Interesting video, Michael, but “foreign missionary” as a model of missional life is precisely what some of us are trying to overcome. Ed Stetzer said recently that missional “heads into the neighborhood to tell people about Christ.” To me, this all sounds far more colonial-crusader than missional.
We are not foreigners in our own neighborhood. I would offer that missional lives and serves in the neighborhood without an agenda of “us and them” religious conversion, but with great hope that Spirit will gather and transform. In this sense, missional is a push-back against the idea of “conversion” as a market transaction – against the idea of “Jesus sellers” in a secular marketplace.
Missional might also be the transformation of institutional religious processes into something deeply human, organic, and interpersonal. In the video, the arrows pointing away from the building might be more prophetic than they realize. We’re seeing this transformation unfold as the global church begins to connect freely via social media, less constrained by clergy-centric / stage-centric / institution-centric / professional-centric identity and ideology.
Call it missional or organic or relational or incarnational — whatever you call it, I think it represents a LOT of people realizing a need to drop their inherited religious polarizations (converter / convertee, etc..) while freely and even recklessly living out God’s love and empathy in us and through us, towards all people – becoming more authentic and intimate and transparent with their community and with the very heart of Christ.
But that’s just how I see “missional” and there are a LOT of people with widely varying opinions on this
I liked it! I think it describes the progress to missional church in the West pretty well (at least in the American context). I’ve seen this in my own life as the son of an evangelist. We moved from mail-outs to moving out over the years as a church plant. I’m glad to see that we are modeling the ways of Jesus as his representatives everywhere.
Thanks for your perceptive words. I resonate with a lot of what you’re saying. Certainly conversion mustn’t be cast as a market transaction, but my fear is that we lose any sense of convertedness whatsoever. Is all polarization bad? Truth is (I think), we do in a sense come in (or rather, from within) as something other or foreign. We are, to use a biblical phrase and allude to an important book all at once, “resident aliens.” But what you’re saying is certainly a needed corrective to many! (And a welcome voice, so far as I’m concerned, in the whole missional conversation)
Thanks Chad!
Michael Westmoreland-Whitesaid:
The next installment in my series on moral discernment is up at Pilgrim Pathways, Michael.
The video makes sense as a movement within evangelicalism. Now that I’m in a liturgical church, the need to react against ‘church growth theory’ isn’t quite as important.
We had this video at Sunday morning service the last Sunday of Lent, before Holy Week. It was very interesting and for many of us, the first look at “missional”, but I certainly hope, not the last!
Johnsaid:
“Is all polarization bad? Truth is (I think), we do in a sense come in (or rather, from within) as something other or foreign.”
I wonder if Jesus is better understood as freedom FROM religious identity – replacing religion with the purest form of love (cross, etc.). So rather than perpetuating this sense of “us-and-them” by “polarizing” ourselves as “aliens” which – I might suggest that we have been set free from the need to marginalize others into dualistic categories of “saved” and “unsaved.”
Perhaps authentic unconditional love sees other people not as evangelistic targets, but as fellow strugglers. We live without religious judgment or premeditated agenda, yet naturally frame our understanding in the language of unspeakable grace, for we have found no greater love. Faith becomes a rhythm of life, rather than a duty, a ‘calling’, a career, or any other assumed identity that sets us inorganically apart from others.
John L said:
Interesting video, Michael, but “foreign missionary” as a model of missional life is precisely what some of us are trying to overcome. Ed Stetzer said recently that missional “heads into the neighborhood to tell people about Christ.” To me, this all sounds far more colonial-crusader than missional.
We are not foreigners in our own neighborhood. I would offer that missional lives and serves in the neighborhood without an agenda of “us and them” religious conversion, but with great hope that Spirit will gather and transform. In this sense, missional is a push-back against the idea of “conversion” as a market transaction – against the idea of “Jesus sellers” in a secular marketplace.
Missional might also be the transformation of institutional religious processes into something deeply human, organic, and interpersonal. In the video, the arrows pointing away from the building might be more prophetic than they realize. We’re seeing this transformation unfold as the global church begins to connect freely via social media, less constrained by clergy-centric / stage-centric / institution-centric / professional-centric identity and ideology.
Call it missional or organic or relational or incarnational — whatever you call it, I think it represents a LOT of people realizing a need to drop their inherited religious polarizations (converter / convertee, etc..) while freely and even recklessly living out God’s love and empathy in us and through us, towards all people – becoming more authentic and intimate and transparent with their community and with the very heart of Christ.
But that’s just how I see “missional” and there are a LOT of people with widely varying opinions on this
Chad said:
I liked it! I think it describes the progress to missional church in the West pretty well (at least in the American context). I’ve seen this in my own life as the son of an evangelist. We moved from mail-outs to moving out over the years as a church plant. I’m glad to see that we are modeling the ways of Jesus as his representatives everywhere.
Michael DeFazio said:
Hi John,
Thanks for your perceptive words. I resonate with a lot of what you’re saying. Certainly conversion mustn’t be cast as a market transaction, but my fear is that we lose any sense of convertedness whatsoever. Is all polarization bad? Truth is (I think), we do in a sense come in (or rather, from within) as something other or foreign. We are, to use a biblical phrase and allude to an important book all at once, “resident aliens.” But what you’re saying is certainly a needed corrective to many! (And a welcome voice, so far as I’m concerned, in the whole missional conversation)
Thanks Chad!
Michael Westmoreland-White said:
The next installment in my series on moral discernment is up at Pilgrim Pathways, Michael.
The Charismanglican said:
The video makes sense as a movement within evangelicalism. Now that I’m in a liturgical church, the need to react against ‘church growth theory’ isn’t quite as important.
Br. James Patrick said:
We had this video at Sunday morning service the last Sunday of Lent, before Holy Week. It was very interesting and for many of us, the first look at “missional”, but I certainly hope, not the last!
John said:
“Is all polarization bad? Truth is (I think), we do in a sense come in (or rather, from within) as something other or foreign.”
Good questions. We’ve been having a similar discussion at Scot’s blog (http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2010/04/david-opderbeck-on-that-soul-s.html).
I wonder if Jesus is better understood as freedom FROM religious identity – replacing religion with the purest form of love (cross, etc.). So rather than perpetuating this sense of “us-and-them” by “polarizing” ourselves as “aliens” which – I might suggest that we have been set free from the need to marginalize others into dualistic categories of “saved” and “unsaved.”
Perhaps authentic unconditional love sees other people not as evangelistic targets, but as fellow strugglers. We live without religious judgment or premeditated agenda, yet naturally frame our understanding in the language of unspeakable grace, for we have found no greater love. Faith becomes a rhythm of life, rather than a duty, a ‘calling’, a career, or any other assumed identity that sets us inorganically apart from others.
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