lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
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Archive of "missional" Category
Anabaptist Missional Ecclesiology – Doctor of Missiology
All good missional ecclesiology is owing to the Anabaptist tradition. I came to understand that at some point in grad school and have only become more convinced of it since.
This is why I want to let everyone I can know about an incredible opportunity coming up this fall. Ever heard of a DMiss? If you haven’t, you need to familiarize yourself. It’s kind of like a DMin, but with a few key differences.
The DMiss is an applied research doctoral degree designed for ministry practitioners as opposed to straight academics, but its focus is missiology – an increasingly vital dimension of study for those engaged in ministry within Post-Christendom.
This fall Fuller Theological Seminary is launching an “Anabaptist Missional Perspectives Cohort” for those interested in the DMiss program. From Fuller’s page on the DMiss program…
The Doctor of Missiology degree equips leaders to effectively integrate theory into missional praxis within the global reality of the twenty-first century. With this program, key leaders will continue their ministries in-context, attending a cohort-based seminar once a year for four years at Fuller’s campus, and interacting with a Fuller SIS faculty member.
The DMiss program is designed for leaders with a minimum of five years of missional experience who desire:
1. To assist mission leaders in context.
2. To have direct impact on practical ministry.
3. To maximize their leadership potential within their organizations.If you’re interested in anabaptism or missional ecclesiology, have already got a masters degree, are looking for some more education, and are convinced, like me, that the best forms of education are those rooted in a learning community of engaged Christian leaders, you really need to check out this program. Deadline for applications is the end of May and if you hurry, you might even be able to get a refund on your application fee!
Learn more about the cohort model of education here.
Learn more about the program structure here.
Let me know if you have any questions, I’d love to talk more about it. And please forward this on to others you think might be interested.
Missional Preaching Part 2: Preaching as the Proclamation of Biblical Truth
In my last post I was making the claim that given a missional ecclesiology, the practice of preaching is a communal activity. On top of this, I would like to suggest that preaching in missional churches seeks to proclaim biblical truth.
Now, don’t miss this. I don’t mean “proclaim biblical truth” in the fundamentalist, “The Bible says it, so that’s the end of discussion and you’re stupid if you don’t see it” sort of way that’s maddeningly common, but in the, “In faith, we proclaim this to be true about God and life in God’s Kingdom,” sort of way.
Because missional churches seek to shape a people for mission in a Post-Christendom world, every activity of the community, including preaching, is meant to be a formative practice in this regard. As Stutzman says in the paper mentioned previously,
Missional preaching deliberately draws contrasts between the gospel message and the practices and values of American civil religion, aiming for conversion from habits shaped by participation in American democracy to habits formed through Christian discipleship.
In preaching, missional churches seek to proclaim the truth of the reality of God’s Kingdom in the midst of every other competing reality. The point of preaching for missional churches is not anthropocentric/therapeutic - meant to make people feel emotionally better. Nor does it seek primarily to be relevant in order to captivate or entertain an audience. It is not even so concerned with being exegetical or expository – patently cerebral types of communication. Missional preaching is theocentric – it is a practice in which we look for God’s reality to intersect with ours and DO something in us and in our midst.
So, for instance, each and every sermon preached at Life on the Vine features a rhetorical phrase of some sort. This is a simple way to articulate the truth that is being proclaimed from the morning’s text. The rest of the sermon, normally about 20-25 minutes since it’s not seen as more central than any other part of the liturgy, is spent, not unpacking a text, but proclaiming a biblical truth from that text that addresses us and calls us all to some response.
For instance, this summer I preached from Genesis 49 and proclaimed the truth that,
Our hope in the promises of God rests on God’s character, not ours.
The aim in my preaching of this sermon wasn’t mainly to explain the text so that people could understand and try to apply it to their lives, but to proclaim the truthfulness of the text by calling out what it was DOING, namely, calling its hearers to believe, not believe by intellectual assent, but believe by ordering their lives around, this biblical truth.
And the only way to get at this, is to call for a real response. That’s our topic for next time.
Missional Preaching Part 1: Preaching as a Communal Activity
Not too long ago I offered a post on, “Preaching in the Missional Church.” Basically it was an excuse to pimp this awesome paper by Ervin Stutzman of Eastern Mennonite University. Apparently that wasn’t enough for my good friend Wess, who asked what missional preaching looks like
To try and do justice to Wess’ question, the importance of the topic and to make space for better discussion, I’ve decided to divy this up into three posts. I’ve got in mind to describe three unique attributes of preaching in missional churches and then illustrating them by way of examples from Life on the Vine, the missional community Amy and I are a part of. (Dave Fitch, one of the co-pastors of LOV, offers some reflections on this same topic here.)
In missional communities, preaching is a communal activity which seeks to proclaim biblical truth that calls for and invites a real response.
In most churches, the task of preaching is the responsibility of one individual – 9 times out of 10, a man. Not only does the task of preaching often remain unshared, but the scope of preaching does as well. This reality conflicts with the communal nature of missional theology and ecclesiology.
In missional communities, one of the central aims would be for a team of teachers, whose giftedness is affirmed by the congregation, to share responsibility not only for preaching and teaching, but for giving their time and attention to identifying and equipping other gifted teachers in the body.
Life on the Vine is shepherded by a 3-person team of bi-vocational pastors. Not only do they share teaching and preaching responsibilities, but they also facilitate what we call a “College of Preachers,” every summer. This gives those who have (or at least want to discover if they have) the gift of teaching, the opportunity to use and explore this gift in a guided way.
In addition, we follow the church calendar. This means that we are all aware, well ahead of time, of those texts which will be preached each Sunday. Whoever is responsible for the preaching portion of our liturgical service also facilitates a time of teaching and dialogue for an hour or so before the worship service. This time gives the entire body the opportunity to speak to the text for the morning and it gives the preacher the opportunity to (re)shape their sermon in light of the insights, questions, and concerns of the body.
I’ll speak to the issue of missional preaching proclaiming biblical truth next time. For now, what are your thoughts on preaching as a communal activity? Is this important to you? Why or why not? What might be other ways to achieve the same goal in different ways?
Book Review – Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People
I was fortunate enough to receive a pre-release copy of Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People by Scott C. Sabin from Judson Press.
Sabin is the Executive Director of Plant with Purpose, a Christian relief and development agency.
Christians have a responsibility to love and care for our environment as part of God’s creation and Sabin gets that for sure, but that’s not the genius of the book. The real beauty of this book comes in the author’s ability to explain to readers, with remarkable insight and simplicity, the inherent connection between caring for the environment and caring for the poor and oppressed. He does so by providing a relational framework for understanding the issues throughout the book. Through first-hand stories and lessons learned from years of experience, Sabin unmasks the naivete and ignorance of the brand of evangelicals for whom creation care is auxiliary to (their version of) the gospel. He suggests – at times more implicitly than explicitly, that all the challenges we face, as well as the solutions to those problems, are relational in nature
Throughout the book, the author tackles issues such as deforestation, sustainable agriculture, sanitation, grassroots enterprise, and climate change. In each case, his aim is to point out how our engagement with these issues has everything to do with out concern for those who are most globally at-risk.
For Sabin,
…without God, all the development and environmental restoration in the world will not bring transformation.
At the same time, he is able to articulate that transformation is not something other than God-infused labors of development and environmental restoration.
As someone who believes that one of the hallmarks of the missional church is listening to voices from the margins, I was struck by this comment from the author.
The idea that stewardship and conservation are part of a liberal agenda seems ludicrous in much of the developing world. I remember the shock on the face of our Dominican director when I tried to explain the suspicion with which many U.S. churches regarded the environmental aspects of our work. It was a horrifying thought to him that American Christians would be less than enthusiastic about caring for the earth. Many of our brothers and sisters in the developing world are way ahead of us in their understanding of stewardship, and there is much that we can learn from them.
For anyone wishing they could find a book that offers a global view of some of the most pressing environmental challenges without getting lost and confused in technical jargon, this book is an excellent resource. The book even features a discussion guide at the end for each chapter making it an excellent choice for groups interested in studying and talking about these issues together. Through raising our awareness and offering practical suggestions, Sabin offers readers a hope for the future that is rooted not in our ability to affect change, but in God’s invitation to join him in his mission of the reconciliation of all things.
We Need WAY More Missional Conversations: A Response to Ed Stetzer
I regret that I’ve never med Ed Stetzer face to face. I’d like to believe we’d be fast friends who share a mutual passion for people coming to know Christ and joining in God’s mission in the world. At the same time, we’d disagree about a lot. For starters, a blog post he published yesterday critiquing the need for missional (among other) conversations.
Ed seems worried about missional conversations that don’t…
involve men and women being redeemed, changed [sic], and transformed by the gospel.
I read that and think to myself, “What? Where in the flip is he getting his definition of missional and who is he talking to? These are the things that are at the very center of missional theology and ecclesiology.” I have worked hard over a healthy number of years to stay involved in every way I can imagine in the missional conversation and outside of the very fringes that you find in any population, I simply don’t know of any missional people or groups that would merit this kind of concern.
Ed says,
It is never a good thing to be defending our lack of converts to Christ while we are busy converting people to our cause. To me, it is the difference between complaining and creating a new (and better) way.
He goes on to say,
I don’t want missional to mean attacks on mega and fast growing churches who are reaching people “wrongly,” while missional churches are reaching few “rightly.”
I think I get Ed’s heart here, but these statements are FAR too simplistic. One of the main reasons for the lack of converts in missional and emerging churches is the popularity of churches who are, in fact, “reaching people ‘wrongly’.” For those who embrace missional theology and are trying to cultivate missional communities, especially in contexts where Christendom still exists, we are fighting an uphill battle… and wearing a 100 lb. pack… and it’s raining… and we’re barefoot… and… You get the point. In a culture which still features the cheap grace of individualistic salvation and consumeristic church involvement, guess what – the message of dying to yourself, submitting yourself to a community and joining in God’s Kingdom mission that will, in all likelihood, threaten your identity and lifestyle is pretty unpopular. When given the option, would-be converts will of course respond,
Thank you very much, I think I’ll just attend St. McDonald’s where I get saved by raising my hand, I can disappear in the mass of people, and the entertaining music & speaking gives me warm fuzzies every time I’m there.
The fact of the matter is that those who identify with missional theology engage in this fight for the very reasons mentioned above – because the converts made by the dominant expressions of Christianity in the US are in no meaningful way redeemed, changed or transformed. I doubt many people are more aware of the crisis of nominal Christianity in the US that Ed, so I find this a surprising oversight. So, albeit with the character and concern of Jesus, I think this is very much a biblically justifiable fight for missional people to be engaged in – the fight for biblical faithfulness and fulfilling of the command to make disciples.
Ed goes on to say,
I am not willing to say that a lack of converts is a sign of unfaithfulness. But, I am willing to say that too many change movements are not seeing lost people’s lives changed.
Fair enough, but this reality is far more poignant and dire when we consider the lack of disciple-making happening in long standing traditions that aren’t thinking about change at all!
Stetzer rounds out his post by saying,
So, let’s continue conversations about being “missional” or whatever, but let’s not do so if it distracts us from the mission. Instead let’s talk about these issues but not let them distract us from our main focus–showing and sharing the love of Jesus to a desperately lost world that needs a message of hope.
To this I say a quick and hearty AMEN! But I am also quick to resist Ed’s false dichotomy by pointing out that having “conversations about ‘missional’ or whatever,” aimed at the faithful practice and witness of the church is VITAL to the manner in which we show and share the love of Jesus. Not having these conversations, or having them poorly, is far more dangerous than seeing them as a distraction.
Between the promise I believe missional theology and ecclesiology hold for the trajectory of Western Christianity and how incredibly misunderstood both remain, I submit that we need WAY more conversations, not less.
Transitioning Traditional Churches into Missional Ones
A little over a week ago, my cousin-in-law Josh, asked how one might go about transitioning traditional churches into “something more missional at its core.” Since I have banged my head against this wall for years in several different churches, my response will be a mixture of, “here’s where I failed,” and “here’s what I think is most helpful.” For anyone who might have missed them, my posts on, “The Move: The Journey from Attractional to Missional,” and “What is Missional?” would be really helpful in understanding where I am coming from.
I should say a few things at the beginning to help frame my thoughts.
1) This is a wine skins issue (Mt. 9:17). Anyone considering this topic who thinks (whether they realize it or not) that this is basically about getting new wine into old wine skins is destined for frustration and failure – I speak from experience! Missional churches represent brand new wine skins, not just new wine.
2) This takes a long time. The most experienced people will tell you 8-10 years minimum. When we are talking about changing the core identity of, not just a person, but a community, we have to expect a long hard road. An apt analogy – God got Israel out of Egypt in pretty short order, but it took another 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel.
3) No one person is capable of maneuvering this transition. Solo pastors are dead in the water in this regard. And this isn’t to say that the better way is having a team of top-down leaders – this will end up being damaging as well. One of the keys to instilling missional DNA in a church community is inspiring and encouraging new imagination from the bottom.
Those things being said, what does it take? What might the process look like?
My short answer is,
A Spirit-guided intermingling of communal practices, teaching, and prayerful reflection.
Here’s my slightly-longer expansion on those three things.
I take for granted that fundamental to the distinctions of “traditional” and “missional” is a vision of what it means to be the church in Post-Christendom vs. Christendom. My personal opinion (others may disagree) is that there is no point in talking about what it means to be a missional church until Christendom has been rejected as a cultural value. Thus, transitioning traditional churches to missional ones is a non-linear process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Communal practices, teaching, and reflection are the tools which assist in this ongoing task. It would be a (classically modern) mistake to think of this as a mainly intellectual enterprise. Instead, in the integration of these things, deconstruction and reconstruction happen alongside one another.
Since there is no universal model to apply to this topic, we are better served by asking general questions that need to be answered in specific contexts. Here are some questions which I think would serve us well in maneuvering this sort of transition.
– In both small numbers as well as large, what are the practices we can engage in as a community that will shape us into people and “a people” who think and act like Jesus?
– As we try to be honest with ourselves, what things are we doing as a community that don’t seem to be contributing to our spiritual formation?
– How do we incorporate space in our times together (in homes, in meetings, in gatherings) to intentionally reflect on and respond to what we sense God is speaking and doing in our community?
– Who are those in our community who seem most gifted to teach (identified by the fruit of their teaching helping people become more like Jesus)? How can we encourage these people to engage with authors and speakers who are dealing with the subject of missional ecclesiology on our behalf?
– How do we make incremental yet strategic changes in the percentage of money that goes to those things which ensure our security as opposed to those things which necessitate faith in the midst of great risk?
Over and above questions like these, I would also suggest these sort of biblical principles for those who shoulder the responsibility for a transition like this:
– Find people of peace who can be trusted and are willing to commit to the journey. Ask for their help.
– Demonstrate servant leadership by being open, transparent, and broken.
– Commit to structures of biblical conflict resolution. Entrust to God’s care those who choose to leave (there will be many and this is not necessarily a sign of poor leadership).
OK, there’s some initial thoughts. I’m sure I’ll have more so I hope to continue the discussion by way of comments.
Hi There…
Hey, I'm JR - welcome to the blog.
I'm just an average guy trying to shape his identity around God's dream for the world and his place in it. This blog is a place for me (and you!) to reflect on and discuss all that might mean. Looking for a bit more on me? Check out the about me. Peace.
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