This is going well! I'm very interested in the responses you all are posting. I very much appreciate your honesty and insights, and I hope you are all reading what the other students are posting. I was hoping we would be able to learn from each other, and that appears to be beginning to happen.
I have two ideas for blog posts for this week, and you're free to write about other things as well. Here's the first idea: someone gave me a link to a website: http://www.missionalnetworkweb.com/
I don't have time to look around that website this week. If some of you would like to look it over and see if there's anything helpful on it, feel free to do that. Give us the exact links to any articles you think are good and tell us why you think they're good.
Here's the second idea. Last week I was telling someone about this missional church paper, and I said, "I know what a missional church looks like, because I've been in one, but I don't know how to help a church become more missional." The person I was speaking to said, "You have to begin with people's view of God. It all depends on that." Based on the readings for next Monday, feel free to respond to the idea that the place to start is with people's view of God. Do you agree? Disagree? What about our view of God influences our understanding of being missional? How would you go about changing congregation members' (or small group members') view of God? What aspects of their view of God would you want to change?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Graeme Flett writes:
Following a question that asks “What is the church?” Lynne raises a secondary question – “how does your proposed definition help us connect with missional church issues?” This is where the rubber meets the road. If the church is to be understood in terms of ‘relationship’ (held together by the Spirit in sharing Christ’s life together in communion with the father), the focus shifts. Old questions are asked with fresh vitality. What does it mean to be Christian? What does it mean to become Christian? Rather than attending a church, because that’s what Christians do, the language shifts to one of participation. We start asking each other, with a high degree of ownership and personal interest, how do I personally participate in the life of God? How do we share in this life together? The kingdom of God means what? These are philosophical questions but discussed around a dinner table (with good coffee) the language is connective and collaborative. The focus is not motivated by a consumerist mindset of how the church can serve but how can we serve because we are the church.
I wonder whether missional church issues like maintenance vs mission, inertia, indifference, apathy subside when people find the freedom to re-imagine faith and tell their stories as being church. I really like what Roxburgh says in this regard. “The key to innovating missional community is formation of a people within a specific memory and narrative. This begins by engaging the lived stories of people and bringing those stories into dialogue with the biblical narrative.” (p71)
Roxburgh, A. & Romanuk, F., The Missional Leader (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).
Dellwyn Moylan writes:
Following on from Stuart’s and Susan’s comments regarding the Presbyterian Church and maintance and mission. I disagree with Stuart re the church maintaining the status quo. At the last General Assembly the church committed to a new nation wide mission initiative called “Press Go’ this is not maintaining the status quo but trying to be missional. In my area the church certainly is involved in the things that you list as being done by others now. The church runs the two local food banks, members volunteer as budget advisors, a local medical professional and a social service agency refers clients needing counselling to one of the local ministers on many occasions. Just recently the church began working with Presbyterian Support to run a foot clinic. If the churches are not directly involved they often provides resources such as finances, people power remembering that most in the parish in this area are older and buildings for use by other groups I see all this as mission. Many in the churches not collectively as the church but as individually are actively involved in community groups which is part of their mission as people of faith. Sue says that a significant number of volunteers are people of faith and I would agree. It’s how they live out their faith. As part of research I did for another paper last year I was amazed just how many organisations the members of my church serve through and the hours they give as their mission. Some churches today may struggle to undertake as much mission as perhaps they once did or would like to and this is often due to the age of members and the resources available. The current moderator of our Presbytery is big on mission, he is always talking about mission, and it’s his them for the term of being moderator. We need to be careful that we do mission out of our response to our faith and not to meet our own needs or make ourselves feel better.
In response to Graeme Flett blog (March 6), yes I also wonder whether we default to understand church as what it does than what it is. This perhaps also feeds into Lynn’s question as to whether the way people understand God influences the way they understand church. In my experience people are more comfortable and confident when they are asked to do something, especially when it comes to faith. I suggested to someone this week that the church community needed to consider how it might change in order for new life to emerge. The response I received was “You do the change you like, just tell us and we’ll get used to it.” I explained it was important for the community to self reflect, to consider its self understanding, how it identified itself as church, then it could decide upon and implement change for in this way they engaged in the process and owned any change. “But I don’t know how to do that, I wouldn’t know where to begin,” was the nonplussed reply. It struck me there was not only a lack of confidence or maybe permission for the community to have such authority to know but also a lack of knowledge about what being church meant.
My usual response would be to rush in and give a lot of information, and this may be useful as the process proceeds. But was ‘not knowing’ a bad thing? I’m not sure we are comfortable dwelling long in that place of ‘not knowing,’ the apparent inactivity moves us to want to do something. But this mystery found in the very nature of the triune God that reveals and demands of us quite a radical, as Graeme writes, “relational and communitarian” response cannot be captured by our knowing, but can perhaps be encountered in the place of our ‘not knowing.’ Perhaps out of such encounter may grow some understanding of what we are to do, or maybe God do through us, of how we are missional, of how we humanly participate, as Susan Blaikie writes, “in God’s purpose in creation and history.” It is a dated text now but perhaps Hans Kung’s words about church suggest a missional impulse to church identity, “God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ is the origin of the Church ...these origins determine what is permanently true and constantly valid in the Church, despite all historical forms and changes and all individual contingencies. Loyalty to its original nature is something the church must preserve through all the changing history of that world for the sake of which the church exists. But it can only do that through change, not through immobility; it must commit itself to each new day afresh, accept the changes and transformations of history and human life, and constantly be willing to reform, to renew, to rethink.”
Hans Kung, The Church (London: Search Press, 1971), 14.
Kingsley Ponniah writes:
Blog Post 2
I found Wright’s contention, in our course book reading, that Jesus’ role had both messianic and missional thrusts quite thought provoking. He points out that in his conversation with the 2 disciples on that Emmaus road (Lk 24: 45 - 47) Jesus reveals that his role had both these dimensions. And I wonder whether the church adequately recognizes this inseparable link between the messianic and missional in the life and ministry of Jesus. One does not exist without the other. This poses a challenge for the church – as beneficiaries of Christ’s messianic work we are called to share in his mission. Often we respond to Christ’s finished work on the cross and all the benefits that come with it, without recognizing that response is incomplete without our commitment to be involved in Christ’s mission in our world. So, while I would agree with the statement made to Lynne that our understanding of God will have an impact on our understanding of the church’s mission, I would like to add, based on what Wright contends, that the church’s Christology will also have a significant impact on its understanding of mission. In light of this, is it enough for the church to be calling people to come to faith in Jesus Christ? Should we instead be calling them to become partners with him in his mission, which would require, first of all, a personal response of faith in him? Jesus call to his first disciples was not primarily a call to faith in him. It was a call to be involved in his mission. Any response to that call would require faith in Jesus and what he was about. Hence, faith in Jesus is not the goal of discipleship. Rather it is the door that leads to what discipleship is really about – involvement in the mission of Jesus.
Grahame Walker writes:
I wonder if how we view mission affects our understanding of God rather than the other way around. Is mission an invitation or a command from God? Some of the readings use the language of invitation or partnership. Here Mission is God’s initiative and the key purpose of the bible. We are simply participants in this great purpose made possible through Jesus under the power and direction of the Holy Spirit. This conjures up a softer, more collegial image of God as we join together with him in his work. The language of command is more military. This conjures up an image of God as the order giver and commander. When this is the language used in the church, often guilt and indifference is the result.
I’m interested in Kingsley’s question: is it enough to be calling people to faith in Jesus Christ?
My immediate reaction is to reply in the negative. It’s never been enough to believe in Christ in some kind of cerebral way. As a young person growing up in an unchurched home, I believed in God and in what I knew of Jesus Christ. I was also very aware that I was not a Christian. I would become one in the future when I had done what I wanted with my life. When I was ready to settle down and live how God wanted me to, I would become a Christian. (God had other ideas about that :-)
Since then I have heard far too many “Jesus is my boyfriend” gospel messages. They seem to be about Jesus adding something to one’s life, rather than a radical call to discipleship. (Lest you meet me one day; I’ll own up. My own discipleship is fairly bland at times!) Nevertheless, surely being a disciple is about entering into God’s mission. Wright defines mission as: “… our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation.” (p 79) That sounds like discipleship to me.
I am aware of a danger in answering Kingsley’s question in the negative though. We could say that one’s eternal salvation depends on us entering into God’s mission/being disciples. And doesn’t it? After all, we live how we really believe, not how we say we believe. If we suggest a 2 step process: belief then partners in mission, does this make us Pelagianists? Perhaps this is another area of theology altogether?
On a separate matter; I’ve be re-reading Steve Taylor’s “Out of Bounds Church”.
I like the way he writes without using lots of long theological words. I love his image of us being DJs in relation to culture. P 36 He describes how we retain and assimilate fragments then remix them in our brains to use them as we choose. In my view this is a positive view of Postmodernism and culture. As Christians we are free to use the things that are helpful, Biblical, Christ-like and to discard the rest. This pre-supposes a deliberate choice, of course, rather than a subtle infiltration that we are not aware of.
Following on what Dellwyn wrote I found it encouraging reading about a church that is involved in these activities. Furthermore I have been encouraged by the PCANZ ‘Press Go’ initiative. Nevertheless I believe that there are major differences in some areas of New Zealand between urban churches and rural churches, where the rural church might still be more central to a community.
What I also found interesting was again the idea of what mission is. Is mission now an activity that one does to help people? I ask this question in light of the dichotomy I have seen between overseas mission agencies and aid agencies: for many there is no difference between the two. Therefore when we help these people in whatever way, do we let them know why we are helping them? How do any of these activities see people come to faith? I have found in South Auckland enough mental health programs, budget advice expertise and counselors to go around, so much so that if we did in fact start another one of these we would be recreating the wheel. But I do think we need to ‘make disciples’, which Wright (p 35) clearly states, is Jesus’ primary command to his disciples and the church. Anderson in ‘It’s About Mission’ on p 187 also exemplifies this command. Of course this must be through both word and action, but have we over compensated with action and activities?
Tim Pettengell writes:
I am not sure whether it is the cynic in me, the modernist or the realist, but it is my perception, when people speak either of church as maintenance or church as missional, they both seek the same desired outcome – the continuance and furtherance of the church. But how is this word church being understood and used? I suspect that church in this sense means a faith and socio-political-economic institution that embodies our personal convictions, beliefs and values that are affirmed and expressed by the community that such embodiment forms. Yes/no?
If maintenance and missional church seek the same desired outcome, then it begs the question – “Are we really naming and responding to the quintessential issue?” I suspect not! If one adopts the position that the decline in church numbers and the corresponding increase in the interest and expression of spirituality within society; is due to the majority of people no longer finding church – as a faith and socio-political-economic institution no longer believable or credible as opposed to a secularity model – as supported by the studies of Webster et al. Then people are sending the church a clear message. Credibility is about praxis, while believability is about theology. So while missional church seeks to address the praxis question, it is not – as I perceive it, willing to engage with the theological question. Thus, may be, the real issue is that our theology is all wrong! For example, how can we claim and proclaim an understanding of Jesus that is at odds with his historicity?
However, in saying this, I am aware of a paradox and tension. While on the one hand the church is no longer credible or believable, on the other hand, people still want the church because: a) this is the church they have been institutionalised into – cf. Riddell – reading 2; b) they need the church to fulfil a civic (such as state funerals) role as well as be available to perform the rites of passage (birth, marriage and death); c) to speak out and to represent those who are unable or reluctant to do so (social justice) and finally d) there will always be a minority who will find meaning and purpose in a creedal faith. It is this paradox and tension, that Roxburgh (reading 16) seeks to explore and address through – “Liminality: a model for engagement.”
So, may be the words of Albert Schweitzer are not only truly prophetic, but the reality we need to grasp:
[Jesus] comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side; He came to those [people] who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
To Susan Blaikie (and others?) – my short answer is this (fuller response next week) – from Patrick of Ireland it comes from his devotional poem the Breastplate:
I sought my God, my God I did not find;
I sought my Christ; the Christ I did not find;
I sought the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit I did not find;
I sought my neighbour and I found all three!
I appreciated Susan’s post on Friday, perhaps “entering into God’s mission” (a recurrent theme in many of the readings) is better framed as getting into an alternative story, already gathering momentum, and a little bit wild. A story that is never quite tied down at any one point, a story that might have more in common with Edward Lorenz’s chaos theory than systematic Newtonian physics. One thing I really like about the Christian scriptures is the bizarre ways people get into the story. Some heavyweights are there, Abraham, Joseph, Moses but then there’s some oddballs, some naturally excluded people; Naaman the Aramean (Syrian), Ruth the Moabite, some widow and her dead son from Zarephath, crazy dessert nomads whose honourable life is applauded.. tax-collectors(imperial sympathizers) , terrorists, and the just plain mad, all of whom end up in the story, and what’s more all end up participating in changing what happens next (a very postmodern idea). For me some of this discussion is too polemic, I kind of like the mist that’s here in the missional discussion as well...
Commenting on the definition of the "Mission of God" first by Kitchens in reading 3:"...rooted in God's mission to restore and heal creation" and then by Wright in reading 4:"...in God's own mission within the history of God's world for the redemption of God's creation", there is a sense in which our understanding of God's mission influences the way we carry out that mission. There is much evidence in history of the decline of churches where their aim or goal or "mission" became little more than social work as carried out by many secular organisations and agencies, and no trace of the real task of bringing people to Christ.
For me, God's mission is to bring us back to himself. That is the goal. If anything else becomes the goal such as restoration, healing, redemption, then He becomes a means to those ends. He can never be a means other than to Himself. If anything else is the goal, then He automatically becomes a means to that end or goal and once that end or goal is realised, He becomes obsolete. If we define God's mission as "To bring us back to Himself" then will it not fundamentally change the way we carry out this mission?
Jan Clark writes:
When Kitchens describes the three aspects of vocation (p71) he suggests that. ‘The church is called to be the apostle to the world, bearing a distinctly Christian culture and worldview into an alien culture.” The underlying principle must be that you understand Christian culture, have had the opportunity for mentoring as you grow as a disciple of Christ. I think one of the most powerful tools for enabling change is a process that allows reflection on your own experience alongside the Christian tradition (in its fullest sense - prayer, scripture, worship, spiritual disciplines etc), that recognizes the culture in which we live and deliberately looks at dialogue between all these sources and then articulates implications for missional service. Kitchen describes the struggle of the Davis congregation as they worked to understand how to respond to the needs of the community at the doorstep, a messy process where action and reflection fitted together alongside respectful listening.
In as much as we say, “the beginning of mission is not an action of ours, but the presence of a new reality, the presence of the Spirit of God in power.” (Newbigin pg 119), I also want to affirm that the only thing that is going to change a church or group into a missional community is God. We can create all the opportunities to learn and grow and reflect but in the end mission begins “with an explosion of joy” in the heart of the believer. This is God’s work!
Keynote speaker at a diocesan conference here this weekend was Bishop Philip Richardson, who has Episcopal responsibility for the Taranaki region. Over the last ten years he has been developing a ‘Bishop’s Commission for the Future’. A report has been produced in response to a simple Gospel vision that says, I am utterly, unreservedly and unconditionally loved, and so are you and so is every other human being. The consequence of this proclamation is that each and every human being has the right to a full and happy human life. Following the Executive Summary of which these two sentences are part the report summarises needs and responses for engaging in the mission the church is invited into. The report itself was based on more than two years of consultation and research and implementation is expected to gradually build over the next ten years. Building this missional focus began with listening to God and the community and returning with a rough draft that the community could critique before a final document was agreed on. The culture is changing, the partnerships for mission are emerging because the journey has been based on prayer, clear communication of our call as followers of Christ, research and listening – the result is commitment by church and diocese to respond to need. Seems to be a practical example of how you create a missional church.
Ruth Johnston writes:
Change (a)– there are many types of change possible. Perhaps each church community needs to find out what type is the first one required for them – and then implement it – or try to! The often expressed fear is not of change in and of itself but of what might be lost through it. In the last two years we have made some minimal changes to a small room – it now has some tables (round) comfortable chairs, coffee maker and people there each morning.- and there is an invitation board outside welcoming anybody/everybody to come in. It took 2yrs to get vision into some reality – people were scared of who might arrive. However, instead of people coming in (we haven’t got there yet) our congregation members find it a great place to pop in – with the result that they are getting to know each other, our two congregations now mix together between the services and there is a growing unity of purpose and togetherness! Necessary in a missional church.
(b) a more difficult change, at my place, will be to make disciples of many of the people! That is if discipleship means not just being a believer but also a learner and one who grows in loving, honouring and trusting God. There seems to be an inbuilt resistance to reading, learning to understand and applying scripture. Does anyone else find this?
(c)Picking up from Lynne and all the people of faith who volunteer because of their faith – as individual churches do we commission people and pray for them week by week as we do for those who are overseas? Do we help our workers to see work-places as mission fields – commission and pray for them? This could heighten awareness of mission being life or life being mission.
(d) finally, a change in focus – how many of us have been in buzz groups, brain-storm sessions, planning groups talking about what needs there are in society and which we can meet? Perhaps we need to be in praying groups to find out where God needs us and is waiting for us – I suspect we would be surprised and that it would all be a lot easier.
I was struck by the partnership dimension in the four readings assigned this week. I particularly enjoyed Newbigin who emphasizes the ontology of a missional church in the incorporation of the dying and risen Jesus and the sharing of his mission (p117). This view of God, which is incorporating and participative, shapes our missio ekklesia to the missio dei.
Thus I would challenge Kingsley Ponniah’s comment that Jesus’ first call to his disciples was ‘not primarily a call to him’, for mission starts with incorporation (this is also echoed by Anderson’s emphasis on the spirit in his reading). In a commentary by Morna Hooker on Jesus’ first call to repent in the gospel of Mark (Mark 1:15), she writes ‘…Jesus is the one with whom God is well pleased, the Son who is obedient to God’s will, who has given the Spirit of God and who has done battle with Satan: in a sense, then, Jesus is the very embodiment of the Kingdom…his words are an indirect testimony to himself.’1 Thus to repent and believe in the good news (ie Jesus) is a missional act. To follow Christ, to participate in the ekklesia and breaking bread together is the ‘visible centre’ (Newbigin, p 120) of mission.
This incorporation also needs to be one of freedom and freeing which returns us again to Jesus’ first call to repent and believe in the gospel. While I agree with Tim Pettengell wholeheartedly that we encounter Christ in the mouth of friend and stranger alike as so beautifully expressed in the hymn to St Patrick, this does not strip us of metanoia. God does not pour out His saving grace that would deny us of our autonomy and freedom (I appreciate Augustine would disagree with me here). Thus the call to faith and mission is one of invitation and grace that allows us to refuse or accept ie, it upholds the divine image we are created in, even if saying ‘no’ to this image is ultimately choosing our unfreedom. In this respect the church can be described as a body of metanoia, freely incorporated in God, disclosing ‘the true meaning of the human story’ (Newbigin, 125).
There was a dimension of mission which I found challenging in the readings; God enlisting our participation in his ‘no’ to the world; the expression of our opposition to and engagement with the world. In the reading from Wright he expresses how ‘conflict with idolatry’ is often a neglected dimension of missiology (Wright, p 27). I would be very interested to hear how other students respond to this dimension of mission.
1 Morna Hooker ‘The Gospel According to Saint Mark’ London: A&C Black Ltd, 1991, p57.
Thinking about the audioconference conversation about the church I confess I struggled mightily as we went through various definitions that attempted to encapsulate the church in a sentence or less. I think that part of my struggle is that in the end the church is formed out of a web or maze of relationships that are drawn together, encouraged, grown, developed over a long period of time. That development has a common core of beliefs that are founded on Jesus Christ, and a common set of actions that have grown out of two thousand years (or much more if we take Wright to heart) of developing symbols that speak of who we are and what we believe. Attempting to capture all of that in a handful of words can never do justice to who or what the church really is. Yes it is about faith, about a message, about relationship, about sacraments and doxology, but somehow it is so much more as well. I understand that we must have definitions to allow ongoing conversation, but I think we need to hold the definitions lightly.
Misson is synonym to 'calling' from God as an indevidual or as a community. In the triune Model of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, their missions are communicated (not vobally but in nature) and there was a 'calling' among them. Without 'calling', church easily became 'purveyer of religious goods and services' as Anderson said p78 as people get to choose for their preference. The mission begins with the Holy Sprit, and He draw his people into the field where He works, as John 16:12-15 the Holy Spirit will give them power and bear witness. We can interpret 'give them power' to 'receive power to do what He wants us to do'. For the question arisen by Lynne Baab; 'You have to begin with people's view of God' I want to change to 'You have to begin with the calling from the Holy Spirit'.
Post a Comment