The Relational Mission

Jesus replied, "My Father is still working, and I am working too." John 5:17 God is already at work. He has been working while I have slept. While I rest, God loves. God loves and works in love in order to restore all of creation. God is moving in love to offer love. Today begins with the love of God which has been at work and continues to work.  It does not begin with me. God's mission flows out of God's being. God does love because God is love. God's actions align with God's being. God's being is love. God's actions are love. And this love looks like Jesus hanging on the cross. God works in the world with cruciform love. God's mission in the world does not begin with me or with the church. How could anything like cruciform love begin with me? I would never opt for that. I would never have enough wisdom or creativity to love people like that. God's mission of cruciform love begins, continues and ends with the love and work of God. To fa...

Long before "missional" became a popular theme, Lesslie Newbigin wrote the following in 1963, identifying the "missional" nature of God's people: "The Western world has had to be recognized once again as a mission field, and the churches have been compelled in a new way to define their nature and mission as parts of a divine society distinct from the wider society of nations in which they live, and all these factors have contributed to the developments in the field of theology in the direction of a missionary understanding of the nature of the Church itself. The truth that the Church is itself something sent into the world, the continuation of Christ's mission from the Father, something which is not so much an institution as an expedition sent to the ends of the earth in Christ's name, has been grasped with new vividness" ( Trinitarian Doctrine for Today's Mission , 12) I have something like six shelves of books that in some way r...

God is a missional God. The Spirit of God is moving across creation to restore all things. There is nothing beyond the reach of God's redeeming touch. God calls his people to join him in his mission. Some churches (and small groups) step into the flowing river of God's mission. Others don't. In this post I want to identify one of the most significant things that keeps God's people from joining God in his difference-making venture. I call it "Attacking Easy Targets." Ultimately we are complaining ourselves out of mission as we place blame and pick fights. Like a bully at a playground who picks on those who cannot fight back, there has been much ink used and tons of rhetoric spoken by church leaders attacking these easy targets. These easy targets fall into the category of things about which we are concerned but over which we have little to no influence. Target #1: The Culture The first set of opinions can be grouped under the label “There’s a problem wit...

He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. ” —Luke 10:18-20 These are the words of Jesus after the 72 returned and reported about the mission on which Jesus had sent them.  They were rejoicing in their ministry success. They were celebrating the results of their efforts. It seems to me that we spend a lot of time in the modern church rejoicing over the outcomes of our ministry, especially when we are successful like the 72 disciples were. Do we turn ministry results into an idol? Consider the history of Christian "movements" over the last century: Missionary movement—focusing on reaching the nations and rejoicing in our efforts when we do. Charismatic movement—focusing on the experience of God's presence and rejoicin...

Word and action. Promises and promises kept. Proclamation and fulfillment. If you want to understand who God is you must view how God both states and acts. He makes promises and he comes through on what he has promised. Many toxic images of God result from the fact that we don’t hold these two in collaborative tension. If we lean toward a God who speaks but his actions are not expected, then we create an image of a god who has a lot to say to us but for the most part it’s up to us to get it right. His talk, our action. Sadly, I see this happening in the "missional" movement today. We think that since God told us to go and "make disciples" then we must go. We act as if God has said all he is going to say and we don't trust that God is actually going ahead of us and with us. But Jesus's final words to the Great Commission are "Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age." (CEB) If we have an image of ...

Yesterday, our second son lost his tooth. He was acting like a dog biting a towel and his brother pulled it out. Immediately they both yelled that his tooth came out. I guess it's the little stuff like this that matters most. When I decided I would give my life to some form of pastoral leadership, I envisioned all the great stuff I would due to impact the world. All the sermons, the miracles, the conversions, and of course the big church to go along. But today God was in the midst of a lost tooth. And the reality is that on most days I find that God is actually moving in the little, the insignificant, the easily missed. In the simple conversation with a child I find the wonder of life and the mystery of God. But these little "whisper" moments are easily overlooked. Since God is big and the problems of the world are enormous, we tend to assume that the things that God wants to do are grand in nature. After all, it is big programs and creative ministries t...

Last week, I got my preview copy of Difference Makers, which comes out in June. It was kinda fun to read it just to read it, without any thought of ways that I could make it better. I found myself encountering what I wrote as if for the first time. (What does that say about my memory?) With this book, I aim to offer an alternative way of making a difference. Most of the time, when we think of difference making, we think of doing something, taking on a cause, standing up for justice, or taking radical action. While I don't have an issue with taking action or the specific actions taken, I've found that when we focus on the actions themselves we fall short of being difference makers. There is a huge difference between doing stuff that makes a difference and being a difference maker. The being will include the doing, but when we focus on the doing part the being may or may not follow. In Difference Makers , there is an emphasis on both being and doing. This means that we ca...

How do you communicate to the average person in the church what it means to be on mission with God without using the word "missional"? I've found that most of what has been written about being missional aims at the church leader. Most of the people  worshipping in our churches want to make a difference in this world, but they don't want to learn all the theological language of being "missional." So in my writing over the last couple of years, I've sought to talk about being missional in a way that relates to everyday people. The results will hit the shelves next month in the form of Difference Makers . My aim was to write about a theme in a way that relates to the average person, the kind of person who goes to work everyday — as an accountant, a teacher, a factory worker — and does not have the time or the energy to read thick books about what it means to be a "missional" Christian. The approach taken here is multifaceted. The chapters ...

When I was writing my book Difference Makers , my oldest son (age 9) asked me about the title. When I told him, he responded, "Is this like The Avengers "? This got me thinking. Difference Makers are God's heroes who are putting the world to right. After I explained this to him, his face lit up. Maybe I became a little "cooler" in his eyes. But there is one huge difference. The Avengers have an end goal in mind, that is goodness, justice and wholeness. God's Difference Makers have a similar goal. They are sent by God to participate in God's redemption of all things. But the means by which The Avengers try to get to that end involves a lot of violence. The means and the ends do not line up. They want justice and peace, but their process of attaining it involves meeting the enemy on their terms. The meet violence with violence. God's difference-making heroes are on a journey of learning how to align the means with the end. In other words, the way w...

Church buildings dot the landscape in Western countries. Many are old and represent an bygone era. Some are very new and look more like modern shopping malls or office buildings. Most fall somewhere in between. These edifices are an unquestioned part of Western culture. The church has become so unquestioned that we rarely think about the role or the purpose the church plays from God’s perspective. For most, it is assumed that the church provides spiritual services for the sake of people who feel that they need such things. Sadly, the idea that the church is a provider of spiritual goods and services is not limited to those outside church life. Many faithful church members perceive the church as being a spiritual association that is primarily designed to provide a certain set of spiritual services. And if those services are not met according to their liking, there are plenty of church options who may meet their needs better. As a result the church is often viewed as a spiritual vend...

In June, my new book Difference Makers is released. This is a book that aims at the person in the pew who is asking the question of how his or her life can make a difference. While I was writing this book for individuals, an ongoing subtext was how we as difference-making individuals participate in the people of God, the church, which is called to be a difference-making society. The question for us is How then do we make a difference? The church is much more than just a group of individuals who make a difference on their own. We need to have an imagination that sees the church as a soceity. In Stanley Hauerwas' commentary on Matthew he writes about the church in his introductory reflections on the Sermon on the Mount. He called the people of God a "society." I like this word because it pulls back the curtains on what the church is called to be, something much more than an institution that provides religious meetings once per week. It helps us to see how Jesus was and...