A little missional ecclesiology …

From From Corporate Church to Missional Church Review and Expositor, 101, Summer 2004, Craig Van Gelder.

The missional church conversation has introduced a new dimension into the discussion of the identity of the church. In this conversation, mission is no longer understood primarily in functional terms as something the church does, as is the case for the corporate church. Rather it is understood in terms of something the church is, as something that is related to its nature. But also of importance in this conversation, mission is not subsumed under ecclesiology as is the case of the established church where the church is seen as the primary location of God’s activity in the world. Rather the missional church shifts the focus to the world as the horizon for understanding the work of God and the identity of the church. This understanding is expressed in terms of the relationship of the missio dei—the larger mission of God, to the kingdom of God… The organizational self understanding of the corporate church is replaced by a missional self understanding for the missional church. To catch the fuller implications of this shift of perspective one needs to understand the biblical and theological foundations for the missional church—what might be called a missiological ecclesiology.

…Critical to understanding God’s redemptive purposes is understanding that the universality of the good news is always embedded in particularity. There is no abstract Gospel. Gospel is always clothed in culture and comes to expression through particular people within particular contexts. The implication that became clearer over time in Israel’s history was that participation in God’s redemption in the world, while anticipating the fully revealed Kingdom of God, was more about suffering service than privileged status (see especially the role of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53-54). This is a lesson that comes clearly into focus when Jesus tried to help his followers understand that the role of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 must precede the full revealing of the reigning King of Daniel 7. In Jesus words, “… the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This is the same lesson the missional church throughout the ages is called to indwell, a lesson with which it has often struggled. The Gospel frees the church to live in vulnerability in relation to the world, where this vulnerability will often lead the church to the margins. All too frequently, the church has sought to amass power at the center in order to build and maintain domain—as seen in both the established and corporate forms of the church. This is a domain that is often more about serving the interests of the church than being for the sake of the world…

The key to understanding the missional church in the Book of Acts is comprehending its relationship to the kingdom of God…Jesus does not provide a lot of specific content about how this community of believers would be organized and how it would function, but it is clear that the Spirit’s presence within it and the Spirit’s working through this community would make this new organization unique in the world.

…but the church struggled to bring this intent of God into its shared practices. The early disciples struggled to live into the full reality of being a missional church. In the midst of this struggle, the Spirit led the church to live into its missional identity through crossing cultural boundaries and developing new contextual understandings, oftentimes in the midst of the church’s reluctance. It is to be noted, in this regard, that the leading of the Spirit in the missional church is characterized as much by disruption, change, conflict and adversity, as it is by planning and strategy.

…The presence of the Spirit and the Spirit’s teaching and leading the church gives birth to a church that is missionary by nature. The church’s very existence in the world has to be understood in missionary terms. The church cannot help but participate in God’s mission in the world. This is part of what it means to be the church. To do less would be contrary to its nature.

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Every man is our brother, and every man’s burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal.

Whitney M. Young, Jr. (civil rights leader, educator, Unitarian Universalist)

What Missional Looks Like

Last night, I attended a gathering of Micah’s Porch, a Unitarian Universalist missionary David Owen and a Lutheran Minister at Micah's Porchoutreach in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. It was perhaps not what most people would conceive of as being mission… and I’m sure that there are more than a few people who might have an adverse reaction to it. But it works from what I think is one of the basic premises of missionary work…

What Missional Looks Like

…my experience is that there are many others in our movement that are feeling compelled to recover the dynamic of mission in their faith. Our world is facing cataclysmic problems and sitting on the Unitarian franchise is a luxury we cannot afford.

David Owen-O’Quill, comment on “A Missionary Faith,” Celestial Lands, web log comment posted February 14, 2008, http://celestiallands.org/wayside/?p=40 (accessed April 13, 2011).

The faithful church critiques its cultural environment, particularly the dominant culture; affirms those aspects of culture that do not contradict (their) gospel; constantly tries to communicate (it) in the surrounding cultures; and is cultivating and forming the culture of (the) new community; a culture not of the world.

Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: a Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1998), 114-115.

Our missiology does not call us to convert our neighbors, but to embrace them, learn from them, and support them. We take our children out of our house to visit the other houses.

Rebecca Ann Parker

What Missional Looks Like

… “It’s important to find people who are treated the worst, who have the worst resources and just love them,” Kiniry said. “Not try to fix them, not try to save them, but just show them hospitality and kindness.”

He said he began organizing the potlucks when it dawned on him that he had more food and material items than he needed.

“I realized I had all the food I needed and more,” he said. “I was wasting food and many in my same community were going hungry. It meant I wasn’t truly loving my neighbor like I loved myself and I wanted to change that.”…

…

More than a year ago, Lenni Lissberger, a pastor, brought her services to the group when she began hosting what she dubbed a Pilgrims in the Park service on Sundays before the potluck.

Lissberger leads an “open-air” service in the center of the park and said about 15 to 20 of the area’s homeless attend. The service is open to anyone – something she stresses.

“I tell them no one is here to judge them,” she said. “We’re here to provide a place of hospitality. A place where God can do what only God can do.”

(Hat tip to Eric Posa)

What Missional Looks Like