Living Missional – Part Two Where We Are Headed…

Oh, how things are changing.  I am changing.  The world is changing.  You are changing, even if you don’t notice it.  For hundreds of years we have lived in the same mode of modern culture.  It’s really best seen in education, wherein students were sat in rows, information was written on the board, and the students were expected to copy down the information and memorize it.  But in the last two decades or so we have learned more about how people learn, and that has changed everything (educationally speaking).  It has been documented how students need a variety of learning methods, such as movement, conversation, cooperation, trial & error and experience.  It has revolutionized the way our classrooms are run, and in doing so it has revolutionized us as thinkers about everything – academics, life, God, people, relationships.

At the risk of scaring people with theoretical terminology, we are moving from the modern era into the post modern era.  And let me clarify.  Post modern does not mean liberal.  Post modern does not mean realitivist.  Post modern does not mean democrat.  Post modern does not mean athiest or New Age or “e-van-jellyfish” (as some pastors have taken to calling evangelicals who don’t see things in complete black and white).  Post modern means the era after the modern era.  It means we’ve moved past modern.  We’ve moved past thinking we are right and others are wrong and they need our message in our way from our denomination with our style of worship.  It means something different is happening.

Some are very afraid of what is new.  Some run for the hills when a new song is played on a Sunday morning, or when the sanctuary chairs are in a different pattern, or when (gasp) a new person delivers the Sunday morning message.  But when it is culture that is changing perception and this changes how we relate, it is inescapable.  So, what is it that we are changing into?  Let me dive right into that…

The church is entering into an era in which people are realizing that the church is not the leadership, it is not the building, it is not the doctrine and it is not the slant from which you see the bible.  It is the people.  The church is me.  It is you.  It is whoever lives the incarnational message of Christ.  For the last 400 years we’ve lived under the rigid structure of Church.  Service times, Sunday Schools, worship styles, elder boards, event after event after event.  Take any of those things on their own and examine them and they are in their nature good things.  But we have used them to define us.  We have used them to give us identity, purpose and satisfaction.  And we have also used them to show how we are right and others who do things differently are wrong.

Instead, we are walking down a path, like it or not, that is deconstructive in nature.  It is not about inviting people in to our building or to our events.  It is about going out.  It is not about telling someone four steps that will lead them to the magic prayer of repentance.  It is about showing someone that God reaches to them right where they are.  It is not about boosting our numbers at our events.  It is about making our neighbors welcome in our home.  It is not about fourmula.  It is about love.

As I read through the gospels I have noticed something.  There is no where (that I can find) where Jesus lays out the Four Spiritual Laws to anyone.  He does not even usually admit outright that he is the Christ, coming to save them.  What he does is love and serve.  He talks to people who are used to being treated like garbage.  He cares for the sick.  He eats meals with people – usually people seen as unfit to eat with.  He visits people’s homes.  He loves on children.  He goes fishing.  And we look at these things through our glasses of modern thinking and say “How can we plan events that model these things so we can reach the maximum amount of people?”.  Now that is a decent goal, but we are looking at it incompletely because no matter what event we host, few people come from the outside community.  Most people attending our events are US.  However, if we look at what Jesus did through the glasses of postmodernity, we will see a different picture.  We will be asking “How can each one of us be loving people in the way Jesus did?”

Do you see the difference?  Instead of hosting a men’s breakfast where men are free to invite their friends and neighbors – and maybe 5 visitors come, we teach our men how to reach out to their neighbors and have men from their neighborhood (or work or t-ball dads) over to their house for breakfast on a Saturday morning.  Instead of hosting a giant Easter Egg Hunt on the church lawn as a community outreach, we pass out eggs to families who host Easter Egg Hunts in their front yard for the neighborhood.  Instead of the leadership and elders trying to scheme to get people in the front door, we teach our congregations how to be equipped to go out the front door and do the ministry of the church in their daily lives of work, sports, school, neighborhoods, and friends.  And then we give them the freedom to do the ministry of loving people outside of church events without guilt, expectations, rules or formulas.

This is a hard change to make, but it is so necessary for the church (as in the people who follow Christ) to live relationally (valuing the development of relationships), conversationally (always being willing to talk, listen and interact) and incarnationally (as a bit of Jesus walking around in this world loving and serving as He would).  This is how the secular culture already functions – willing to delve into relationships to seek or to give love, willing talk about ideas and pursue them as if solving a mystery not pounding a point, and waiting with baited breath for someone to reach out and touch them as Jesus did the leper.  Jesus always went, always talked, always loved, always gave.  After all, people don’t want to know they are welcome in our building or at our events.  They want to know their neighbor loves them.  I’d rather have one person really love me than 500 simply tolerate my presence.  It’s not about welcoming people into our church buildings, it’s about welcoming them into our lives, our homes and our families.

Next up:  Living Missional – Part Three   What’s The Next Step…