Back to Missional

The last time I brought up the term "missional" around here, it provoked some small degree of discussion, pro and con. I’m probably coming to the use of this term late, but I’m definitely happy to "embrace" it (to use the sticky parlance of the moment). Seriously, it seems to me that a lot of folks have invested in this term as a form of Christian self-definition, finding it a useful corrective to certain prevailing trends. These folks call themselves missional, they discuss and apply the term continually, and by the use of this term they even seem to be self-consciously separating themselves from the general trend of contemporary Christianity. In saying, in effect, "we are the missional Christians," they are by implication suggesting that many others are not missional.

I generally like what I’m hearing from these missionals. As I mentioned a while back, the term seems to be a healthy alternative to the me-and-my-needs style of "doing church." Perhaps we can describe the difference this way: it’s the difference between a believer who skims the Bible looking for that special solace-verse that will address his personal problems and lift his spirit, and one who reads the Bible for a deeper understanding of his own mission and calling as a Christ-follower. Each is likely to find exactly what he's looking for. The former is once again comforted, and the latter is once again called.

This issue gets to the heart of my own oft-stated dissatisfaction with my church. In a lot of preaching that I hear, the congregation is urged to position themselves vis a vis Jesus in the place of the beseeching crowds of hurting people that seemed to gather around Jesus all the time. The various stories of Jesus healing "the many" work perfectly for this kind of sermon. First, the preacher shows us how Jesus cares for the hurting and ministers to their needs with power. Picture all that familiar "stock footage" from just about every Hollywood Jesus movie, where the Savior is walking among crowds of the destitute, the mournful, the crippled, the deaf, blind, and mute, the lepers and other untouchables, and as he walks he heals them with a touch.

Next on the preacher’s agenda, we in the congregation are urged to see ourselves in the place of those pleading ones. We are encouraged to "relate to" those in the beseeching crowd, reaching out hungry hands to Jesus. Cease depending on yourself, we are urged, admit your helplessness and come to Jesus. He will "transform" your life.

And the last step, the denouement of the sermon, is a call to the congregation to come to Jesus (in the form of "ministry teams" that line up in front of the church) and receive healing!

Now, I do not contend that any of this is wrong in and of itself. But I do contend that this sort of preaching does not correspond neatly to that which we read in Acts, nor to the emphasis we find in the epistles. This observation alone, if true, should be very humbling and disconcerting to us.

To understand how we might make a very different sermon from that very same scene in the healing ministry of Jesus, let’s take a second look at these typical "crowd scenes" from the Gospels. See again the reaching hands, hear the cries for pity; the sheer neediness of these people must have seemed overwhelming at times to the disciples, don’t you think? Indeed, part of the awe they must have felt toward Jesus was in the fact–the deeply mysterious fact–that he, the Master, was never overwhelmed.

But wait, I just mentioned the disciples. In the first rendering of this little scene, they didn’t appear at all. They are, apparently, in the background, easily ignored. Perhaps they are of little importance. Why mention them, after all? They’re only there, watching. That’s what they do. They follow Jesus, they watch what he does, they listen carefully to his teaching, they frequently misunderstand, slip up, look downright foolish, and then simply move on. They are learners, you see, and Jesus is their teacher.

But here’s the point: that’s us. As believers, as Jesus followers, shouldn’t it be these fellows, the disciples, in whom we are encouraged to see ourselves? At some point, should we not be encouraged to understand ourselves by looking at them, by seeing ourselves in them? That, it seems to me, is one of the great uses of preaching. From Sunday to Sunday to re-issue the call of Jesus upon our lives.

We are the disciples of our day. We have been called–each one of us–to spread the knowledge of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom in our corner of the world? A great step in the "working out of our salvation" is when, by the graceful in-working of God, we move from me-centered pleading to Christ-centered following. Hallelujah!

Our preachers should be helping us along in this process, rather than seeming to enforce (by repetition) a communally-shared self-definition as helpless pleaders. This is the great need of the church today, in my opinion. A concerted, thoughtful, and continuing restatement and explanation of the call of God on every believer. Whatever associations the word "missional" may have for others, this is my understanding of a missional church, and a missional people.