Redemptive Missional Opportunities
We are continuing our look at the book by Bill Easum - Unfreezing Moves - Following Jesus into the mission field The other posts in the series can be found here
Unfreezing Move Five – Redemptive Missional Opportunities
|
Old way (my phrase) |
New Way (my phrase) |
|
Mission Committee |
Missional Attitude |
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Active |
Discipled |
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Program |
Reason for Being |
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Service |
Redemption |
|
Raising Money |
Sending People |
For the second element (Active > Discipled), Easum writes that stuck congregations:
“attempt to get new people involved in the origanizational and/or programmatic life of the congregation whether or not they have any biblical and spiritual foundation from which to minister. Their goal is to involve as many people as possible so they won’t leave the Church. The result is that most people are not discipled. Placing people into serving roles before being discipled usually results in a congreagtion of biblical and spiritually illiterate – good people doing good works with no idea of how to use these missional opportunities in a redemptive way.” (p111)
I think Easum is wrong in his assertion that people should not become involved in the missional activity of the Church. He is right that such people are not equiped or motivated to approach the good works from a redemptive missional opportunity perspective. But Easum seems to ignore the redemptive missional opportunity provided by having Christians working alongside non-Christians. At Northern Community we have experienced the benefit of creating environments designed to do “good works” that involve people from our congregations, as well as community volunteers and work for the dole participants. It is the sharing of this experience and the cultivation of good environments that result in many missional opportunities of a redemptive nature.
I do take Easum’s point when he writes about the danger of thinking “of outreach ministries as services to the community rather than redemptive opportunities” (p111). Yet I disagree that the solution to this danger is to only involve people who are discipled in missional activity. We need to remember that missional activity can also be a discipleship process and probably the most valuable and important one.
April 2nd, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I’m begining to wonder whether Easum’s definition of ‘mission’ is more narrow than mine. While I wouldn’t want to limit mission only to acts of service to the (broader) community I definitely see acts of service and compassion as part of the church’s mission to the world… it doesn’t take a discipled person to feed the homeless for instance, though it is only through a process of discipleship that such a person would come to realise where such an act of service fits into the broader redemptive work of God.
I’m wondering whether by the time we come to categorise this activity as being “mission” and this as being something else whether we’ve already missed the boat? If (in the words of the UK Anglican report “mission shaped church”) it isn’t God having a church which has a mission, but rather God has a mission which has a church, then surely we need to locate everything we do in the sphere of missional opportunity, and if we can’t, then why on earth are we doing it?
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:01 am
“We need to remember that missional activity can also be a discipleship process and probably the most valuable and important one.”
I agree. I don’t think that we can separate discipleship from missional activity. So much of the call to Christian living is wound up in mission. I think that it is not wise to separate discipleship from this.