I’m wondering if the organising purpose of a missional church should be to discover the love of God?

YES!

If “God is love”, then that must be a major element in His “organising purpose.”

My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

That kind of mission is passionately consuming,–a vortex that draws others into the flame. No shift needed; extravagant love sucks us in together…

Grace, good questions.

Tom

I hear what many of ya’ll are saying. If you just show up at a church building somewhere – say a mega-church – and sit through the service – and go home. Yeah – that’s really nothing – maybe a couple hours a week.

However, if you are in a leadership position in that church – and sit through all the meetings and prep and all of that – it’s going to be pretty tough. What we found was that – the interest in keeping the machinery running waned compared to seeing Jesus alive all around us. I’ll quote something from Kathy Escobar’s last post:

(our old crutches and ways of doing church) … “will no longer satisfy us because we’ve tasted and experienced the mess & glory of humanity & divinity mixed together and can never turn back”.

Problem to most people looking in – is that it looks real messy – and most organizations would love to see Christ birthed in an extremely sanitized environment. Christ was born in a manger in a filthy bug infested manure filled stable. And that is still where He often chooses to be born.

For the leadership group (I can’t call it a team – it was one man with 4 bobbleheads) . I was a part of – no way they would immerse themselves in that kind of mess.

Ultimately however, that process begins with a true conversion of purpose in order to begin a fundamental shift in focus rather than adding missional window-dressing.

This has to happen in the hearts of the leaders in order to equip the congregation with the missional imagination and spiritual transformation necessary to implement change.

ken,
Your comments about recognizing the faithfulness of those in current models remind me of things that I have heard about from the book Tangible Kingdom. I may have to bump it up on my wish list.

Individuals within any type of community are free and able to express missional lifestyles, with or without the support of their church community. They can certainly be an inspiration and example for the church.

A change of priorities and focus is needed in order for the organization to become a missional church. This is an intentional and deliberate choice that will ultimately (not necessarily immediately) completely redirect the emphasis and practices of the church.

jeff,
Give up stuff? Don’t get me started.

Mark, Rose, and Robby,
I believe that most congregations exist as worshipping communities, not missional communities. That is the Christendom model. Many will likely continue with this as their central purpose. Worship is good, but it seems that it should result in mission.

Peggy,
A missional subversive?
You are a great example that individuals can be missional regardless of their church’s stance. My post was talking specifically about the likelihood of organizational willingness to sacrifice and change.

My family are very much a group of missional “insiders” in a traditional church. It continues to be interesting to see what God is up to in our lives … which frequently makes us feel a bit like “outsiders”

Yes, Jeff, we are ready to “go missional”

OOHHHHH WAIT, you mean if we do that we can’t do ….. and we will have to give up ….

UMMMMM, I think we are comfortable where we are at.

I think one possibility in the evolution from institutional to missional might be found in the principles of Petersen & Shamy’s ‘The Insider’. There are missional people within the institutional attractional churches that need to be recognized and supported as they move outside of the structural church and into missional models. Perhaps the models they establish will become viral and others from within the structural church will follow suit. Cannot God build a bridge that will benefit both in the process?

One thing I am convinced of is that the move to being missional is very organic and organic is often messy. Things that live and grow tend to move and shift and adapt as they encounter various areas of resistance and they end up looking uniquely different than what they started out to be.

Disappontment is a result of unmet expectations. Expectations are generally born out of formulaic master plans. I believe that while moving to missional, leaders need to stay focused on the journey, not the result … I don’t think anyone has a clear picture of what that is.

Grace, its helpful to me to frame the question as you did: “what will it look like for an organization to shift its purpose to mission?” This then becomes a problem we can solve with specific steps, and even measure the change. It’s important that we acknowledge there are things we cannot measure. And it’s important to acknowledge that personal and internal renewal must go hand in hand with change (though frequently it follows obedience). But it’s equally important to acknowledge that structures are human inventions and are subject to human intervention. An understanding of organizational mechanics, systems theory and emergence really can help – I’m thinking of U-Theory, Appreciative Inquiry, Chaos theory and similar stuff..