Missional Movement?

There hasn't been a lot on this blog recently, but every so often something turns up that it seems important to take note of.  This latest post from Mike Breen is one such item.  He's discussing the effect of Western individualism on the missional framework. He begins this way:

Since we began experimenting with discipleship, Missional Communities, and the like in England in the 1990s, we have been partners and friends in what you might call the missional movement. It has been fantastic to see all that God has done through what we believe is a work of his Spirit in remobilizing the church for mission.

.....However, I think if we’re honest, it’s not producing the kind of church we see in the book of Acts. At worst it stirs up guilt that we’re “not doing enough,” and at best it produces people who have a vague conviction that they should be “missional” at work, at school, in the neighborhood, etc, but who don’t really know how to do it in a non-weird way, so we either end up saying something awkward or we say nothing at all.

This isn't a long blog post, but it's well worth visiting.

Missional God

Last year Ross Hastings published the book, Missional God, Missional Church, Hope for re-evangelising the West.

Kevin Ward, from the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, in Dunedin, has written a very good review of the book, one that makes you want to go out and buy it straightaway- especially if you've got any interest in mission. The review appears as a guest post on Jason Goroncy's blog. 

Ross Hastings may not be a name that's familiar to you: here's the biography that appears on the Regent College website:

Ross Hastings holds a PhD in organo-metallic chemistry from Queen’s University, Kingston and a PhD in theology from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, his native country. He has a vested interest in helping the Christian church understand contemporary science and in helping the scientific community benefit from theological and philosophical scholarship. Dr. Hastings teaches in the areas of pastoral theology, the theology and spirituality of mission, ethics, and the interface between science and Trinitarian theology. He has taught chemistry at high schools in England and South Africa, and also at Trinity Western University. He has served as a senior pastor in Kingston, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; and Burnaby, British Columbia (BC). For eleven years, Dr. Hastings served in this capacity at Peace Portal Alliance Church in White Rock, BC. His theological dissertation is a comparative study of the Trinitarian theology of Jonathan Edwards and Karl Barth and is in the publication process. His first book, Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for Re-evangelizing the West, was released in 2012 with IVP Academic. Dr. Hastings serves as Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Regent College.

Missional/Discipleship

 I keep saying I won't be posting anything more here but there was an article by Mike Breen (with the provocative title: Why the missional movement will fail) that someone alerted me to this morning which I think is essential reading, and certainly very much related to the kind of material that has appeared frequently on this blog.  Here's how the article starts....

It’s time we start being brutally honest about the missional movement that has emerged in the last 10-15 years: Chances are better than not it’s going to fail.

That may seem cynical, but I’m being realistic. There is a reason so many movements in the Western church have failed in the past century: They are a car without an engine. A missional church or a missional community or a missional small group is the new car that everyone is talking about right now, but no matter how beautiful or shiny the vehicle, without an engine, it won’t go anywhere.

So what is the engine of the church? Discipleship. I’ve said it many times: If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.

More here. 

Update on the 30 days

Back on the 2nd May we mentioned that Alan Roxburgh's Missional Network was running a 30 days of joinging God in your neighbourhood series.

I've just checked back and there are now 20 days listed (obviously a little behind, even given that they're a day and half behind us in time zones), with some fascinating and useful material.

There are several items by Simon Carey Holt, along with a variety of ideas of ways to engage with your neighbourhood, such as going out with the local police at night and hearing what they know about the area, or offering tutoring to immigrants close by, or becoming a regular in a particular coffee bar or other meeting place, and getting to know who else is there frequently.

Some of the ideas may not appeal, some may take up more time than you have available. Nevertheless this is a worthwhile series which is bound to have at least one thing in it that's of value to those looking for ways to become more neighbourhood-focused.

Counter-cultural

In case you thought that retirement had settled upon me in such a way as to make me a bit like Rip Van Winkle, asleep while the world passes by, let me assure that I've actually been busy enough this week to keep me going most of the time. Okay, occasional rests have been the order of the day, and walks with the dog, but in general I'm still keeping an eye on what's going on.

Hence, links to a couple of blog posts. The ubiquitous David Fitch wrote one, and is featured in the other. Don't let that put you off; to me he speaks some pretty good sense, if we're prepared to listen.

The first is Fitch's own, a post on the kind of leadership needed for the postmodern world. It looks pretty much like the servant leadership Jesus espoused - so that's a good thing (!)

The second comes from another old favourite on this blog, Len Hjalmarson. In this one he quotes Fitch a good deal as he draws up a list of ways to 'instill missional habits.'

This post is as countercultural (at least counter church-cultural) as the first. Both worth chewing over while you're having your morning cuppa.

Small group stages

Scott Boren, author of Missional Small Groups writes about four different types/stages of small groups.

1. personal improvement
2. lifestyle adjustment
both of these stages can apply to any small group, not just church-oriented ones.
3. relational re-vision
4. missional re-creation.

As you can see, it can take some time for a small group to get to a missional mindset: many small groups never make it, in fact, and remain in either stage 1 or 2.

You can see a detailed summary of Scott's four stages either here or here.

Conversion! - maybe

Late last year I blogged briefly about a book called Launching Missional Communities by Mike Breen and Alex Absalom.

Dave Fitch has just read it and claims 'conversion' to the attractional model of church, after having spent a number of years arguing for the missional approach as the best option.

His lengthy post, however, appears to arguing for something rather different to what most of us would have considered 'attractional' meant. My understanding of 'attractional' is a church where people basically expect non-believers to come to the central place/building - how the church members go about getting them to the church in the first place varies enormously, of course.

Fitch says Breen and Absolom are talking about something different: an occasional (say six weekly or even three-monthly) service for the believers which may or may not 'attract' any outsiders, and which is like a kind of major celebration for all those involved in the church (which in Breen and Absolom's case consists of lots of small sub-groups - missional groups, in other words).

So, as one or more of the commenters on Fitch's post say, he's been 'converted' to something rather different to the normally accepted version of 'attractional'. In fact, it may be that he hasn't been converted at all. LOL

Read the post and see what you think. And what does his post add to the argument about missional vs attractional - what does Breen and Absolom's approach add to it?

Going Missional

As a leader in the Gospel and our Culture Network, George Hunsberger set forth four trajectories of self-awareness for the missional church:

1. “We own our cultural-ness, our own culture.” We join with our secular neighbors in living
within the particularities of the American culture.
2. “We have the habit of continuous conversion.”
3. “We are a living demonstration of the gospel.” More than rational proof, secularized
people want to see whether it is possible to live by the mandates of Christian discipleship.
4. “We structure our lives around being a sent community instead of a vendor of services.”
For many churches, this involves a fundamental shift in identity, pastoral leadership habits,
community formation, and orientation to the church’s mission.

This comes from an essay entitled Preaching in the Missional Church by Ervin R. Stutzman of the Eastern Mennonite Seminary. The essay is around 17 pages of pdf file, and full of interesting insights into the concept of 'going missional'.

Missional vs Attractional?

Mike Breen is a writer I came across earlier in the year, and I've just been alerted to a blog post he wrote recently in which he discusses the (mostly positive) reactions of J R Rozko to the book Breen wrote with Alex Absalom [in discussing this review he writes: His review of Alex and I’s book - one of those awful things that slip into blogs because of the speed with which most of them are written - I hope!]

The book is Launching Missional Communities, and in it Breen and Absalom discuss whether attractional and missional need to be at odds with each other. Breen comments in the blog:
There is something inherently attractive about a group of people coming together to worship their Father and King once they’ve been actively engaged in the mission field. In other words, the gathered church, coming in from being scattered, is unbelievably attractive. Why? Because it is the power of the reconciled community.

One of the big discussions in the circles I inhabit seems to have been that attractional is on the way out and missional is definitely in. Breen and Absalom seem to indicate that the two aren't necessarily incompatible. Check out the rest of what he has to say here, and read an excerpt from the book itself here.

The Missional Channel

Nope, this isn't an addition to Sky; sorry to raise your hopes.

Instead it's a site on Vimeo, where there are about ten videos from mission-focused speakers, including some whom we've often named in this blog for various reasons: David Fitch, Alan Hirsch, Ed Stetzer, Graham Cray (the Fresh Expressions man), Andrew Jones, Alan Roxburgh.

The videos vary considerably in length, the longest being around half an hour and the shortest just under two minutes (the length shows up down the bottom left of the screen before you start running the video). The titles aren't terribly helpful ('Missional Conversation', 'an interview with..', 'cultivate gathering' and so on) so it's a matter of opening up one of the videos and seeing what it has to say.

Recommended for those short patches when you just need to stop and listen for a while....

A mission question

What is God saying? How will I respond? These two questions - or one combined question, depending on your point of view - are the basis of a reasonably long post by David Fitch. It isn't a post that answers the questions as such, but it's a post that gives the reader a chance to reflect on whether these two questions are the most important mission questions we can ask....or not.

Fitch begins by looking at the way in which all churches come to a somewhat stagnating point - and even those who come to faith during that time and join the church don't quite come alive, but drift off.

Fitch says we need to keep asking ourselves what our purpose is - or rather, perhaps, what our purpose is within God's purpose. And he's not looking at this from an individual approach, but from a community (church community, that is) approach.

This is a thought-provoking article that deserves careful reading.

So, what is missional again?

It's a bit of a day for catching up, having been on holiday and rarely posting over January. Here's a section of a post from the Reclaiming the Mission site
in which our old friend David Fitch talks about the way we worry too much about whether a thing is a fad or a movement, whether something will last or fall away and much more. Here's part of what he has to say on:

The Missional Church: Much has been written about the problem with the word “missional” (see here for instance) It’s meaning has become diluted. It is being misused as a new market niche in church. A whole synchroblog was created to answer the question “What is Missional? Some fret about the word losing its meaning. Oh Ok – probably right. Nonetheless, I personally gravitate towards the Missional movement. I find it rich in theology and history. The word means a lot to me. I admit I get agitated when I have to explain myself a lot more when I use the word, nonetheless I still find it all compelling. I think the best tack is to take what I’ve learned among Bosch, Newbigen, Guder, Hirsch, Frost, Roxburgh and many others: work within the church that God has placed me, be as discerning and thoughtful as I can with the resources God has given, and let the fruit speak for itself. For me, there is already much much fruit...

A synchroblog, by the way, is a number of bloggers all writing about the same topic within a short space of time - I think!

Introducing the Missional Church

Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (Allelon Missional Series), by Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren.

This book won’t be out till November 2009. In the meantime, here’s some information about it:

Many pastors and church leaders have heard the term "missional" but have only a vague idea of what it means, let alone why it might be important to them. But what does it actually mean? What does a missional church look like and how does it function? Two leading voices in the missional movement here provide an accessible introduction, showing readers how the movement developed, why it's important, and how churches can become more missional.

Introducing the Missional Church demonstrates that ours is a post-Christian culture, making it necessary for church leaders to think like missionaries right here at home. Focusing on a process that allows a church to discern its unique way of being missional, it guides readers on a journey that will lead them to implement a new set of missional practices in their churches. The authors demonstrate that living missionally is about discerning and joining God's work in the world in order to be a witness to God's kingdom on earth.

To be published by Baker Books.

Incidentally, we're on the lookout for a word to replace: Post-Christian, or even Post-Modern. What do you think the word for the coming period could be?

Arguments against planting a church

David Fitch says you don't go out these days to plant a church by providing a host of 'goods and services' in the way in which a church in the 'modern' era did. (I'm not sure that he's entirely right here: I suspect church plantings have always had to start small and grow the 'goods and services' in due course.)

He lists three things that people tend to say when they're arguing against being involved in a church plant.

1. My life (and my family's life) would be consumed if I went and planted a church with some other people. Notice the assumption that building a church is a 24/7 job: no rest, little sleep, no time for the family, no reading (for fun), no recreation and so on.

2. I will be leaving behind relationships and starting all over again.

3. There will be a leadership rift - people will get mad, break up things, leave us hanging out to dry.

Fitch has sensible and realistic arguments for each of these. Planting a church is a slow growth process, one where you live - along with other people you already know - in a community. It takes time to grow a church, just as it takes time to grow roses. No church starts up ready-made in a new community; or if it tries to, it's likely to fail quickly.

The relationships won't be left behind because you will be taking people with you who are already your friends, and the leadership (he recommends a leadership of three) will be mutually accountable to each other.

But read it in detail here (and read the comments and his responses too)...he puts it much better than my summary does.

Mike Frost on mission

A quote from Michael Frost:
It is not any longer possible…that we sit in some command center telling other people how to go forth. I’m speaking in particular to those of you who are clergy. You cannot preach about, encourage or motivate or mobilize people into mission unless you model what missional proximity looks like. You cannot sit in some ivory tower spending days and days preparing sermons which are seeking to motivate people into mission unless you yourself are prepared to embrace that similar commitment to proximity. Do you follow what I’m saying? I’m not just talking about proximity like “our building is on the street corner on the main street with a gigantic sign and everyone knows that we are there.” I’m talking about personal, relational, and geographic proximity to people.

Unfortunately Rick Meigs, the write of the Blind Beggar blog from which this quote comes, doesn't give us a source. (You might like to pray for Rick: he was travelling on his motorcycle on June 13th, and was hit by a truck crossing the line, and is in critical condition.)

Play and Theology

I was alerted to this quote by Robert Jenson on the Inhabitatio Dei blog, which is run by Halden Doerge. Jenson is coming to Dunedin as the University of Otago’s Burns Lecturer, and will lead a half-day seminar at the Knox Centre on the subject of the Eucharistic Church being a Missional Church on the 13th March, 2009.

Play is meaningful action that does not need to seek its meaning in some achievement exterior to itself. It is what we do because we do not have to. It is action to which the future opens as gift rather than as burden. The life of the Trinity is sheer play. As play with the Trinity, liturgy is anticipation of life in the Fulfillment–the closest we get to freedom. It must be admitted that liturgy-as-play is a rather rare occurrence in America’s recognized churches.

Robert W. Jenson, Story and Promise: A Brief Theology of the Gospel about Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973) pg 184.

Integral Mission

René Padilla writes on the Integral Mission blog and asks What is Integral Mission Anyway?
He begins by saying:
Although it has recently become fashionable to use the term integral mission, the approach to mission that it expresses is not new. The practice of integral mission goes back to Jesus himself and to the first century Christian church. Furthermore, a growing number of churches are putting this style of mission into practice without necessarily using this expression to refer to what they are doing: integral mission is not part of their vocabulary. It is clear that the practice of integral mission is much more important than the use of this new expression to refer to it.
He goes on to compare the traditional view of mission, with its four dichotomies, and then discusses integral mission:
When the church is committed to integral mission and to communicating the gospel through everything it is, does, and says, it understands that its goal is not to become large numerically, nor to be rich materially, nor powerful politically. Its purpose is to incarnate the values of the Kingdom of God and to witness to the love and the justice revealed in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit, for the transformation of human life in all its dimensions, both on the individual level and on the community level.

Missional Shift or Drift

Leadership Journal conducted a survey in May 2008 asking nearly 700 evangelical pastors how their perceptions of the gospel and mission currently compare with their understanding a decade ago. The results were illuminating, and have been summarised in a report by Helen Lee. What follows here is a brief look at some of the highlights.

Compared to ten years ago, they found

• Pastors are focusing more on the Gospels than on the Epistles.
• More pastors believe the gospel is advanced by demonstration and not simply proclamation.
• More pastors say the goal of evangelism is to grow "the" church rather than to grow "my" church.
• More pastors believe partnering with other local churches is essential to accomplishing their mission.
  

Scot McKnight says, "The shifts have actually been going on for maybe 25 or 30 years. There has, though, been a surge in the last ten years. Evangelicals rediscovered the Gospels, and began to reframe their understanding of the gospel in terms of the Kingdom and not just justification."

Five changes are gaining momentum in congregations all across the country:

* Affirming the whole gospel
* Not looking to a megachurch model
* Focusing on making disciples
* Encouraging a missional mindset as a means of spiritual formation
* Establishing partnerships to advance the gospel

Smaller more adaptable churches are being seen as more viable than mega-churches. David Platt said, "We've learned that we don't have to bring people into a building to accomplish our mission." And Dave Gibbons says, "The pastor is now a subcategory of the church. I am now thinking about how to gear everything so that the laity is leading. It's all about how to make our congregation feel as though they are the leaders of the church as opposed to the pastoral staff."

Larry Grays, pastor of Midtown Bridge Church in Atlanta, whose congregants are mostly urban professionals between 20 and 40 years old, has learned that his people want more opportunities to serve the community around them. As a result, Sunday mornings have become less important as the emphasis shifts to inculcating a mentality that service should be a seven-days-a-week commitment.

Partnerships between churches are increasing, and a humility regarding non-Western churches in growing. Gibbons again: "We tend to be patronizing, thinking that we know more, but often it's the locals who know more, and we need to partner with the government, with educational institutions, or other organizations instead of going alone."

Some cautions are aired: don't move from one extreme to the other, from the seeming severity of the Epistles to the social action of the Gospels, from proclamation to 'demonstration evangelism', from leading your congregation to suddenly expecting them to take the initiative.

The full report is here.

Wasting money on short term missions?

Andrew Jones on Tall Skinny Kiwi tackles the issue: Are Short Term Missions a Waste of Money?

I've been inclined to think they are, but Andrew makes ten points mostly in favour of short term missions, obviously feeling that the gains outweigh the losses. I've just given the beginnings of each point. You'll find the rest on his site.

1. Short term missions might be an expensive past-time but if they are a far better alternative to overseas vacations and holidays.

2. A cross cultural experience, even if only for a week, is good training for a career in overseas social enterprise or preparation for long term missions.

3. The fall in number of long term missionaries worries me but I am encouraged by the number of missionaries being sent out by the global south.

4. We should send out young people for longer periods of time.

5. Short term mission should be more relational.

6. Missions today is multi-directional and it is a mistake to talk about missions only in terms of our country sending missionaries to others.

7. Pilgrimages and self-guided mission experiences sometimes offer a better posture of learning and receiving hospitality than traditional short term missions.

8. Churches must stay involved in both sending overseas missionaries or they will lose their vision within one generation.

9. Partnering with an established mission organization is a good way to get some cross-cultural sensitivity training for the team.

10. And lets not forget the massive resource we have with retired missionaries now living back home.

The Forgotten Ways

Alan Hirsch wrote in his book, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church -

Missional church is a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission. When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people.

On his blog site, also called The Forgotten Ways, he takes issue with the word 'missional' being made to be the new emergent. In other words, if I'm reading him rightly, he doesn't believe that the emergent church is a new way of being missional. For him 'it was not so much that the church has a mission but that the mission has a church' - that is, mission is what the church does, and the reason many churches fail is that they forget to keep on in mission.