The Relational Mission

When new ideas come along in the church, we get attracted to their novelty and even their benefits and start exploring what it means to adopt those ideas. But new ideas never pan out like we expect. As we move toward something like the idea of being a “missional church” we buy into it but we face stress along the way. One stress point has been the feedback that the “missional” conversation downplays and even de-emphasizes evangelism. It's common to measure the value of church's vision and strategy by how many baptisms are recorded. And because that way of talking is not an focus of the missional conversation, many jump to the conclusion that those involved with “missional” are really more concerned about social justice issues than people’s eternal salvation. In times of stress or times when we don’t know how to respond, the natural tendency is to revert back to what we know. In this case, the old paradigmatic battle of whether a church emphasizes personal salvation or socia...

I'm reading Scot McKnight's latest The King Jesus Gospel . I love this book already and I'm only a 25% through it. Because I think that what Scot is saying is so crucial for the Evangelical Church if it is going to advance down the missional road, I'm going to blog as I am reading it, rather than waiting till I complete it. Thus far the strength of Scot's argument is to give us some new language to understand ourselves as evangelicals. Don't worry, he is not attacking the need for having a salvation/conversion experience, he is instead challenging the idea that the Gospel=Salvation. Since the word "evangelical" has its roots in the Greek word for "gospel", we can easily assume that we practice church in an gospel-centered way. Instead he invites us to consider that we are really a "salvation culture" instead of a "gospel culture." Because of our myopic focus on the salvation/conversion experience, we have stripped the ...

Today I stayed sick and missed worship with my church. I tuned into a couple of religious programs hoping at least to hear God's word, but I was rather dusappointed. Even though there were many scriptures quoted, I was saddened by the fact that all of the seemed to be geared toward finding success, God's will for my life or unlocking some kind of secret to being all I can be (for God of course). I must admit that I did not last very long and watched a recording of Psych and then fell asleep. I so longed to hear about the good news of God coming, of his inbreaking of time and how he expressed love, true love, that the world so needs. Instead I got a warmed-over version of the American gospel: if you do x then good things will happen to you. I've heard enough about what I need to do. What about what God has done? What about what God is doing? What about what God will do in the future?

I sent the manuscript for Missional Small Groups back to the editor today. It feels good to have it out of my hands. But I have a problem. Within the hour I started working on my next book. It was like an inner compulsion was propelling me to start writing. Actually I have already written about 25% of it written. It will be a book on Luke 14-15 that demonstrates how the parables of these two chapters reveal the missional nature of Jesus. I am discovering that my story of Jesus and the fact that the evangelical point of view of Jesus is not one that is missional in nature. Actually it is a story that reveals an unreal Jesus that we have to try to become like. It is a Jesus who asks us to travel to him, a distant Jesus who came to appease a distant angry Father. The evangelical Jesus of my history is one who stands on the stage, tells about Jesus dying on the cross because we are such idiots and God has to do something to reveal his glory and power. Of course this Jesus tells this with...

A friend of mine is engaged to be married and is planning a reception at which there will have a pig roast. Her father, a Caucasian Christian, is taking a a class on the Hebrew Torah and he sent her a long list of passages which forbid the eating of pork. Her question was why is he so enamored with the Torah. This conversation revealed yet another way that we gravitate to other eras and cultures as a way to romanticize our way out of dealing with the reality of the here and now. We look for some kind of secret pattern or mystical genius to life that will unlock the blessing of God. The focus on the Torah is but one example. Others include the way we tend to idealize the first century church. So many are seeking to return to the early church as if their experience was some kind of panacea. But as one of my New Testament professors once said, "It seems to me that the New Testament churches failed to live up to any great expectations just about as much as our churches today." ...

I was talking yesterday with a man who has let an extensive research project on the nature of churches in SE Asia that are seeing spontaneous conversion growth. I asked him "How do you define the nature of conversion?" He responded, "That is an important question in the Western church but when Muslim person gets baptized there choice is a crossing of a line that is clear and obvious to all." The implication: it is impossible to do "mental ascent" Christianity in these contexts. This raises all kinds of questions about the nature of conversion in the West. We know what it means theologically but because of the nature of cultural Christianity, there is no real line to cross except for the cases where the culture looks down on certain lifestyles ie immorality, drug abuse, etc. In most cases those who are converted repent to the extent that they become moral citizens of the broader culture. Is this all there is?