Here’s another old blog post – May 14th 2011. As you will see, I used to be quite opinionated. Actually, to be honest, this is still the way I think about church and mission. I thought it seemed quite relevant, considering that we’ve currently lost our ability to invite people to physical gatherings. If nothing else, the next few months is going to expose whether or not our churches really are missional or not…
Just a question. In the book of Acts, where was the most common place to call people to leave their old life and follow Christ? I don’t know the technically-correct answer, but what I can tell you is that it wasn’t at church.
The vibe of the New Testament seems to be that church is for believers to worship and be discipled, and mission is something that happens outside of the church. I can’t help but feel like something has gone wrong if church is where our mission happens. The call to new life in Christ should be happening in the marketplace, the Temple Courtyard and the Lecture Hall of Tyrannus. The call to growth; to learn how to use our time and money; to understand better the consequences of God’s reality – these things should be happening in the gathering of believers.
When the two are mixed-up, then it is less than ideal. Disciples are repeatedly fed milk rather than meat and, just as bad, there is less encouragement to take the call of discipleship to those foreign places. Instead, mission becomes about inviting people to church, where we have paid professionals to do all the hard work. “Hey, it’s my job to get them here – the rest is up to you.”
No. The local church exists to feed disciples so that they are equipped and empowered to take the Gospel into the world in which they live and work. A church is not missional because it has seeker-sensitive services. A church is missional if the body are encouraged and enabled to live, pray, proclaim and take risks as followers of Jesus from Monday to Saturday.
