The Relational Mission

Yesterday, I wrote about the need to save our groups from BAD community. After working on this idea last night, I realized that we don't need saving from bad community. Most of us know that we don't want bad community. We need saving from mediocre community. We need to develop ways to break out of settling for mediocrity. Here are a few ideas that might help break the the cycle: • Fast and pray. Don't do this alone. Get with a few other members and seek God's face for the group. • Each group member take a week to think about what they want from the group and then come back and talk about the desires of the heart that each one has. • Find a service project to do together. • Talk about a friend in need that the group can begin to pray for and serve. • When talking about the Bible in the group, get to life application as quickly as possible. Move out beyond the head and allow the Bible to touch your heart. On a similar note: refuse to assume that a new Bible study wi...

I just started writing some new curriculum that will have this title. It seems to me that many small groups in the American church are caught in the trap of living off community as an appetizer. I had a friend in graduate school who would go to Sam's Club and Costco at 4:00 p.m. so that he could graze off the samples as he walked around the food section. That was his "dinner." While this a cheap way to get food, it does not exactly make for an enjoyable dinning experience. It's just a utilitarian way to fill one's tummy. Community as an appetizer works much the same way. We know how to start groups. We know how to get people connected and how to find good curriculum. And as a result people feel like they are getting community. However, just as my friend felt he was getting full on free finger foods, we feel like we are getting our fill of community. Yes we spend time together each week. Yes we talk and even talk about spiritual things. And yes, the group might...

This is the second installment of my weekly Missional Reflections where I quote a theologian and then reflect on how that might challenge our common understanding of being missional. This quote from Stanley Hauwerwas. "To emphasize the idea of character is to recognize that our actions are also acts of self-determination; in them we not only reaffirm what we have been but also determine what we will be in the future. By our actions we not only shape a particular situation, we also form ourselves to meet future situations in a particular way. Thus the concept of character implies that moral goodness is primarily a prediction of persons and not acts, and that this goodness of persons is not automatic but must be acquired and cultivated."(Hauerwas, Vision and Virtue, 49.) There is such a thing as missional character. This idea challenges us to go beyond questions of what can we do to be better at doing missional acts. It calls us to think about missional community as somethi...

Last week, I was in a conversation about implementing some new ideas in a church. A leader stated, "Well, let's just do it and figure it out along the way." And while on the job training is always going to happen, I realized in that moment just how much we do this in the church. I want to return to the baseball theme that I have been using as an analogy over the last couple of months. The equivalent in baseball would be the coaches and players showing up on opening day and not doing any preparation beforehand. No coaches meetings. Now Spring Training. The assumption is what really matters is what happens each night during the game. I'd like to suggest that most of the success on the field of baseball has more to do with what happens behind the scenes than what happens during the games. I'm not just talking about practicing either. I'm talking about the coaches' meetings, the front office meetings, and the position player meetings. I'm referring to ...

I read the draft of this book about four years ago. I found myself making another paradigm shift as I read it. As I followed Alan's personal struggle with what it means to be missional, I realized that I had missed what "missional" actually means. I had thought, along with most, that missional is about a new way of being the church. Afterall, the church is our "mother" and God's bride. At that point, I was working with Alan to get this book published. As I pitched the idea of this book to the editor, he said that it sounds like it is "putting mission into missional." This is exactly what it does. It challenges our church-centric focus and invites us to join God in his mission to redeem all of creation. Of course the church has a role in what God is doing in the world, but God's dream is much bigger than just having missional churches. He wants to empower his church for the sake of engaging the world on mission. To do this, Roxburgh invites ...

If you want to tap into the power of missional praying, how do you do it? At first it can feel intimidating because some assume that they need to have a very well developed sense of communion with God before they can show others what it means to walk with God. But that is a misnomer. We only need a genuine, honest relationship with God. People need to see us struggling to relate to God, which will be the reality for the rest of our lives. People don't need to see some form of dishonest perfectionism. They need to see saints who know how to walk with God through the ups and downs of relating to him. That being said, here are a few ways to make prayer missional: 1. Seek God's presence in your group meetings. Bible studies are good. Working through video curriculum can be helpful. But if you are settling for a focus on these things and missing out on God's living presence in the midst of a group, then you are settling for less than the best. (I will have a post soon on how ...

The way we pray can have a huge impact upon how we are missional. I'm not just referring to a group having a list of "pre-Christians" that they pray for during their meetings. Missional prayer actually lets those in our neighborhoods see inside how we relate to God. Instead of seeing prayer as something we do within the Christian enclave, it demonstrates a relationship with God to others who need to see who God really is. But this requires two things: 1. We must cultivate a genuine relationship with God so that we can reveal it. Missional prayer results from an overflow of communion with God. Such prayer creates space for the kingdom in our lives and in our world. 2. We must cultivate friendships with people in our neighborhoods so that they can see into our lives and view our communion with God. We don't do this with the intent of "winning" them to something. We do this because we are a people of love and we want to share life with them. This is the ...

This is the 1st installment of my weekly Missional Reflections where I quote a theologian and then reflect on how that might challenge our common understanding of being missional. The first is a quote from one of my favorite theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. "Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. In the end all his disciples abandoned him. On the cross he was all alone, surrounded by criminals and the jeering crowds. He had come for the express purpose of bringing peace to the enemies of God. So Christians, too, belong not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the midst of enemies. There they find their mission, there work. ... "According to God's will, the Christian church is a scattered people, scattered like seed 'to all the kingdoms of the earth (Deut. 28:25). That is the curse and the promise. God's people must live in distant lands among unbelievers, but they will be the seed of the kingdom of God in all the world." (Bonhoeffer, Life...

Last Friday night I took my five-year-old to his t-ball game. The first 30 minutes is set aside for practice. While a light rain fell, my son traipsed through the wet grass and tried in vain to climb the soccer goal frame. Then he came back to the car. I told him that he needed to go through the ball with his team. He said to me "It's just practice. I don't need to practice. I'm already good." His comments remind me of how we often live our faith. We tend to emphasize action, radical choices and public declaration. In other words, we prioritize our faith when it's measurable. But no sport works that way. Games are won or lost on the practice field long before the games begin. But this is the way it is with anything worth doing. I've heard stories about how Jim Carrey would practice his facial contortions and unusual noises for hours in front of a mirror. Monet painted over more paintings than we will ever know. Doctors call their daily work "pract...