Beyond the Barn

Recently I gathered with national leaders to think about missional leadership. It was good to meet old friends and make new ones. We gathered at the Presbyterian retreat centre at Crieff, just south of Guelph, Ontario. One branch of my direct ancestry settled to farm in that area, not ten minutes away, in 1836, after arriving from the little village of Cratfield in Suffolk, England.

I used to go and walk in the woods there, mostly in spring, summer and fall. I spent Thursday mornings too working on my post-graduate thesis in the restored milk house called 'The Hermitage,' for several months of 1993. I got to know the trails and idyllic splendour of the woods in all seasons - in trails and forest beyond the barn in the photo. There's a particular place where one trail would take me, to where I would sit - on a bench at the border of forest and field. There, outlined on a sturdy sign, were words which I absorbed and which I've often since used as a benediction at the conclusion of a service of worship. They have been a blessing upon my life - and I hope will be on yours . . .

High as the sun and stars above
are the Father's plans of love -
far beyond our comprehension;
No human mind could e'er conceive
the plans by which the Father leads
His chosen ones, His children . . .

Go then in peace
and the blessing of God Almighty -
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
be with you and remain with you,
now and always.
Amen.

Hungry

I take for granted being able to sit down at table with friends and family - in the warmth of a cozy house in mid-winter, with all of the provision for both need and pleasure. I think that Christianity is about family and about Table and about a community of friends being drawn together, sharing life and laughter, sharing hope even in the midst of the transience of life and the dangers that may arise each day. Sharing it with others whenever possible is so important. You can be 'an individual' all by yourself; but, if you want to be a 'person' you have to be in community.

Effective Neighbourhood Churches

What kind of church is helpful, relevant, noticed, needed in its community?

1. A church that has learned to release its people to its community, to their neighbourhood(s), instead of expecting them just to minister in the church or needing them to run programs.

2. A church that has learned that God will provide for the vision that the church receives. Provision follows vision. Don't wait for money - just start. People support initiatives and action - not ideas. Money follows ministry.

3. A church that has a consistent ministry, that keeps doing the same thing; a church that stays with it. Credibility happens because of the constant care and ministry of the church. It is consistency that breaks down resistance. The church's members minister consistently to the people in the neighbourhood where the members live. Perhaps they adopt a block, an apartment, a townhouse complex. They believe that they are living there - sent there, to serve their neighbours, there. As they discover needs of individuals and communities, they invite their contacts, friends, fellow-church people (for example: plumbers, electricians, food-preparers) to help them in their service three. They remember names, birthdays, sports scores of the children. They find or give information where needed concerning legal counsel for new immigrants and help to befriend and welcome them into community life. They build relationships door to door, property to property.

4. A church that ministers to 'the ministers' on Sunday. The congregants - the members are the ministers and their real ministry happens in their week, primarily in their community, and in the places where they work, study, play, work-out and socialize. The people do the ministry where they go, normally, regularly: where they live. They help others in ways others have no reason to expect. They are good neighbours. Through ministering they are emptied and thus come to church gatherings to learn, worship and to be filled again by the Presence of God, the knowledge of God and the encouragement of the people fo God. (Often congregants are too full and have not been ‘drained’ by ministry in their community. The church teaches, encourages and trains its people in how to empty themselves for the sake of the world, in the love of the individuals and families ‘in their in their neighbourhood. The community formed at church is for the sake of the communities where the congregants live.

5. A church that realizes that vision is found 'in the valley.' It is inspiration that comes from the mountaintop: vision in the valley. It is as we go 'down' to where people live: find where they hurt, live, struggle, celebrate, desire - that we begin to see, hear and feel the needs. Then we can respond to our neighbour in need. Then we can show forth the sign and witness of God's present and coming Kingdom. In becoming ‘incarnational,’ as we go and live there - with and among the people, feeling their pain, sharing their sorrow and their joys, there we receive vision of how to serve. Vision doesn't happen in the boardroom. It comes from where the need is - where people are.

6. A church that knows that the real ‘alter call’ (to use an old-fashioned revival meeting term) happens in the neighbourhood. It knows that when prior responses occur - when and where there are opportunities for a whole series of responses by their neighbour, they will be loved to respond in a number of ways, perhaps before they ultimately Respond to the God who forgives, who loves, who renews.. This church encourages and equips its ministers (in the community among their neighbours) to give many opportunities to say ‘yes’ to the loving service(s) offered. They respond affirmatively to the kindnesses, the welcome, the hospitality, the deeds of love, and then to the one doing them - and later, perhaps, as God’s Spirit leads, to God Himself. We expect transformation through the consistent prayers and giving, in many little and large ways, of God’s ‘ministers’ as they love and serve their neighbours - where they live.

7. A church that believes (without being egocentric but by actually being others-centred) that it can reach a very large area - perhaps a whole city, through starting and staying in ministry with people on the block or apartment - the neighbours where we live. In starting small, remaining faithful and committed, loving and serving in a host of ways, God only knows the impact that may touch a large area, reach an entire generation - carve out a wide clearing even in the dark forests of town and cities. From deeds of service stem deep relationships as neighbours live and love together and together begin to make lasting change in God’s world.

8. A church that has a generous spirit. This is an overall position and stance - not a one deed thing - not the baking and sending of one pie or the phony and manipulative beginning of a relationship only because there is an agenda - like its time to invite a neighbour to an evangelistic rally. A generous lifestyle and the ministry of encouragement is continuous, marking the people of this church in their neighbour-love and service. They are generous with words, laughter, smiles, passion, possessions, good deeds - with their life. They seek to be generous every day; they come and go expecting to bless others - not vice versa! They are ready to almostly seemingly go overboard with the encouragement of others and in their optimism toward them.

9. A church that uses broken people and doesn’t wait till they're perfect or completely fixed. This church is a safe place where there is serious help, teaching, encouragement and enablement for people who have made huge (or small) mistakes. Such a church seeks to give hope and vision to its members and takes a chance in releasing them into ministry. It ‘errs’ on the side of grace in helping and in releasing to ministry broken people. Much effective ministy comes from this.

10. A church that changes the atmosphere of its community. Crime drops (the police, politicians, the community notice). Christians show up, incarnationally living out their faith, primarily ikn deeds in saturating their community with love and with good. They accept people, accept different cultures, love people who are different and minister to them even before they begin to respond.

Live the adventure of the Gospel ! Throw parties, create gatherings, shovel snow, share in a block square dance or garage sale, open your home, clear the trash, prepare food for the sick and lonely; visit, notice, care for kids, youth and seniors. Who knows what Holy Spirited transformation such love may bring.

Who's the Missionary? - Where to Serve?

It's difficult for us Christians to actually live Christianly, incarnationally, seeking Kingdom values, trying to follow and work with Jesus in building community in our neighbourhood. Most of us leave our neighbourhood behind and drive away to the church of our choice. Well meaning, but perhaps mistaken, we do this so we can try and change our world - somewhere else, Jesus helping us. We forget, perhaps, that the Jesus who showed up in a manger wants to show up in our own home, on our street, in our neighbourhood, within my postal code area.

Rather than being the church where we are, seeing ourselves as responsible for the spiritual health of our street, apartment block, neighbourhood, we actually leave - at least on Sunday and other times when there's something to 'support' at the church, something we'd like to get in on.

We go to a church or even a home-group based on affinity (usually outside of the immediate area where we live). We choose based on affinity - with people like us (perhaps of class, income, shared interests or whatever), where in the overall context of this choice we consume the religious goods and services we want. We drive - sometimes many miles to where 'the needs' of ourselves and our family, we feel, may be best met.

We see ourselves not as sent by God to our world, our community, our neighbourhood, let alone to the places where we work or play - but as those who get to send - others, missionaries - somewhere else. To do this, often in passionate, sacrificial ways, we give money, love, letters, prayer support - but we think it is those few others, those missionaries, really, who actually are the sent ones while we others get to stay behind at home - to run the church.

This is not missional thinking. In fact, sometimes the best churchmen and women do not yet realize that they too are missionaries, on God's mission with Christ.

Missional Church - Not Merely Another 'Model'

Cam Roxburgh, Pastor of the creative Southside Community - five congregations covenanted together as one church in Vancouver, British Columbia, says:

The word 'Missional' has become a 'buzz-word.' We hear it used in so many different ways ranging from a new program that a church has initiated to a synonym for evangelism, to the type or model of ministry that a church is using. But none of these come close to capturing the meaning of what it truly means to be a missional church.

Missional Church is not a model of church in the long line of models that we have adopted or adapted in a local context such as Seeker Driven or Purpose Driven, Cell Church or House Church, Traditional or Contemporary.

Rather it is a deep-seated belief that God is a missional God (always has been and always will be) who is sending His people (the Church) into the world.


Another definition (from www.makikichristianchurch.org/vision_glossary.htm) states: Missional Church is one "that is sent by a 'missionary God' into the world - to be a sign, foretaste and instrument of the Kingdom of God."

Role and Challenge

How can denominations and Christian leaders intentionally help local churches in their primary and privileged mission task of being with and working with Christ as He transforms neighbourhoods and entire regions?

Harsh But True?

The following words of Al Roxburgh are hard to take, prophetic, maybe in some ways over the top - but I think worth thinking about and maybe praying over individually, and as Christian leaders and communities.

We need a movement of God's people into neighbourhoods, to live out and be the new future of Christ. It must be a movement that demonstrates how the people of God have a vision and the power to transform our world. This is not the same as current attempts to grow bigger and bigger churches that act like vacuum cleaners, sucking people out of their neighbourhoods into a sort of Christian supermarket.

Our culture does not need any more churches run like corporations; it needs local communities empowered by the gospel vision of a transforming Christ who addresses the needs of the context and changes the polis into a place of hope and wholeness.

The corporation churches we are cloning across the land cannot birth this transformational vision, because they have no investment in context or place; they are centres of expressive individualism with a truncated gospel of personal salvation and little else. Our penchant for bigness and numerical success as the sign of God's blessing only discourages and deflects attempts to root communities of God's people deeply into neighbourhoods. And until we build transformed communities there is no hope for a broken earth.

-- Reaching the Next Generation

Little Church - Big Job

The Church is not the Kingdom but its concerns are as wide as the Kingdom - ie. being agents and ambassadors of God in the restortion of all Creation. What Jesus has secured through His death on a Cross, with Him and in some mysterious way through us, God accomplishes His sovereign, eternal purposes.

Should We Just Hunker Down Awhile?

Iona

Are there times when the church, when a disciple, may legitimately withdraw from society?

May we seek not so much to hide out but legitimately reside as 'aliens' and created alternative communities within the midst of a society that has not yet heard the Good News, living hiddenlyand subversively among those who have not yet submitted to the Prince of Peace, without whose rule there is no peace.

The Irish Celtic church with monks and leaders who in some ways 'saved civilization' settled down, hunkered down at first, build monasteries, gathered the gospel message, penned and painted the Gospels in such masterpieces as the Book of Kells, sought first to live out its implations together in community, building monasteries, living in isolated places and islands like Iona and Lindesfarne - before venturing forth to convert and transform the land of the Picts and Druids and Angles and Saxons - and indeed all of Europe.

How do we penetrate society with the message and praxis of the Gospel - in a community that is both sign and witness of Kingdom coming?

A Missional Church is a Sent Church

What does it mean that in following, we remember that as Jesus was sent to our world, so are we? Indeed, a missional church is one that is sent rather than merely one that sends. And then - how do we unfetter ourselves as apprentices and disciples of Jesus, so that we can follow the uncontrolled Spirit of God?