Challenging Times

Rather than talk about mission as the ‘organising principle’ of the Church, let’s just talk about getting back on Jesus’s mission for us.

All the reasons we put forward for making mission the organising principle still apply – God is the sending God; our times require that we get back on Jesus’s mission; mission catalyses and energises the other functions of the Church (worship, discipleship, and community).

But talking about getting back on Jesus’s mission has some important advantages:

• This time it’s personal. It’s about Jesus and us. That makes it more concrete, less abstract.
• It avoids focussing just on ecclesiology (how the Church is organised).
• It’s a reminder that we’ve lost something important.
• It makes it harder to ‘get off the hook’ by thinking in terms of incorporating ‘missional insights’ into our existing way of doing things.

So there you have it: I believe that if the Church in the west is not to diminish and die, we need to get back on Jesus’s mission for us.

What do you think?

I’ve blogged several times recently about the idea of making mission the ‘organising principle’ of the church. I’ve looked at some reasons for this (here, here, and here), and at one of it’s greatest strengths.

But it also has a major weakness: however many qualifications and exceptions you put, it does pitch mission against worship.

But the fact is that the no. 1 purpose of humanity is to worship God and to enjoy him for ever (paraphrasing the Westminster Shorter Catechism). And, as John Piper says:

‘missions exists because worship doesn’t.’

One day, mission will cease, but worship will go on for eternity.

So it doesn’t work very well to pitch mission against worship.

The problem is about how we think of mission and (more importantly) how we think of worship. I listened to a sermon the other day which had a significant section about worship, and the implied understanding – never actually discussed – is that worship is what we do when we gather together in the church building and sing songs. This is simply an unbiblical and narrow understanding of worship. (I’m sure that this isn’t how the person preaching that sermon really understands worship – but it was still the default message that came through.)

So is there a better way to re-focus on the importance of mission? A way that doesn’t pitch it against worship (properly understood)? I believe there is.

Watch this space…

There were some interesting responses to Mike Frost’s talks at the Future Church event last month, from people who are involved in more traditional kinds of church:

‘That was interesting / thought-provoking…’

‘There were some helpful insights in what he said.’

‘It’s all a case of finding the right balance, isn’t it?’

Behind some of these comments, there seems to lie a genuine desire to take some parts of the missional approach to church, and somehow ‘bolt them on’ to our existing attractional way of doing church: ‘Can’t missional insights co-exist with an attractional church?’ is the key question. The sub-text of this question about co-existing is: ‘We don’t mind adding a few missional things to our existing programme, but we don’t want to think about making more radical changes to the (attractional) way we do things.’

This is where one of the strengths of the ‘mission as the organising principle’ approach becomes clearer – because we’re obviously not likely to operate with two organising principles. As long as the worship gathering remains the central activity of the church, the church is unlikely to become truly missional – and our society is likely to remain largely unreached.

I can’t be the only person who smiled when I heard about the advertising campaign that the British Humanist Association has been sponsoring on the sides of London buses, saying ‘There’s probably no God…’

I’m not sure whether they mean this the same way a certain beer describes itself as ‘probably the best lager in the world,’ or whether they’re just hedging their bets.

What follows is a guest post by John-Mark Strange.

My reaction, upon reading about the ‘Atheist Bus campaign’ was that, as a Christian I owe someone an apology. You see, many people’s response to seeing the slogan; ‘There’s probably no God, now enjoy your life’ was that they found this slogan refreshing.

Now, set aside for a moment the fact that both the atheist and the Christian cannot be right – there cannot be both one God and no God at all. I can see what people might find refreshing about this slogan. After all it says that you should just get on and enjoy this life. What a positive message!… Unless of course you are terminally ill and don’t have much time left to enjoy. In that case it offers considerably less comfort. Or if you live in poverty and every day is a struggle for you… then it offers very little hope. Or if you have lost a loved one, or you are clinically depressed, or lonely or… In fact this is a message that offers very little hope to anyone except those who have all that they could want, and do not long for something more permanent.

Now compare that to what the Bible offers – hope even for the sick and for the least of people. Justice for the helpless and those in poverty. Comfort to the lonely. And best of all – a self sacrificing, loving God who desires a profound and permanent relationship with us beyond the span of our very lives. This is the message of the Bible, and if the atheist message seems refreshing in comparison then we are not telling it well enough. It is for this I felt that must apologise.

Now my complaint with this campaign: it seems to be falling prey to what its prominent supporters claim to abhor most. Richard Dawkins says ‘What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn’t) but whether his existence is probable’ and also that ‘thinking is anathema to religion.’ Now go back and read the bus slogan again. Does it not say – ‘just enjoy your life! don’t worry yourself about God – he probably isn’t there at all’. Is this not encouraging the opposite of thinking? Is it not in fact asking for a little blind faith? Is it not a plea to believe in something without any evidence? And is this not the the atheist’s biggest complaint against organised religion – that it tries to remove the need within us to actually think things through?

Perhaps people are just as eager to cling to certainty in atheism as they are to a religion. That is why many people are demanding that the ‘probably’ be removed altogether from this slogan. There is a reason for this – We are creatures built with a longing for a truth in which we can trust.

Now the atheist may stop there and wonder at it, but the Christian has a further mandate: ‘Come let us reason this out together…’ says God in the Bible (Isaiah 1:18). If you are to believe in the God of the Bible you must be prepared to wrestle with biblical truth and not to follow unquestioningly. If you are a Christian then this is not just an option but a requirement. You must think about your faith in order for that faith to grow and to be refined. This sounds uncomfortable, and it can be. But in doing so there is one truth you can trust in and take comfort in. You will find that the God you believe in is big enough to take it. And that is refreshing.

Phil has just set up an interesting survey asking how you would ‘do church’ if you had a blank sheet of paper.

Go here to take the survey.

In recent posts I’ve been looking at the proposal that we should make mission (rather than, say, worship) the organising principle of the church.

One reason for this is that God is the sending God. Another is that our times require that we organise around mission – because we’re living in a ‘post-Christendom’ world.

The third reason is that mission catalyses the other functions of the church (worship, community, spiritual formation) in a way that worship does not.

For example, when is someone most likely to grow spiritually – through sitting in services listening to sermons, or through getting out there on a short-term missions trip? I know that I’ve grown most in the times when I’ve been way outside my comfort zone. It is mission that catalyses spiritual growth.

(Although it isn’t central to the argument, I think there’s a biblical justification for this. In Philemon verse 6, Paul writes ‘I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.’ It seems that we don’t come to this full understanding just by listening to teaching – which is what you might expect. We come to a full understanding by sharing our faith with others.)

Similarly, do people grow together in community more when they make community itself the goal, or when they serve together in some higher purpose such as an evangelistic outreach? The people with whom I have the closest bonds are those I serve next to, not those I sit next to.

And so on. The argument is that mission catalyses worship and formation and community.

So am I convinced that we need to make mission the organising principle of the Church? Yes, I am. But this may not be the best way to put it. In my next few posts on this theme, I hope to look at one major strength of this approach, and one major weakness, and then to suggest an alternative.

Eddie has just flagged up this truly tremendous list of missional resources.

I don’t expect to live long enough to read them all (but I’ll die trying).

In his talks, Mike Frost says that we should explore what it looks like to make mission the organising principle of the Church. The most important reason for this is biblical – the sending God.

But there is another important reason: our times require that we organise around mission.

It was probably pretty obvious to the early Church that they needed to organise around mission – that’s why they grew so fast.

It’s pretty obvious in many parts of the world today that we need to organise around mission.

But for the past fifteen hundred years or so, it hasn’t been so obvious in the western world. In the world of Christendom, the Church occupied a privileged place at the centre of society. Pretty much everyone was baptised in church. The vast majority were married in church… and in due course buried in church too. Even people who didn’t believe were ‘Christian atheists’ – the God they did not believe in was the God of the Bible.

In the world of Christendom, we didn’t have to worry about mission so much, because large numbers of people ‘went to church,’ and even those who did not knew where to find us.

But we aren’t in Christendom any more. For something like 90% of the people around us, the Church is a massively irrelevant non-event. And an approach that waits for people to find us, or that invites them to come in to our buildings and our services to hear the Good News on our terms… just doesn’t cut it.

In a post-Christendom world, we need to organise around mission, or we will die. It is as simple, and as stark as that. And (like you) I know of plenty of churches today who are choosing death over discomfort.

There’s so much more I could say about this, but once again, other people have already said it, and have said it better than I could.

One of the best is Stuart Murray Williams, in his two books ‘Post-Christendom‘ and ‘Church after Christendom.’ (I don’t agree with everything Stuart says – especially with his views about the atonement. But on the subject of post-Christendom, no-one else gets near him.)

Other good places to look for a discussion of Post-Christendom are Mike Frost’s book ‘Exiles,’ and Alan Hirsch’s book ‘The Forgotten Ways.‘ Both of these have good short sections on this.

 
The Slipstream podcast for November is now online, featuring Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat.

Sylvia Keesmaat is adjunct professor of Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. Her husband Brian Walsh is the co-author of ‘Transforming Vision’ and ‘Truth is stranger than it used to be’ (with Richard Middleton). Together they have co-authored ‘Colossians re:mixed: subverting the empire,’ and (forthcoming) ‘Romans disarmed.’

Go here to listen.