Sitting at the coffee shop picnic table next to me is a strange new breed that has come to inhabit much of Austin: the “liberal with money.” While the pair in their mid-50s sip on overpriced lattes and stare at iPads, they discuss the economic failures of everyone from Obama to the countries Greece to Zambia.
A few nights back, a friend organized a potluck and art show for our friend who is currently in the middle of a war zone on the other side of the world. He spends his days helping an NGO that hopes to teach a small city methods to cut down the mortality of newborns and their mothers. He does it because it is the physical manifestation of the good news of the Kingdom he wants his new neighbors to know about.
To be honest, I’m more like my neighbors at the picnic table than my friend on the other side of the world. I was raised watching PBS news every night. I remember getting upset in fourth grade because no one else in my class was interested in discussing the latest developments in Palestine. Like my coffee shop friends, I have always prided myself on having an informed opinion. But there is a big difference us opinionated caffeine addicts and my friend on the other side of the world:
He lives there.
The word “apostle” simply means someone who is sent. When we spoke with my friend over Skype he shared about what he probably considers mundane. Office work at an NGO, navigating the culturally mandated gender roles, and riding his bicycle in a warzone. Yet as he shared what was normal for him, we were all overcome with a sense of admiration and protectiveness. We want him to be safe and to succeed. We want it because we love him, but also because we sent him, and he has taken on the responsibility for our mission.
Church planter Don Coleman put it this way: We talk about doing something so much we fool ourselves into thinking we’ve actually done it. The cure to this is, as always, found in the story of Christ. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”
This is one of the great dangers of the missional movement. We are reading all of these books and going to these conferences that celebrate the missional/incarnational impulse. We may go as far as reading a few books and learning some statistics about our neighborhood. But how many of us really are living like my friend: embedded in a world which is not our own, to the point that what seems strange or dangerous to outsiders has become mundane for us. Even if we physically move somewhere, we find ways to keep to ourselves. We read authors we agree with, listen to music and talk radio created by the remnants of Christendom, and seldom attempt to develop relationships with people who are far from Christ.
There is a simple cure for this Missional Misstep.
Move into the neighborhood.
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