Let me say up front that "missional community" has become a buzzword. As such, in this article, the term "missional community" should not be interpreted as equivalent to the current buzzword that is making the rounds. It is simply a term that I heard in one context that seemed to be the best term I have found yet to describe what God wants to do. However, there are others who use the term who do not mean the same thing. In summary, take the article at face value it does not necessarily correlate to other uses of the same term."
God is desiring to setup missional communities of believers all across the earth. Currently the body is organized into churches which are more a collection of people that meet on the basis of common beliefs much like a political party of another group. During the week they live separate lives in isolated worlds and they gather periodically, usually twice a week at most, around their commonly held beliefs. Now I am not trying to say that this is bad or tear the church down. This is not to be construed as an attack on the current church, but rather as a statement of the direction the Lord intends.
Our concept of church is not bad, but it is not what God is now desiring to do. God no longer wants to simply have a group of people that live completely separate lives and gather simply around some weekly meetings and other events. God is looking for a bride. A person, a body, for His Son. A body is not a loosely correlated group of individual parts, it is rather tightly bound unit consisting of different individual parts all so tightly bound together that one cannot exist without the other and that an individual part loses all purpose and meaning apart from the whole. An individual part of the body is individual and has specific characteristics and a personality if you will, but apart from the body that individual part loses all purpose. This is what God is looking to develop.
To often we are looking for leaders that stand aloof and are sufficient in an of themselves, but God describes us as a body. The brain is a powerful leader in the body. Let, if you take out the other parts of the body that deliver blood and oxygen to it, it becomes powerless. Any part in the body, whether it seems to be prominent and powerful, or small and insignificant depends on another part and is in turn a dependency for yet another part.
We can no longer be bound only by a common cause or a common set of beliefs. We are to be bound by a common Spirit. The same Spirit must flow through every member in the community. This means, it is not another to gather around activism, creeds, or ideals. If we are to be bound by a common spirit, then that means we have to pursue and attract the Spirit of God. This means we cannot be content with something man can create, but we are now solely dependent on God's personal involvement and that can be a costly prize to obtain. If one part of the community rejoices; all rejoice. If one part of the community weeps; all weep. Each community will have a unique expression and yet these individual expressions will come together to weave a beautiful tapestry having different patterns and different colors, but all are woven together on the same loom and of the same material.
Such a community does not destroy the individuality of each member, it rather develops it as God intended. God did not design His church to consist of individual cowboys, serving God alone and needing nobody. The community of the church needs the smallest member. One of the biggest tests for church leadership is the ability to hear the voice of God in the most unsuspecting member of the community. God often speaks in through the one we would least suspect. It is a great loss when we are too blind to recognize when He is speaking.
God often uses the least qualified member of a community to speak in order to encourage that individual. What encourages an individual to grow in God more than being used by God? What encourages one to greater depths of the Spirit more than to feel the Spirit flowing through them? We would do well to remember that God often places wisdom on the lips of the babes in the nest to encourage them to fly. It is a test for the more seasoned in God to remain in the place of humility and simplicity and be able to hear God in any way, shape, or form. The young or new Christian also often has a fresh enthusiasm that is infectious and can help those re-fire the more seasoned in God with a fresh love just as a mature marriage can be energized by recalling the days of new love.
In addition, we also have a natural tendency to become like those we are with. We end up talking alike and thinking alike to a great extent. God often needs to use another that is either new or not yet acclimated into our "system" to speak the wisdom of God that is hidden from those who have become established in certain ways.
Again, God's design for this time in history is not a group of great individuals, but rather a prolific church that consists of communities of believers that are bound together in love by the Spirit of God. Such believers are not just a group of believers, they become a community, a people because they share a common culture, common values, and a daily interaction with one another. It is a community that is not exclusive, but is, on the other hand, open ended constantly offering invitation to the poor, lost, and the dying. The face of the community is constantly changing as new members that are old, young, poor, rich, black, white, and all kinds are added to the church daily.
God desires to blend all these individuals into a community where He can dwell. A community where the defining mark is the presence of a Spirit that is from another world. People that are "other worldly" and yet they are perfectly human because they are being formed into the very kind of humans that God designed for from the beginning. Such a community is a beacon to the world because it is the only community which fulfills the lofty ideals the world has searched for since the dawn of time. The mark of the community that God is desiring will not be a creed or statement of faith. Rather it will be a presence. There will be a scent, a fragrance if you will, of another realm. There will be a love that permeates every member. You will be able to talk to each individual member and see the same thing in each member's eyes. It will be as if each member's heart is beating in perfect sync.
This does not take away from the individuality of each member. On the converse, the unity of Spirit among the community is all the more amazing because of the diversity of each individual member. The world cannot bring lasting unity in an scenario, much less among a group consisting of members that are fundamentally different. The expression of the community is different in each member, but the essence is the same. I feel the same spirit talking to a senior in the community that is very traditional but loves Jesus as I do speaking to a twenty something that would not wear a tie to save his life.
The paradox of it all is that the differences among the community fuel the balance that unity needs. We must have the unique expressions of God's personality among us, however much we gravitate towards out preferences and tend to associate only with those whose expression of faith is most similar to ours. The Spirit gives out the gifts, spreading them across the body, but we tend to fellowship most with those whose gifts are similar rather then embracing the Spirit's way of making us dependent on each other by recognizing and valuing different gifts even when they seem in opposition to our own gift.
We need the fiery holiness and reverence of the man obsessed with God's holiness and majesty. We need the love and mercy of the one who is so in awe of the tender love and grace of the Father expressed through Jesus. We need the one who carries the burden of prayer night and day and raises their voice in agony of Spirit that the kingdom might come. We need the one whose heart exists just to sit and worship oblivious to the outside world. We need the passion of the evangelist insistent that we do not ignore the outside world lest it perish.
The extremes of God's expression in each individual bring a tension that creates a unified community that is a miracle of God. It is not a cultist unity that comes from conformance to a single pattern, form or man, but rather it is a Divine beauty that is more akin to a gorgeous field of wildflowers whose beauty is found in the diversity of shapes and colors found in the various members of the field. This tension protects the community from drifting to one extreme and becoming myopic.
So often a ministry drifts towards a particular truth and stays there. Now God often gives ministries a specific "flavor" and that is part of their greater ministry to the body of Christ, but within a body there can be a danger to identify solely with a particular flavor and not operate in balance. The thing that God has laid on your heart I am responsible to support, uplift, develop, and participate in because God is using you to bring that to my attention. Perhaps I don't have the fire of evangelism, but the burden of prayer. The insistent voice of the evangelist to reach the perishing is God's voice to me through His body to reach the perishing. I do not forsake the unique voice and gifting God has given me, but rather become more balanced by submitting to the voice of God through another.
If a community cannot bear this tension, they will not be the kind of community I am talking about. If there is no conflict in the community then I question if God is at work. Now by conflict I do not mean constant dissension and division, but there should be the tension of God working his purpose for the community out through the individual expression of each member. The unity of the Spirit will be tested and developed by just these conflicts.
Now we have already said that God's plan is for a community and not for individuals, but, like everything else, we have to apply the balance of the Word. This certainly does not mean that God may not take someone into isolation and develop them that way for a season. God can develop a man however He wishes and a constant test we face is whether we hold believers to Biblical standards or to our own standard of experiences or our own interpretations of Biblical truth. Let's acknowledge and live by God's patterns, but let's not try to box Him into a corner either.
Also, even within a community God is going to have to do individual works. He is going to have to take each member aside and test them. He is going to have to show them where they stand in Him. He is going to have to bring them to a place where they hammer out their relationship with Him individually so that they can be a full member of His community rather than one that rides the spiritual overflow of the other community members. Again, the power and unity of the community depends on the individual work in each believer, not on adherence to uniformity.
Such a community is required for believer to develop to the maturity that God desires. When an individual is down, they are brought up by another's passion. When one drifts towards compromise, they are re-centered by the fire of the holiness that burns in another's heart. When legalism creeps in one heart, it is melted by the mercy and love shown by another. When fasting becomes too painful, the support of other fasting members spurs us onward. Isolated and alone, a believer would falter unless they are in a unique training place with God, but in a community they flower and develop because of the body.
Such a community is missional because they have come to view life as a mission. A mission has targeted objectives. Everything is geared towards a single goal. They are no longer wandering aimlessly to simply enjoy life but are rather committed in unison to the mission given by Jesus. The unity of the Spirit will draw diverse individuals to a single, focused mission. They are diverse in expression and gifting and yet unified in the mission. A community with no mission is simple a club. The world has enough of those. We need both these words "community" and "missional" to produce what God wants.
Do we see life as a life and death mission? This, I believe, is one of things that really separates our western view of the world from the believers who are in persecuted countries. In those countries, to accept Christ is to force you into a decision of how you will live your life. To be obedient to Christ is to be on a mission for the rest of your life. Our environment is more lax. We have a pseudo-Christian culture, especially in America, which seems to make our Christianity fit in with American culture while it is actually directly opposed to the American way. We are lacking many of the external factors that force persecuted believers into absolute commitment, although this situation will not last forever. Regardless of the environment, we are still called to be true to the one that we love and lay aside the things which so easily entangle us (Hebrews 12:1).
Christianity is to be focused around a mission. Jesus gave a great commission to go make disciples. If you notice, the Christian communities that are thriving are those which are taking that commission seriously. He also told us to not lay up treasures on earth. This further focuses the mission. Raise up disciples and invest in a spiritual kingdom. That is our mission. There are things we are required to do to live in this earth, but where is the focus? Do we do the bare minimum that we need to do? Do we live simply so as to not become entrapped in the age? A simple, focused life can help one to stay on the mission.
I recently spent a day with the Atlanta IHOP community that is raising up 24/7 prayer and worship in Atlanta. They are not there yet, but they almost have prayer and worship going up 24 hours a day on most days of the week. Such an ministry fuels the community I am describing. When a part of the believer's focus is making sure that prayer and worship is going up 24 hours a day, it helps to refocus that efforts of that body. If prayer and worship are important enough to lay aside other pursuits and to suffer the inconvenience that it takes to keep it going 24 hours a day, then the community must be focused on something greater that personal schedules and comfort. A ministry such as this helps to bring a body to the focus of mission that I am describing.
How can you not be missional when you peak in the prayer room one morning and see members worshiping and praying and know that they have been doing that since the late hours of the night? Such a sacrifice and focus fuels that understanding that we are on a mission. We have to catch this sense of mission until like Paul we can say "this one thing I do." Do we do "one thing," or do we prioritize among multiple things that we do? Do we live for the mission or do we live with a list of priorities where "church" is something important but also on a list of priorities including work, play, activities, etc. It is not wrong or secular to work, but it is not a priority. An occupation is necessary to provide for our families, provide for the gospel and should be viewed as our current mission field. Beyond that it is not part of the mission of our lives. Likewise, children are to be raised with focus. We must prepare them for the mission of their lives, not just shuttle them to and from activities so that they can participate in whatever extracurricular activity is the fad of the day.
If we are to nurture and develop such a community, then one thing that we must understand is that the community God is desiring to raise up must be known more for what it is for than what it is against. What it is for must be the defining mission statement and what it is against will flow out of this. A problem throughout history is that people gather around what they are against. A church body cannot gather simply around what they are against and thrive, but this happens more than we know. This is one explanation for why many new, different communities of believers are thriving while many others are having massive problems and not going anywhere.
If the community is built on what the believers are against and what they did not like in another church; they are doomed to failure. However, if the body has come together around the things it wants to see and the vision God has given rather than simply in opposition to the failures and faults it sees in others then that body will thrive. A body cannot stand on criticism. Jesus Himself said that the mark of believers would be that they have an incredible love one for another. This does not mean that the we should not expose errors in the church, but we have to examine our message. What is the essence of our message taken as a whole? If the essence of the message is criticism, then it will not survive.
How do you define your body of believers? Is it simply we are against liberalism, humanism, compromise, etc or is your essence a desire to be like Jesus, live in His holiness, love each other, etc. You see the best and most perfect way to rebuke the wrong is to live for something that is right. If you live for what is true and good and perfect, you will become a rebuke to all that is imperfect and compromised. If you focus solely on what is imperfect and compromised then you are in danger of the Pharisaical mode. Believe what is true, live it, and empower others to do that same.
Can such a body exist again on the earth? It can and it will. God desires it and is placing the seed of desire for it in the hearts of believers across the nation. It will come. It may perhaps be the "city" church that many desire. The "city church" is a concept based on Paul's letters which address the church in a specific city where Paul seems to treat the body in a certain area as a whole whether or not they actually all met together. Many groups have tried to implement a "city church," but the problem is that too often, such groups declare themselves as the city church looking down on all the other bodies that are not a part of their model; missing the other expressions of the body in the city that God has planted as well.
The city church comes from these individual missional communities of believers. Each one is unique and has a unique expression and gifting. However, they are also in relationship with other believers in the city and "cross pollinate" among the other ministries in the city working together to advance the cause of Christ in their city. This is the city church. It is not a single "church," but rather the body in a city consisting of many individual and unique fellowships all recognizing that each individual body is God's gift to the others. Realizing that there is no competition in the body and that when another community of believers is strengthened, the Kingdom is advanced, and if the Kingdom is advanced then our community's mission is being accomplished such a community of believers can rejoice for the successes of another body even if they come at the price of their own increase.
Again, can this exist? Is this goal too high and lofty? No, it is not. It is for such a thing that Jesus died. And so, let us not throw stones and tear down the expressions of the body that exist today even if they are lacking. Let us rather hunger and thirst for this expression of the body of Christ on the earth and let us work towards it in our own personal relationships. Again, the best rebuke to compromised Christianity and to the deterioration of Christianity from a revolutionary movement to a yawn invoking group of people that are all too at home in the world, is to begin to stake our lives on the gospel.
I was recently passed a comment from a missionary friend of mine. A believer in a persecuted country was asked about his freedoms to share the gospel. His reply was that he could do whatever he wanted as long as he was willing to die. That willing to die thing must be first dealt with for the church to rise above where we are now. In a persecuted country, the church is strong because that is dealt with at the genesis of the Christian life. To choose Christ is to make that decision and so once that decision has been made, they go on in the things of God with a sense of mission and dedication. We must make that same decision. We must die to our self life, our desire for ease, prosperity, and comfort and commit ourselves to the mission of Christ. This sounds like rhetoric, but it must become a hearts cry where we truly die to ambition, careers, success, and whatever spurious pursuits are shifting our focus off of the mission that Jesus Christ calls us to.
I was recently in an elevator that had video feeds of the news in the elevator. There was one other person in the elevator and it flashed a story of two would be suicide bombers who had blown themselves up strapping on explosives in Afghanistan. I heard the person mutter "how stupid" as they read the story. I thought to myself, "stupid?" It is only stupid from a western view of life. We seek to maximize life in both experiences and in length in order to maximize the pleasure we can obtain during our brief stay on the earth.
The two individuals that died decided that something greater than momentary pleasure was worth living and dying for. No, the real stupidity belongs with us who can find nothing worth dying for and so spend every day that we have seeking to prolong the physical pleasures that can accompany living. Now, do not get me wrong I am not in favor of suicide bombers and believe that those individuals were bound to another deception that seeks to destroy them in another way. However, I pray that when my life is at its end and I prepare to breathe my last that I will have more in common with the devotion of a suicide bomber than with an American that finds such extreme devotion and sacrifice "stupid." I fear that perhaps presently my life is more tilted towards the American view of life, but let us look forward to the new year and give ourselves in devotion to the one for whom the sacrifice of our lives is truly worthy. And let us learn something from the terrorists: there is a cause and a revolution that is more valuable than the pleasures of living.
