tabletalk

How to Speak Missional: Present the Implications of the New Reality

Dally suggest this as another part of preaching/speaking missionally. What are the implications of the new reality of the Kingdom of Heaven, being presented to your senses?

Let me illustrate simply. This Sunday I will be preaching on a text from Matthew 9:35-38 - The Harvest and calling out laborers into the field.

A while ago a friend of mine was in Las Vegas and came across the following WWJD banner.

If you can't read the writing at the top of the banner it translates WWJD as "Who Would Jesus Destroy". And then the seemingly inexhaustible list. If you look at only the adjectives like "unrighteous" or "proud" or "haters" or "fearful" or "unbelieving" or "malicious" you'd get it right - NO ONE WILL BE LEFT.

When Jesus looks out at the masses he has two responses: 1 - Compassion for people he sees are aimless and wandering like sheep with no shepherd. 2 - Solution - take healing to them - yes, you yourselves go - be the extension of my compassion. Heal and restore.

The WWJD banner - is the antithesis of Jesus. If we believe Jesus' himself, then one of the implications is that we are asked to be healers and reconcilers. But it begins by adopting Jesus' vision of the world - not as something to be hated and feared but loved and restored. Remember John 3:17 - "For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that through him it might be saved."

Remember Lewis's words from his great sermon "The Weight of Glory" "There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal...But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours...Our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."...vere latiat - the truth hidden inside.

The implication(s) of the new reality of God's Kingdom - we are to be compassionate as Jesus is. The implication is that if you adopt Jesus' eyes you will adopt Jesus' posture towards those you see. When we don't, we need to get back with Jesus to see what he sees. And then act in accordance. We don't distance ourselves from others. We engage in compassionate actions. This is what it will take.

So if you want to speak missionally let people know that it will require a different way of seeing and acting. Not merely thinking. Remember, faith is a verb. Act on it.

How to Speak Missional: Present an Alternative Reality

How do we begin to train ourselves to be missional? John Addison Dally in his book "Choosing the Kingdom" talks about preaching in a way that I find helpful for organizing sermons. But more than sermons, I think it is a helpful way for us to form language and images for a witness that practices missionality. Though I will present these ideas in a linear fashion, they need not be thought of as linear in nature, just parts of how our conversation with each other and the world should go.

The first thing Dally suggests is that we proclaim and alternative reality to the present one most of us captive to. Following Jesus' lead, this means proclaiming the reality and presence of the Kingdom of God. It's a world that beats swords into plowshares, where people of different cultures sit at table, where there is no Jew nor Greek, male nor female hierarchy. What he suggests is that we give people another choice besides what is directly in front of them.

It is what the church is supposed to model - a new reality. We are to be a sign and foretaste of this alternative to the way things are. I know we fail miserably at this. But I do believe that some of it is simply attributable to the fact that we have such a limited and beaten down imagination. In many ways this is C.S. Lewis's suggestion in "The Discarded Image", that the medieval church had the right imagination. They saw the Kingdom of God present around them and had an imagination to receive it.

To present an alternative reality to people is to be genuinely creative and hopeful. It is also helpful. The world is mired in its present condition, and this includes Christians. How can one get out of the mire, if they can't imagine more than what is before them. Look again at Lewis's "Silver Chair" in Narnia. Isn't it Puddleglum who states to the Emerald Witch something like - If we're just babies making up a world, then how is it that four babies can make up a world that licks the 'real' world you suggest? The biblical view of the way things should be is sorely different from the way we act and believe. But we need to still put forth a different reality in our speech.

Next we need to begin to put forth an alternative reality in our actions. We need to live into the Kingdom's values. We need to live out - love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, lay down your life. They are intended to be present realities not merely future promises that end up as cynical critiques of the failure of Christians to live out their faith. I honestly believe that when the bible says "turn the other cheek" it means it. I stand condemned by all the times I've failed to do this. But I also stand guilty, remorseful, grateful, graceful, forgiven, and restored. But not for my own satisfaction. This is intended to be turned out again to the world so that the Kingdom can be proclaimed in word and deed.

This is a bit of a ramble as usual, but you get the point. We don't need more clever ways to be God's people, we need to believe in and live into the Kingdom reality that Jesus began. We need to do all the hard stuff, and realize that the hardest stuff - forgiveness and restoration and love enough to be sustained in this life is accomplished by Jesus.

Next up: Implications of this Alternative Reality.

Your Church's Story: Symbols of Your DNA

This is completely stolen from "Transforming Church" by Kevin Ford. It's a great book and quite helpful. What I hope to do here is give you examples of things that reflect the "dna" of a particular church. Why? Because when the chips are down and we feel stressed we will return in our behavior to the patterns of the past. Also, though these things are always operating in the background and even the foreground of our institutions, these symbols, actions, values, character, they don't need to be responded to in the same way as we might have a few years ago. For me as the son of an alcoholic, I won't change that or how it has shaped my life. But the reality is that I no longer respond to that past in the same ways I did when I was 16 or even 50. But if I don't know how the alcoholic past plays out in my life I am at its mercy and can live out the same craziness. Don't know if this makes sense. But the reality is there is no value to ignorance and knowing our "dna" as a church is critical to being able to respond to it with intelligence and not be victims to our pasts.

Ford suggests there are four symbols to explore that will show us our "dna" or as he puts it our "code" as a church. For him these are the myths, the heroes, the rituals, and the visuals. Over the next few posts I want to explore each of these and give them legs as I understand how it works. My hope? That we'll take a more serious view of the things that have shaped our life together in our congregations so we can respond to it in the light. So that it doesn't operate in the shadows but out where we can see it and make healthy choices and habits.

I believe in my version of "Transforming Church" you can find this around page 82....

A Church's Story - Your Part

It recent months I've been spending a lot of time with leadership groups from various churches. All of them want to know how to move forward. Many are anxious about where they are and question their viability over the next decade.

In these next few posts I want to muse a bit on what can be discovered in a church's story.

One of the techniques for discovering a church's story that I have been using comes to me from Linnea Nilsen-Capshaw from Deep Shift, Brian McLaren's group. She asked the leadership of our former church to write a few things on some butcher paper. The questions were: Your Name; the date you entered your church's story; the significant people you remember when you arrived; the significant ministries that were taking place; were you aware of any conflict.

These questions have become the backdrop for me to investigate with church leadership the dna of their congregations. This is a non-threatening and simple way to begin a self-reflection that doesn't need to end in navel gazing. In fact what it begins to uncover are patterns and perceptions that have been present for a very long time. It does this without passing judgment on those things.

What is always humorous to me is that each person will get their turn at the time-line. I give everyone instructions that we're not trying to get it right, we're trying to hear the perceptions that each person had as they entered their church's story. The humor is that you can't go more than a minute before somebody steps in to correct or add or comment on the story. People's memories are jogged. Sometimes old wounds are opened. Most of the time, I have found a shared fondness for many of the significant people that they share in common.

This sets the backdrop for the next steps. A church's dna is their character. In new churches we consciously and unconsciously set the dna. In older congregations we consciously and unconsciously respond to it.

A good first step is understanding your part in your church's story. Remember your part in your church's story is also your part in the the greater story that God is writing not only in you but through you.

Missional Church: A Field Guide - Practice Stewardship to Build Financial Viability

I want to observe two things about this chapter and I think about the nature of this book in general.

First, if I had it to do over again in the starting of Trabuco Pres Church I would have worked much harder at developing faithful practices of stewardship in the leaders of the congregation. It's one of those areas where we are not accountable enough with one another.

Second, when I read this chapter I am reminded of a conversation I had recently with Alan Roxburgh. The point of the conversation was that the development of Missional Church got derailed in Western Culture when we started viewing it as means to devise new practices for ecclesiological maintenance and continuance. In other words, much of this book betrays the missional focus it espouses. This chapter in particular is the most naked.

Not that institutional survival is a bad thing. It isn't the thing. Our Western perspective is so deeply rooted in the survival of "what we've known" that it is difficult to develop a new way of seeing things.

When we look at churches throughout the world, financial viability is not a possibility. Plus, it is not even necessary to the health and future of the work of the Spirit. Now I know stewardship is more than money. It is more than fiscal and physical assets. It is gifts and abilities and heart as well. In this sense good stewardship is merely good discipleship.

But if we believe that being financially viable is a missional practice then we miss out on the fundamental understanding that it is God who keeps his people and his world. This is one of the hangovers of Christendom thinking. We are hoping to establish ourselves in the world as we know it. What if the calling is to have a church that doesn't rely upon the wealth of the empire for its existence? What if we are to be leaner and freer? What if we are to be united by a vision and a Lord who doesn't need buildings and staff?

I know this sounds idealistic and unrealistic, but my point is simple: Be wary of the effects of Christendom on our missional thinking. It has the power to coerce and subvert even the best intentions.

Missional Church: A Field Guide - Stay the Course When Facing Conflict

"This is the fifth transformational key. It is important for healthy, Spirit-led leadership to stay the course when facing conflict by practicing truth telling as an opportunity for learning and growing together." p.96

There is a difference between problems and conflict. Problems are well, challenges that have solutions that can be derived when we put our heads together and work on them. They are more like tasks that need some good thinking.

Conflict on the other hand is personal. Conflict is always more than a problem-solving task. Underneath it has feelings, history, unconscious responses, and much much more. Conflict is not rational though it will have rationality as part of it's resolve. I may be in conflict with someone not because I disagree with their ideas, but because something in them, the way they talk or act, has reached into my sub or unconscious and grabbed ahold of my sensibilities. I then become reactive - often unknowingly. It's like the physical and psychological response we get from some smells. It catches us off-guard.

The key in both conflict and difficult times (knowing they are not the same) is to stay the course. This is where the non-reactive, non-anxious leadership role is most needed. The true key then is to stay in the room long enough to find out what is really going on. This could take a long time or not.

Often conflict is masked by a more publicly appropriate disagreement over a policy or theological position. While we hammer away at trying to convince others of the rightness of our positions, we wonder why no one's mind is changed. Sometimes we give up and walk away believing the other side simply will never "get it". Admittedly there are real disagreements that have no earthly solution. But most of the time I would wager that we simply walk away too early and never get at the root sources of our perceived problems and underlying conflicts.

I'm reminded of the description of liminality. Liminal is that place in-between. It is the desert wilderness. It is the no man's land between adolescence and adulthood. It is the waiting place where there seems no resolve. I believe it is Richard Rohr who said that the key to leadership is to assist people who have been in that in-between place for a long time and are ready to leave to stay. And to beckon into the room those who want to avoid the desert wilderness to join in with the others. And then to stay put. Stay long enough until the solution, the truth is known. Don't settle. Don't run away. Don't give up. Stay put until God removes you from the in-between.

This is what missional leadership needs to do when it is blocked or challenged or confronted. Stay put. Stay the course. Wait. Pray. Be. Until you know God has spoken and moved. Let God be the truth teller to all gathered. Let's not be the ones to give only one side of the truth - ours!

Missional Church: A Field Guide - Build a Supportive Staff and Lay Leadership

By now you can tell that I'm only touching on aspects of each chapter and giving my own thoughts that are prompted by the authors. I hardly ever read anything in which I am in total agreement or understanding. As you use this resource, I believe it is easily adapted and expanded so as not to be a static set of recommendations that will make you a successful missional leader. These are more like "guidelines".

In this chapter the others talk about what a supportive team ministry would look like. One aspect they touch on is in a title of a paragraph on page 91. They quote Steinke again where he says that healthy congregations "Focus on their strengths." I believe this to be essential to developing a missional congregation.

Missional churches are highly contextual. They see themselves as planted in their mission field. The missional church is sent to the neighborhood in which they live. I'm reminded here of The Message and Peterson's translation of John 1, that the Word became one of us and "moved into our neighborhood." That's what God has done in our churches. Many of us have forgotten this. But this is what a church discovers when it becomes missional in character.

By saying that a missional church is higly contextual means to me that the leadership and ministry gifts that are needed for the work are also present. God has gifted the church with all it needs to do the ministry that is before it at present. The Church lacks nothing other than "eyes to see and ears to hear".

Saying this means that God's gifts are the strengths present and they are what you use to move forward. Some of those gifts may appear as weakness (humility?) but must not be demeaned. Instead God has arranged the gifts in such a fashion that all are needed. When Steinke comments that a healthy congregation focuses on its strengths, it doesn't mean it can do everything. But it does mean that God has gifted the church with special skills and abilities and people. This is the foundation upon which you build. Don't be looking for those who aren't there. Like the boy with the loaves and fishes, appearance isn't everything. Put what you have in God's hands and see God work.

In response to the natural church development folks, I would say that their emphasis on finding out what you don't do well and concentrate on that is thorough modern approach to ministry. We need to be hitting on "all cylinders" to be effective. Well, God may have only gifted the church for a specific task in a specific time and place. To spend our energy trying to pull up the areas that we aren't good at seems an unfaithful act to me. I think the parable of the talents is helpful here. Invest what you've got. That's how things grow. Remember each individual church is not the whole church and in most places doesn't need to be.

I think that supportive teams are teams that can encourage the gifts present with one another. Otherwise you're always wishing for something you don't have. That's the "wish dream" that Bonhoeffer says we need to let die.

Missional Church: A Field Guide - Cultivate a Healthy Climate

In this chapter, Van Gelder and Rouse use one of my favorite descriptions of significant leadership - "Convey a non-anxious presence." This is also a theme in "The Starfish and the Spider". The authors comment that this kind of leadership is more reflective and thoughtful in nature. "They are able to stand back from a situation and observe with some objectivity what is really going on." They quote from Peter Steinke's work, "Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times" - "The leader's 'presence' can have a calming influence on reactive behavior. Rather than reacting to the reactivity of others, leaders with self-composure and self-awareness both exhibit and elicit a more thoughtful response." - P.76 in Field Guide.

The words worth paying attention to are: non-anxious, observe, reflective, thoughtful, non-reactive, self-composure, self-awareness. Where are these abilities developed? For me they are learned behavior. My growing up years and subsequent survival years as an adult were managed by being "in-charge" and assertive. I was a reactive (and often still am) leader. I could go along with the group until I felt it turning away from where I wanted things to go, or thought they should go. Then I would assert my leadership role. This was born out of anxiety. The anxiety was that, like my growing up years, I was moving into an area where I was out-of-control. This was an invitation to chaos and that was unacceptable.

How then does that change? It doesn't happen in the crucible of leadership crisis. I believe it happens when that crucible casts us out into the desert and we are faced with ourselves. There we need to take time to listen, and observe, and reflect, and learn how to be non-anxious with our desert circumstances. By desert I mean those dry places of our lives, those places where our supports have been taken away. The places where we are exposed for our frailty and we are vulnerable. It may the desert of our hearts and minds that no one but God can see, but it is still a wilderness.

My anxious self would want to fix the circumstance and run forward into some other place where I could control my environment. But that only serves to hide my anxiety. No, the key is to learn to remain with my anxious self until the anxiety is attended to and made peace with. It's ok to be anxious. But my anxiety must not rule my actions. So I make peace with it when I can. Acknowledge it. Understand it. Offer it up. Hand it over. Live in it. Until it's affect is diminished.

This is the critical step to being able to handle other people's anxiety. It keeps my anxious self from getting mixed up in the anxieties of others. Then I am not reactive in leadership. I am able to allow for other's anxiety to be expressed. It's ok to be anxious. But let us not allow our anxiety to rule the day.

Jesus comments on this in the Sermon on the Mount. Something about birds and God's love for human beings and tomorrow. It is truly an act of faith to be non-anxious. The road there is through the desert wilderness of our own souls.

Just a note: The expert, the CEO, the driven leader....they will only add to the organization's anxiety not diminish it. At some point it all falls down.

Missional Church: A Field Guide - Discipling Communities

Growing and healthy congregations have several things in common. One, is that their growth and health is related directly to the emphasis and quality of their disciple making.

In this book by Rouse and Van Gelder, they make these observations about congregations that focus on developing disciples.

1. They are not as concerned about numbers; and more concerned with how well people are living their faith and sharing the gospel.
2. They are not as concerned about how well they care for members; and more concerned with how they serve needs of the world around them.
3. They are not as concerned about maintaining institution (structure); and more concerned with empowering people for ministry.
4. They are not as concerned about preserving facilities (ownership); and more concerned with offering them as a gift to their community. p.61

These are paradoxical qualities and actions. One would intuit that to grow a church you would focus on evangelism. But that isn't the case. Focus on the evangelists, training your people to give. Missional church character is developed as a paradox. It is the mirror of the gospel. Don't hold on to what you've got, give it away. Don't focus on your needs, but the needs of others. Don't try to preserve things, but use them up. Don't bury your resources for a rainy day, invest them.

All of this is gospel message. It's nothing new to us. But our implementation of the gospel is sorely lacking. If we follow the paradoxical teachings, like losing our lives, then the end result is we gain our lives.

There is a great scene in the first Harry Potter movie where the children are tangled in a plant. The more they struggle the more they are entangled and their lives are threatened. Hermione remembers her lessons and tells the boys to relax and stop struggling. Harry is able to and drops through the branches safely. Ron continues to struggle and must be rescued.

The gospel lessons are there for us to remember. I'm reminded often of how difficult it is to fall asleep when you focus on falling asleep. Or how uncomfortable it is when someone really works at being your friend and the result is anything but friendship. The goal isn't to grow the church, it's to follow Jesus. The goal isn't mission, it's following Jesus. The goal isn't institutional salvation, it's following Jesus. And when we do - and rest (relax) in him, we find that the very things we would have aimed at get thrown in as side benefits of keeping ourselves focused.

Remember, that discipleship is never solitary. It is never intended for the self-satisfaction of the individual. It is always gospel oriented, which means it is good news to all people.

* a note. This week I will be home surrounded by my books and my beloved C.S. Lewis. I will break with this Missional Church blog and do some Advent observations from Lewis. Yea!

Missional Church: A Field Guide - Unmasking Principalities and Powers

I believe this is one of the most understated roles of the church. Partly because the church has to risk its very life to do this. For me, most mega-churches ride the wave of cultural acceptability. They rarely risk unmasking the "prevailing plausibility structures" which is how Newbigin describes the principalities and powers. What most culturally driven congregations do is baptize the prevailing culture and say something like, "You just need to add Jesus to your life and it will all make sense." The key here is that culture isn't questioned, and the only thing missing is a spiritual component that will "round out" a person's life - meaning and fulfillment will follow.

The irony is it fails to ask anyone to give up anything (except for money to build the facilities that give the impression of success!) I have a friend that would like to challenge the title of a book "From Success to Significance". He would like the next book to skip the 'significance' stage and move straight from success to sacrifice. It think Jon's right. It isn't until we unmask the things that have power to shape and guide culture and us, that we will begin to demonstrate the power of the Gospel.

Many have said that our wealth masks our needs. It gives us a false sense of security. It is true that our current economic situation is unmasking the false promises of false gods.

The church needs to consider doing this intentionally, not merely accidentally. That is we need to say no to those things that give us security and value and importance that are not born in God. We also need to unmask the motives of holding power and influence in our seemingly spiritual acts. The reason my friend suggests that we need to skip the significance part of the above equation is that we can still use all our manipulative and power holding skills to move ahead a very spiritual agenda, and God can be no where in sight. The means are the end for true spiritual success. So we need to give up our own powerful means so that God's means can be seen clearly.

I did a research project some years ago. In it I asked if preaching shaped the missional practices and character of newly forming congregations. The surprise wasn't that it did, but how much it did. The most interesting part of the research to me, however, was that what 'wasn't preached' equally had an effect on the church. In those congregations where social justice and prophetic challenges were absent, so were justice practices and prophetic actions. What we don't say speaks volumes.

At this point it is Paul's admonition in 2 Corinthians that informs me. "We have this treasure in fragile clay vessels to prove that this light doesn't come from us, but comes from God."

Principalities (princely or governing powers) and powers (culture shaping energy, say like advertising or nationalism), that tell us "the way things are" can only be unmasked when we demonstrate that they are wrong. We do this in weakness and reliance. We do this in brokenness and vulnerability. We get there through tragedy and sacrifice and identifying our lives more closely with those who have not, than those who have.

Why else do you think Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem? Jesus unmasked the principalities and powers in his incarnation. We need to get inside Jesus' life and live there.