism.  They talk a lot about “mission” and “planting churches” but somehow that never translates into evangelism. Some wear smallness as a badge of honor. They love to critique everyone else’s evangelism, but do very little of their own. Charles Spurgeon—no theological lightweight—said, “I would sooner bring one sinner to Jesus Christ than unpack all the mysteries of the divine Word, for salvation is the thing we are to live for.”

A lot of the criticisms directed at rapidly-growing churches seem (to me) to be motivated by about 30% theological concern and 70% jealousy, fear and laziness. This is not to say that there is no validity to the theological concerns, just that those making them should pay attention to their motives. Our arrogance may keep us from receiving the grace God works even in the midst of theological shortcomings. We ought to be humbled by the zeal for souls present in movements that do not achieve, in our view, a full gospel-centrality. As D. L. Moody said to one Reformed critic of his, “It is clear you don’t like my way of doing evangelism. You raise some good points. Frankly, I sometimes do not like my way of doing evangelism. But I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.”

2. Gospel-centered churches are characterized by the presence of God. (Acts 2:43)

This first church was full of the Spirit. There are a few things in that chapter that we will not likely experience in our congregations, but verse 43 gives you a classic description of the effect of the fullness of the Spirit—it says the people were “filled with awe.” D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said (and I paraphrase), “The presence of God is a felt-sense of the attributes of God as revealed in the gospel.” Their sense of the “presence of God” was not the result of a musical crescendo or an emotive preacher. It came simply from the preaching of the gospel by ones who really believed it and felt its passions within their souls. Another of my favorite theologians, Jonathan Edwards, described his sense of the presence of God like this:

“Sometimes only mentioning the name of Christ or an attribute of God will cause my heart to burn within me. . . . Suddenly God appears glorious to me. When I enjoy this sweetness it seems to carry me outside of myself. I cannot bring myself even to take my eye from this Glorious Object.”

Note that this sort of experience is not at odds with doctrine, or even beyond doctrine, but flows out of good doctrine. It’s not less than doctrine, it is more. God’s beauty and majesty are not just to be perceived with the mind, they are to be felt in the soul.

Where this happens, there is the joy you see in Acts 2:46-47. It is hard for me to believe that a church can really “get” the gospel when its services are not characterized by joy. Yes, there are times for somberness and mourning and repentance in worship, but the predominant motif of biblical worship is joy. Multiple places in Scripture command us to clap our hands, shout with joy, and to sing and delight in God. They tell us that in God’s presence is “fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). So how can we claim to have gospel-centered churches if our services are not characterized by exuberant joy? 

3. Gospel-centered churches are characterized by fervent, faith-filled prayer (Acts 2:42)

The gospel produces a faith in the church that  makes bold requests of Jesus. You see that referred to here in Acts 2, and fleshed out later in Acts 4:24-31. They expected great things from God, and then attempted great things for God.

The early church was born from prayer. After Jesus ascended to heaven, Acts 1:14 reports that the disciples “were devoting themselves to prayer.” This went on for ten days before the arrival of the Spirit on Pentecost. These believers prayed for 10 days, Peter preached for 10 minutes, and 3,000 people were saved. Today we’re more likely to pray for 10 minutes, preach for 10 days, and see 3 people saved.

Acts shows us a profound connection between corporate prayer and our community getting a sense of the glory of God. When we pray, our eyes are opened to the glory of God. When our eyes are opened to His glory, we preach with boldness, passion and power (Acts 4:24-31). In Acts 7:55-56, we see Stephen lift his eyes to heaven in prayer, catch a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, and in awe begin to proclaim it to those around him. When this happens on a city-wide scale, what you get is a spiritual awakening. Tim Keller gives a glimpse of what this looks like:

In New York, in 1857, a man named Jeremiah Lanphier was hired to witness to a local neighborhood. He was frustrated by utter ineffectiveness, and so in desperation he turned to prayer. One day he invited people to pray with him—six people showed up. The following week, 20 people came. The next week, 40. Two months later, hundreds were gathering to pray. Soon the entire downtown area was filled with men and women praying. Evangelistic meetings sprang up all over the city, and in 9 months, 50,000 people came to Christ at a time when the population of NYC was 800,000. This was known as the great prayer revival of Manhattan.

I really want to see that happen in Raleigh-Durham. If you scaled the proportions, that would be like 100,000 people coming to Christ in a 9-month period!

4. Gospel-centered churches are characterized by empowered members. (Acts 8:1, 28:15)

A stubborn theme throughout the book of Acts is that God’s most effective vehicles are “regular” people. Consider these facts from Acts: Thirty-nine of the 40 miracles in the book of Acts occur outside the walls of the “church,” in the workplace. The longest sermon in Acts is by Stephen, a layman. That sermon led to the most significant spiritual moment in Acts, the conversion of Saul (Paul). Acts 8:1 notes that when persecution rose up against the church, the church was scattered around the world preaching the gospel. But note that Luke tells you this worldwide fulfillment of Acts 1:8 did not include the Apostles. These anonymous Christians were so effective in ministry that when Paul showed up in Rome to preach the gospel “where Christ had never been named,” he was greeted by “the brothers” (Acts 28:15). Early church historian Stephen Neill notes that the anonymity of the major gospel movements in the ancient world is breathtaking: “But in point of fact few, if any, of the great Churches were really founded by apostles. Nothing is more notable than the anonymity of these early missionaries… Luke does not turn aside to mention the name of a single one of those pioneers who laid the foundation. Peter and Paul may have organized the Church in Rome. They certainly did not found it…” (History of Christian Missions, 22)

This flows from the very nature of the gospel. The gospel is not about recognizing the gifted, but about gifting the unrecognized. Church leaders who understand that gospel won’t try to build their church around a handful of mega-talented superstars, but rather dedicate themselves to empowering and releasing the church for ministry (Eph 4:11-13). They become committed to raising up other leaders. They judge their success not so much by seating capacity but sending capacity.

5. Gospel-centered churches are characterized by extravagant generosity. (Acts 2:45)

The gospel is that Jesus “became poor for our sake so that through his poverty we might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). When a church gets this, they become extravagantly generous toward others. The first Christians didn’t just give out of their excess. They voluntarily sold their stuff so that their were no needs among them. 

Eventually this sort of gospel generosity overflowed into the streets, but it started in the church. As the apostle Paul says in Galatians, “Let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). Ultimately, the love that Christians show to one another is a profound statement to an unbelieving world. It is by our love for one another, Jesus said, that the world will know that we are His disciples (John 13:35; cf. 1 Peter 4:9). As Francis Schaeffer said, “the final apologetic that Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.”

Evangelistic effectiveness and doctrinal depth; fervent, faith-filled prayer; a sense of the presence of God; empowered members and extravagant generosity are 5 things that the gospel produced in the early church. How present are they in your church? If one of these characteristics are missing, is it possible that we don’t understand the gospel as much as we claim to? These are the indelible marks of a gospel movement.

If these are missing from your church, the answer is not to “go and try harder.” We need to ask ourselves, “Why is the gospel I am preaching not producing these things?”

Soooo... how are we doing? What's your take? Looks to me like we've got a long road ahead.