Missional in the Moment

Confession: I sometimes struggle with what it means to live a missional life as an ordinary believer.

I can’t seem to find direction in the environment of Missional Gurus who challenge the fruitfulness of missional living and suggest that most of us are Missional In Name Only.  I don’t have a church, ministry, or project to list on my missional resume.

Sometimes I get an attack of performance anxiety. Recently my husband pointedly asked me, “Are you just looking for something to do to prove that you are missional?” Ouch.

So I threw out my missional resume and rather than redesigning my life in missional themes, I asked the Lord to begin teaching me what it means to be missional in my life and circumstances, not as an add-on feature. Unless and until God asks something bigger of me, I will try to live fully missional in the life I have.

Let me share a little of what I am learning. It isn’t earth-shattering, but for me it is a part of letting my life be transformed.

A few of the key ideas are that I try to be
more present
more aware
more sensitive
more intentional.

• The main thing that I learned about myself is that in order to love others, I usually have to go one step beyond what I am culturally comfortable with. I was raised to respect other people’s privacy, to be non-intrusive, to be non-demonstrative, and to be somewhat introverted about approaching others. Not that I am now obnoxious, but in order to express care to others, I have to step outside of my comfort zone and risk stepping into theirs.
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• I have also discovered that I have to stay present in the moment and present to the people around me. Most missional moments appear fairly insignificant.
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• Missional moments look like an opportunity to let someone know that I care about them and what they are going through, sometimes just with words, sometimes with specific actions.
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• Remembering I carry within me the light, power, and life of Jesus Christ, the choice is always available to me to share that love with others or to withhold it.  I try to be generous with His abundant love.
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• I am sharpening my awareness that everywhere around me are people who need words of life and sharpening my sensitivity to where God is at work.
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• From a kingdom perspective, every act of love and care is an investment in eternity. I remind myself of the eternal significance of even the smallest opportunities to love.
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• That’s it. Learning moment by moment to hear from the Father, to follow the Spirit, and to share the love of Jesus in every imaginable opportunity that presents itself during my day.

Yes, this ought to be christianity 101. However, it took me five years to really remove the church-program lens from my understanding of how to live the christian life. My earlier attempts at understanding how to be missional were through that lens.

I am tempted to not publish this because it sounds so simplistic. Yet I know that there are probably others like me who are fumbling along wanting to be missional outside of a context that would programize or institutionalize their efforts.

In order for this to soak into the marrow of who I am, so that missional is more than an abstraction, it has to start at the most basic places.

The reminders that I give myself along the way are pretty simple…

Stay awake.
Love the one you’re with.
Take the extra step.
This is the reality of the kingdom.
This is eternal.

Body Odor

Last week I had several incidents of being around really strident, arrogant believers.  Here are a few examples.

• I sat speechless in my living room while a dogmatic charismatic hammered on about how the only way to be a Christian mirrored the way he believes and smashed everything outside of his little box as inferior to God’s will.  What he doesn’t see is the relational damage that occurs around him as people try to give him more grace than he will give them.  As an example, his adult daughter will not even tell him the name of the church she attends because she already knows that he will be critical.
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• The following evening in a casual gathering of believers from various church backgrounds, a reformed gentleman got himself so worked up over invalidating what others shared and proving right belief that he basically blew up the meeting.  While others in the meeting want to embrace him in the fellowship, he makes it really difficult to do so.
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• From the website of our CLB, “God’s intent is for the church to demonstrate to the world what the kingdom of God is like.  As we grow in our understanding of the kingdom, our mission is to be like Christ by representing the character of Christ in our thoughts and actions, our families, and our daily lives as ambassadors of the kingdom.” Sounds amazing doesn’t it?  Except people in the community would not remotely recognize this as describing the group.  We continue to encounter people dealing with the aftermath of involvement with these “kingdom people.” There is nothing about their exclusive reputation, insular nature, and divisive behavior that demonstrates their supposedly advanced maturity.

What I don’t get is why so often those who claim most loudly to be on the inside track of the deeper christian life are also the ones most likely to be considered asses by everyone else.  Their claim is “we are the only ones who are really doing it right,” yet their reputation does not reflect that in any way.

At what point can we be deluded into thinking that it doesn’t matter that instead of the aroma of Christ we have body odor?

What to do?  I suppose you don’t tell someone they have body odor. I wonder if the attitude of superiority is what prevents them from seeing that everyone around them backs up a step. Hopefully at some point the fruit of the Holy Spirit will become evident in their life and the aroma of Christ will overpower the body odor. 

It is sadly interesting that this condition afflicts the people who claim to have the inside track of the one and only way to truth and church life or whatever. With this depth of knowledge and understanding, one would expect that they would demonstrate in their manner a deeper knowing and reflection of the nature of Christ.

This should be obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway…

If we represent Jesus, it isn’t okay if people think we’re an ass.

The Google Meme

I was tagged by Bill Lollar to do this meme. So I took a few minutes to check it out.

Google your full first name and the word “needs” like this – “William needs” – and then post the first 10 things that Google finds.

First using my real name, which a good many of you know, the results were….

1. **** needs mental help.

Not happy with that, I tried using Grace instead, the results were….

1. Grace needs constant care.

Upon learning of these serious needs, I found myself incapable of completing the meme according to the rules. ;)

If you want to join in the fun, post your results in the comments or post a link to your blog, and include a link to Bill. Be sure to visit his blog to see how it’s supposed to be done.

Male and Female He Created Them

Just wondering…

Assuming that God made pairs of every animal, He already had the male/female idea in mind.

Why do you suppose that He didn’t make humans as a pair at first?

And on what day do you think Eve was created?

Here are the relevant passages:

Genesis 1:26-28, 31, 2:1-3

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule…”

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Genesis 2:4-7, 15, 18, 20-22

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Sunday Driver

On the other hand, and even while being a Crazy Driver, the Holy Spirit seems pretty oblivious to my impatience about “getting somewhere.”

So often I’m like, “Come on! Are we moving?
Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Do you know that feeling too?