Category: Missional Church

Why Aren't We More Missional (Pt 3)

Posted on November 5, 2009

So far we’ve seen that God motivates us for mission with our gospel identity (missio Dei) and missional responsibility (mandates). Another way God motivates us to mission is by giving us particular graces. These graces come in the form of spiritual gifts. All of these gifts are intended to advance the mission of Christ. The Holy Spirit empowers us for mission by giving us missional gifts.

Missional Offices

In Ephesians 4, we learn that, not only is mission our identity and responsibility, but it’s also in our gifting. The Spirit gives missional offices to the church—Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, and Teacher—who exist to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The first three offices are inherently missional, for building out the church, adding to her number, advancing the mission through starting new ministries and churches, leading people to Christ, and proclaiming the gospel. The latter two, pastor and teacher, reinforce the mission by teaching God’s people about the missionary God and the missional church (along with a lot of other things). All five offices exist for the advance of teh gospel. Peter O’Brien comments on these five offices as “ministers of the Word through whom the gospel is revealed, declared, and taught.” So, these five gifts to the church are missional gifts for the sake of the gospel.

Missional Gifts

But that’s not all. Ultimately, these five equippers (Woodward) exist to mobilize the church for mission, for ministry. The Spirit has given you, each one of us unique gifts to advance the mission of Christ, to redemptively engage peoples and cultures (1 Cor 12; Rom 12; Eph 4). In Ephesians, we see these gifts operating in the church community, the Body of the Head. Fine enough. But then something interesting happens. The body grows. It grows up and it grows out, into the full stature of Christ. We build the church up with our gifts (community), and we build the church out with our gifts (mission). As it turns out, the gospel converts us to a Missional Church. The Pauline vision of the Church is a growing, diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural new humanity created by the Spirit. How does it grow? It grows through the godly, responsible, and gracious use of these gifts. If we are in Christ, the Spirit has given us missional gifts, to build the body up and out. To not use these gifts for mission is to to squander God’s graces. The Spirit motivates us with these graces. Be yourself in the Spirit, not yourself in the flesh. Walk out your gifts in the Spirit in everyday life.

More on this approach to mission can be found in my LEAD ’09 talks and a recent sermon on Missional Gifts.

Why Aren't People More Missional? (Pt 2)

Posted on November 4, 2009

Despite the preponderance of missional church resources, American Christians are slow to live missionally. Why is this? In our last post, we suggested that one reason is that we are motivating the church with best practices of mission, instead of an identity of mission grounded in the Missio Dei. Today, I’d like to suggest another motivation, with a twist.

Any evangelical can tell you that they are supposed to be on mission, but very few are. They can rattle off the Great Commission by memory, while running along no differently. Yet, all four Gospels contain missional mandates from the resurrected, King Jesus himself (Matt 28, Mark 16, Luke 24/Acts 1, John 16/21)! Why does missional disobedience persist? Perhaps because…

  1. We don’t take Jesus seriously. Jesus is our friend, not our Lord.
  2. We think the missional mandates are for apostles or super Christians only.
  3. We have a functional God that we like more than Jesus.
  4. We believe that mission is optional and that we won’t be judged for our missional disobedience.
  5. We don’t actually believe the gospel.

Stop Going to Church

Posted on November 3, 2009

We spend just enough time “at church” to be religious, but nowhere near enough time to be family.

Read the rest of my new article here.

Why Aren't People More Missional?

Posted on November 2, 2009

Do you ever struggle in motivation for mission? Do you ever see your people lacking in motivation for mission? After all the shifts in ecclesiology, the planting of many churches, and the landslide of missional literature, why aren’t people more missional? Perhaps it is because we are motivating them with the wrong things.

What should motivate us for mission? There are numerous motivations for mission in the Bible. Many of them can be grouped under three headings that point us to the goal of the gospel, the demands of the gospel, the graces of the gospel. In this first post, I’ll address our missional identity.

Missional Identity

The missio Dei, a Latin phrase meaning, “the sending of God”, reminds us that mission is not merely something we do, an action; it is something God is. Mission is an attribute of God. He’s a sending God. He sends his Son (Easter) and sends his Spirit (Pentecost) to renew the world. So, mission doesn’t start and end with us. It starts and ends with God. His mission is nothing short of the redemption of peoples and cultures, the renewal of all creation for his own glory. It’s God’s great, burdensome, and glorious mission—the renewal of all creation! My goodness, we can’t manage that, but God, in his mercy has invited us to participate in his mission. Through the gospel, He rescues us from a life of self-serving mission to participate in a life of God-serving, Christ-glorifying mission. We are remade into missional people by the redeeming work of the Spirit and the Son.

Therefore, if we are in Christ, we have a missionary identity. We are adopted into a missionary family. We serve a missionary God. Mission becomes part of our identity, because we cut from the cloth of a missionary God. So, the church is a missionary church, with missionary people, that do missionary things. It is who we are and it is also what we do. Mission is not merely for the superspiritual, an option, an appendix to Christian faith. To be Christian is to be on mission.  It’s who we are and it is what we do. We redemptively engage peoples and cultures, by sharing, showing, and embodying Christ in our context. This includes evangelism, social action, and cultural engagement, counseling, empathy, celebration. It’s bringing the renewing power of the whole gospel into the whole city.

Now, the good news of the gospel is that we get to be the blessing of mission, while God carries the burden of mission. Ultimately, it is God’s mission. The Spirit does all the changing; we simply share, show, and embody the wonderfully renewing power of gospel. However, if we aren’t walking with God, keeping in step with the Spirit, and following Christ, out life will hardly be missional. In fact, it will be rife with dangerous disobedience. If you are in Christ, you have a missional identity. To disregard your missionary identity is to reject your identity in Christ. The first motivation is the missio Dei, that mission is in our DNA, our identity. It is who we are in God, through Christ, by the Spirit.