God’s Missionary People: Rethinking the Purpose of the Local Church

by Charles Van Engen | Available Here

Charles Van Engen’s God’s Missionary People helped launch today’s missional discussion, and still has much to tell our local church. Before coming to Fuller, Van Engen was a missionary and theological teacher in Mexico. He has taught at other seminaries and served as president of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America. He continues his work in Mexico through his organization Latin American Christian Ministries. At Fuller, he teaches various classes in the school of Intercultural Studies and provides mentoring from Doctoral students.

The thesis of the book is captured in this introduction:

“Local Congregations the world over will gain new life and vitality only as they understand the missiological purpose for which they alone exist, the unique culture, people and needs of their context, and the missionary action through which they alone will discover their own nature as God’s people in the world” (20).

Summary

Part 1-Local Churches: God’s Missionary People

The book begins with Van Engen’s explanation for the need for the Church to revisit its ecclesiology in the light of missiology. He bases this on the historical self-understanding of the church (drawing from both the Apostle’s Creed and the marks of the Church), as well as developments in globalism and ecumenicism. His argument is that the church should restate its self-understanding in terms of being a missionary people.

Part 2 Local Churches: A New Vision of God’s Missionary People

In seeking to identify the purpose of the church, Van Engen focuses on four tasks: “koinonia,” “kerygma,” “diakonia,” and “martyria.” The result of such a group of people is the Covenant Community of the King.

Part 3 Local Churches: Becoming God’s Missionary People

The final section of the book deals with the practical side of structuring a missional Church. It wrestles with the understanding of laity and leadership. It also deals with the practical aspects of managing an organization.

Reactions

This is a book that I wish I had come across years ago. One idea I found invaluable was placing the missional church in historical perspective. By dealing with the historical self-understanding of the church, as well as the tasks early church, the idea of being missional is taken out of its current trendiness and placed well within scripture and tradition.

Some of the most valuable takeaways for me were the four tasks of the church from Part 2. What would it look like if my church and my life, were judged by these four tasks?

• Koinonia is probably what we do best. We love to eat together and play together. But we still have a ways to go when it comes to simply doing life together.
• Kerygma is something that my church is learning. We could benefit from a deep study of the question “what does it look like to make Jesus “Lord”?
• Diakonia has always been a strength of our community. We have many who are social workers and counselors. But maintaining and growing it to non-professionals will take some concentrated effort to maintain.
• Martyria is another growth area. For some of us, the idea of clearly articulating our faith, and maybe even suffer for doing so, is something that may feel too “churchy.”

As much as I like this book, my only complaint is that it may already be dated. I would love to see Van Engen update this book, and reflect on how the developments in the missional movements have embraced his ideas, and how he might have missed the mark.

The post God’s Missionary People: A Book Review appeared first on Chris Morton.

Part One: The Context and Challenge of Missional Leadership

Part One opens with an overview of the issues at hand and a description of how Missional Leadership compares to pastoral leadership. They argue that God is not finished with the church, it his means of reaching the world. They explain the different phases of transition that a church will go through as it navigates from the models that served it well in the past to a missional model. The authors also describe what makes a missional congregation different, and why leading it is a unique task.

Part Two: The Missional Leader

Part Two focuses on descriptions of what makes a good leader including features like maturity and self-awareness. It also discusses how to create a coalition that will help build momentum in a missional direction. This requires creating a culture where the leadership listens to the church and the church listens to the surrounding community.

Quotes

“Missional leadership is about creating and environment within which the people of God in a particular location may thrive.”

“Today, in discussion about the nature of church leadership, there is little theological wrestling with the questions of how to form or socialize a people into an alternative community. On the contrary, there is growing emphasis on how to help seekers feel they belong in a congregation without any expectations or demands on their lives.”

“A missional church is a community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.”

“We have forgotten that God’s future often emerges in the most inauspicious places. If we let our imagination be informed by this realization, it will be obvious that we need to lead in ways that are different from those of a CEO, an entrepreneur, a super leader with a wonderful plan for the congregation’s life. Instead, we need leaders with the capacity to cultivate an environment that releases the missional imagination of the people of God.”

“We are in a period that makes it impossible to have much clarity about the future and how it is going to be shaped. Therefore those leaders who believe they can address the kind of change we are facing by simply defining a future that people want, and then setting plans to achieve it, are not innovating a missional congregation. They are only finding new ways of preventing a congregation from facing the discontinuous change it confronts.”

Two Takeaways

One great takeaway is the “Three Zone Model of Missional Leadership.” It is a great tool for helping leaders of established churches comprehend the changes that must be made for a church to envision and carry out any new endeavor (not just “missional” ones.) Reading this, I began to see where various churches I have been a part of fit on the spectrum. It also helped me understand the difficulties many church leaders I interact with are having. Most importantly, it gave me a vision of what pitfalls to watch out for as my church matures.

Another valuable takeaway from the book is the interplay between the personality and the strengths of the leader and the nature of the congregation. The book seems clearly written to the average dwindling mainline church, whose leadership has been chosen for their ability to maintain the status quo. This is why the author’s discussion of “imagination” is valuable. It seems there are two ways to move forward: either start over with new leadership and a new endeavor or cultivate imagination. They rightly point the leaders toward remembering what God wants to do in the world, and who their neighbor is.

This to me is the most important lesson from the book: Missional Leadership must be relentlessly focused on the context of their congregation and personally entrenched in lives of those they are hoping to reach.

A church or a leader will never be missional if they haven’t met those to whom they are sent.

The post The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World – A Review appeared first on Chris Morton.

In the immortal words of Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, I’m tired of sex.

For those of us trying to live as missionaries in the post-Christendom West, it’s easy to feel like we’re constantly cleaning up other people’s messes.

All countries, in particular the U.S., have a tradition of “Civil Religion” that wants to talk about what it means to “be a good Christian.”

Politicians manipulate well-meaning religious people to talk about what they want to talk about.

The media focuses on flash points, diverting the conversation to what they want to talk about.

Publishers produce new books and micro-celebrities to take advantage of every trend that comes and goes.

The results tend to focus on topics related to violence, moral failures and often seem to lead back to sex.

At the same time, there is a growing number of people who are committed to reimagining the church for the unique time and place that is the 21st century. This group believes that the gospel has not changed, but the role of the Church must constantly shift for its particular time and place. This group is deconstructing what came before and prayerfully seeking ways to make disciples that work today.

Unfortunately, the monumental mission of this group often gets thrown off course by other conversations.

Boots on the Ground is a growing cohort of in-the-field missionaries dealing with the real life challenges of being the church right now. On Tuesday, May 13, we’ll host our second Synchroblog. All are welcome to participate by writing a blog post to answer the question:

As a missionary, what should we be talking about?

This could be anything. What social issues are being ignored? What are the practical realities of discipleship, finances or even event planning you deal with? What is the most exciting thing happening in the church that never gets press?

Where have we seen God move? Where are we desperately waiting for his help?

To participate, simply publish a post on this topic and share it in the Facebook group on Tuesday, May 13. Please RSVP here or by leaving a comment below.

Please check out the previous synchroblog The Day it Felt Like Church.

The post Bloggers Needed: What should we REALLY be talking about? appeared first on Chris Morton.

Here’s a quick recap:

My own contribution:

Two friends had been sitting on the street drinking. They got into an argument. One friend stabbed the other in the heart. The wounded man died on the spot.

A few nights later, dozens of street kids lined up holding candles, walked in a single file line, and through their tears occasionally shouted the punk rock cry “oi! oi!” Our team stood there along in silent observance. We had no right to join the procession, but our faith gave us the responsibility to observe it.

One kid, a pot-smoking, philosophizing skateboarder with a warm bed in the suburbs rolled up next to me and said. “This is really f*%ked up man. What do you believe in a world where sh*t like this happens?”

With a lifetime of churchy language restrictions suddenly seeming useless I looked away and agreed “Yeah man. Pretty f#%ked up.”

Mennonerd Tyler Tully

Together, we shared an “aha” moment at the end of the day as we discussed all that had previously transpired. Community is messy. When people get together, especially in the midst of poverty, things often heat up. Even in the midst of a Kingdom community, tensions flare; so instead of pretending like conflict doesn’t happen and instead of looking the other way (which we so easily do), we all came to embrace our roles as prophetic peace-makers in action. Ours is not a passive Kingdom.

Life on the Vine’s Ty Grigg
Angela stood up to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper. At this point in our liturgy we usually watch an “icon,” that is, a short video or projected artwork that reveals something about the way the world is and the ways God reveals his glory in our world. This Sunday, we would not watch a video or see a piece of art; we would see Angela and listen to her lament.

The Abnormal Anabaptist Robert Anthony Martin
There was the family that came one time to pick up their laundry and we could not find it. This happened on occasion if the tags came off the bag or the laundry was collected outside of our little system and, therefore, not tagged. This was devastating for this family because, as I mentioned above, this was all they had left in the world. I spent an hour sorting through the unclaimed, untagged bags, looking for a bag with a black dress with white polka dots. When I found it, they wept. They wept over found clothing. And I found myself weeping, too.

Austin’s own Sarah Dinka
I think church for me has become a “place” defined more by my experience than the external factors. I think we enjoy the external factors: the coffee, the food, the music, the conversation. But I think church happens when we are able to care for one another–whatever that looks like.

The Always Heartfelt Kevin Bell
Back in the mid 1970s I ran across a group of Christ followers who took living in community to a higher level by choosing to live together in one large house. They themselves were devoted to learning the deeper things of God, to being close disciples of Christ and living in His kingdom. They ate meals together, played together, and worshiped together. The named their home Dileram House which in the Farsi language means peaceful heart.

Church Planter of the Antioch Movement Daniel M. Rose
The day it felt like church? For a while now the best answer to that question is: “Today”. Being the Church is simply living in relationship with and under the authority of Jesus with others who are seeking to do the same.

The post Synchroblog Recap appeared first on Chris Morton.

The night it felt like Church to me happened in the Summer of 2002. I was a sophomore in college and I had given my summer to working with Dry Bones: Denver, a newly launched ministry to the homeless youth that congregate to panhandle and roughhouse on Denver’s 16th Street Mall.

My reasons for being there weren’t completely altruistic, evangelistic or justice driven. That was a part of it, but the main reason I wanted to be there was because it seemed pretty cool.

My eagerness to participate in the new and strange ministry makes a little more sense if you know about the mishmash of sectarian Christianity and left-of-center politics that had formed me.

I grew up in Denver (i.e., where marijuana would eventually be legalized), a blue dot in a red state. My family was intellectual in a PBS sort of way. Our politics were more influenced by labor unions and the Civil Rights movement than anything happening up the road at Focus on the Family. However, I was also brought up in a conservative church tradition that had spread out of the Bible Belt and taken it’s southern manners with it.

In 2001, this led me to a little Christian Liberal Arts University in a dry county, 50 miles from the nearest landmark in Arkansas. Needless to say, my punk rock liberty spikes haircut were not warmly greeted.

In the land of big hair and big church buildings, I found myself wondering how any of what I was surrounded  by was connected to Jesus. When I was home visiting my folks in Denver. I met up with a guy whose goatee turned into a 10 inch long beard. He told me about swapping stories for cigarettes with teenagers who slept on the streets. He told me that he thought “the brethren” should have something to say to those kids. Immediately, I knew I wanted to be one of those “brethren.”

That summer I, along with about a dozen other interns and volunteers, spent 4-6 hours a day sitting around with the gutterpunks. The beard defined our approach this way:

“Never offer a homeless person a sandwich. Sit down and ask them to share half of your sandwich.”

Over that summer, I got to know a 14 year old who had pulled her overdosed mom out of a full bathtub and called 911. She had decided it was safer to live on the streets. One day, I watched a guy brand an anarchy symbol into his arm using a paper clip and a lighter.

One night, I was witness to a funeral procession.

Two friends had been sitting on the street drinking. They got into an argument. One friend stabbed the other in the heart. The wounded man died on the spot.

A few nights later, dozens of street kids lined up holding candles, walked in a single file line, and through their tears occasionally shouted the punk rock cry “oi! oi!” Our team stood there along in silent observance. We had no right to join the procession, but our faith gave us the responsibility to observe it.

One kid, a pot-smoking, philosophizing skateboarder with a warm bed in the suburbs rolled up next to me and said. “This is really f*%ked up man. What do you believe in a world where sh*t like this happens?”

With a lifetime of churchy language restrictions suddenly seeming useless I looked away and agreed “Yeah man. Pretty f#%ked up.”

That night felt more like church than anything else I had ever experienced.

That summer on the streets, and that night in particular was a clarion moment that created my paradigm for what “feels” like “Church.” It’s important to note that I say “feels like,” because it was only a beginning.

Dry Bones wrecked me for an average church experience and I’ve been trying to rediscover what I learned that summer ever since. It provided a framework of three incarnational concepts that has defined “church” for me ever since.

1. Share your sandwich.

The beard’s lesson to “share your sandwich” is provides a definitive difference between Church and charity. There were lots of places that the gutterpunks could find food. There were not a lot of places where they could be greeted as friends and listened to without an agenda.

By sharing your sandwich you are immediately elevating someone to equal status, and wanting nothing in return. What has surprised me since (although it should not have) is the extent to which this should be applied across races and classes.

Everyone wants to feel accepted and included. Sharing your sandwich allows you to do that without an agenda.

2. Presence is everything.

Perhaps the key to the Christian faith isn’t Easter, it’s Christmas. Jesus-followers are those who believe that the eternal unknowable divine logos became a flesh and blood baby who lived in certain time and place.

Presence was the key to everything our ministry did. We spent more time together as a team and with those we were hoping to reach than any ministry I’ve seen before or since. The staff there has now been doing it now for over a decade.

Eventually, some kids decide they want help getting off the streets. Many eventually came to faith in Jesus. Change only came after being present for a very long time.

Perhaps the reason it felt like Church wasn’t because we were doing things right. Perhaps it was just because we were there. Because we were there, we were a witness that these invisible people had stories, hopes, pains, dreams and worth. Because we had been their witnesses, we had the right to share with them our own witness to the saving power of Jesus Christ.

3. Good things hurt, too.

Deep experiences with the poor leave marks on anyone who participates in them. Many leave with a broader vision of what God is doing in the world. Other leave with a new found ability to see those in need all around them.

Some leave confused, because there aren’t very many expressions of Church that can have room for what they experienced in the world. When I returned to my little Bible Belt college and tried to share my experience, many were confused and some were even offended.

Part of the reason I wanted to spend the summer with the homeless because I had something to prove. I wanted to prove to those who controlled my narrow little world that there was more to the gospel than their outdated codes of conduct.

That summer killed punk rock for me. I hoped to prove some point to the gatekeepers and institutions that would make me accept them and my spiky hair. By the time it was over I was loosing interest in those institutions, because I couldn’t imagine them ever making space for people I had met.

That summer also sent me on a mission to find something that “felt like Church.” I’m convinced that the words of Jesus were meant to be taken seriously. My daydreams are about a group of people that get together and try to do what he said.

Doing that doesn’t mean we’ll sit outside all day with the homeless, although I hope that some days we will. It does mean we’ll share sandwiches, experience presence and work through good and bad pain.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll be able to inspire punk-rockers and institutional gatekeepers along the way.

You can donate to the incomparable good stuff going on at Dry Bones here.

Other Synchroblog Posts include:

• Tyler Tully—The Day that Felt Like Church
• Ty Grigg—It Starts With Us Lamenting
• Robert Anthony Martin—Laundry
• Sarah Dinka—(re)defining: church
• Kevin Bell—House of the Peaceful Heart
• Daniel M. Rose—The Day it Felt Like Church

The post Synchroblog: The Day it Felt Like Church appeared first on Chris Morton.