Mission as an organising principle… I was listening to Michael Frost talk about this in the last couple of days. He was saying he has a fear of mission becoming a style thing, of it being domesticated when it should be dangerous and costly and totally reorientating. His is a vision of mission as a never-ending, surging fighting movement. It’s interesting… Jesus says to some rabbis who are critical of his eating with social outcasts, “Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy not sacrifice”. What would happen if we allowed mission to become the focus of our churches instead of worship ?
When mission is the organising principal discipleship is key. The goal is one of maturing to the point of knowing what to do to personally grow and doing it. Disciples are even deliberately pursuing accountable relationships with people further along in the journey.
This is the vision of a church who breaks out of its building and seeps into the cracks and crevices of it’s surrounding community. It is always listening, sometimes participating in the conversations of the community, even starting some of those conversations. In mostly quiet, unassuming ways, whenever it encounters pain and violence and oppression, it offers solidarity and hope and healing.
It is the vision of a church whose edges are permeable, where sensitivity & awareness reaches out from its very middle, to the ends of the earth.
It is the vision of a church that is deliberately creating spaces for people and experiences beyond itself, allowing them to get close. This affects disciples in costly ways – including the use of their time and financial resources, even relationships. It is a church that engages in ministry enterprises and experiments that are provisional, home grown and have every possibility of failure.
What would happen if we allowed mission to become the focus of our churches instead of worship ?
I happened upon your site and thought I would leave a thought. I like your thoughts about a church that is engaged in the community in order to bring much needed love and peace. But….we must never forget that disciples are sent and thus must be sent from somewhere. A church that is first and foremost mission oriented is a church of works. Works are both wonderful and needed in the world but they must be God working through us rather than us doing what make us feel good. We must therefore first be a church that is connected and grounded in God. He is the One that defines justice. He is the One that defines love. If we are not first a church of worship, steeped in God’s presnce in our lives and making our mission His mission, then our works are just what we say they are and justice and love and reaching out to the marginalized and all the great things you suggest are simply our personal agendas subject to the ever changing whims of the current society. We should be a church of worship so that we can then be a church of mission. Without the first we a just a social service organization.
I agree with the first comment with out a grounding in the truth and a constant search for a better understanding of him, exactly what are we presenting to the community that they don’t have?
Thank you for voicing this! Much of the Christian world does not understand that Christ did not preach and inward, self serving gospel (which would not be good news), but a gospel of service, transformation, and light. Read Mathew 5-7 which culminates with 7:24 in “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man.”
Are we listening? He never praises the Pharisees for their excellent grasp of the Law and prophets, or their memorization of the entire Old Testiment. He says “you strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”
He who has ears to hear, let him hear!