why do we need to push for mission?
Wayne poses an interesting question in one of the threads and I thought it worthy of its own thread:
“I guess the question I’m really asking is about the whole push for mission at all. Whenever I hear people talking about mission, changing the world, that it’s all about “them”, being missional, I get an uneasiness in my gut. Perhaps it is just where I’m at in my journey, but I also suspect there’s something more to it.
Why do we feel the need to push mission? Why do we even create an ambition for it? And before people start throwing verses at me, I am well aware of the great commission, etc… But somehow I think in our culture we are missing the point with mission. Mission isn’t something we need to strive for, it is an expression of who we are….”
Watcha all think?
March 17th, 2007 at 10:54 am
This is a good question!
I do think we ‘push’ for it to some degree, but I imagine that is because our natural default is selfishness and laziness.
I reckon it’d be wonderful if mission actually flowed naturally out of who we are, but in my observation we tend towards self centreness -which then would suggest the problem is in ‘who we are’.
If we look at how we change ‘who we are’ I often feel it is by choosing to live differently. By doing what we know is right and good we reshape our own identity even if we find it difficult.
Not sure if all that makes sense on a Sat miorning!
March 17th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Link to discussion
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/index.php/2007/03/16/not-my-precioussss/#comments
March 19th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Just adding to this discussion, I have often heard, especially in emerging church circles, the whole concept of removing the “us” and “them” polarity. In otherwords, there are Christians in the world and non-Christians (I hate that term). As soon as there is an “us” and “them” divide, there is a need to push mission, because the “them” or non-Christians need to be missionalised.
Mission can then very easily become an ambition to strive for, a performance-based achievement, and can give us status and significance.
But if there is truly no divide between “us” and “them”, then what is mission? There is no “them” to missionalise, only people to love. It doesn’t matter whether those people give verbal assent to a following of Jesus or not, because there is no divide.
In this kind of thinking, no-one needs to be missionalised, and everyone does. Mission then becomes an expression of who we are and an act of love - no matter who you are.
So why do our churches push mission so much?
March 19th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
because God tell us to
March 19th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
“God tells us to”
well, not quite. It is another of those situations where we’ve invented our own meaning for the concept. The idea of ‘mission’ is so tied up in old concepts of traveling to heathen nations to tell the Hottentots about God (which mostly involved convincing the women to wear shirts, for some reason).
If we want to say God tells us to push for mission we need to work out what God meant when sent us, not what John Theodosius Van Der Kemp thought it meant or how Lancelot Threlkeld understood the term.
March 19th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Homer, that is such a patronising response….
I agree with ADHD, that what needs to be examined is our concept of mission. Of course God is a sending God - He sent Jesus. And Jesus sends us too….
But the question is what does sending look like? How does it happen? What is the motive? What does it mean to truly love people without agendas of “them” being a “mission”? These are the things that I am questioning.
Please refrain from patronising responses Homer, but feel free to enter the dialogue….
March 19th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
with the greatest respect it isn’t patronising but simply a statement of the obvious.
There is no need to cogitate about it.
You simply tell people about how Jesus has taken the punishment for their sins on the cross. It can happen anywhere.
You are doing this because of grace God selected you and therefore you tell people of the same thing hoping they gain the same benefit as you.
March 19th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
a statement of the obvious?
Again no. It is a statement of what is obvious to you, but that doesn’t mean it is obvious to me.
That said, you then define your assumptions about the word very well. And I like the simplicity in that summing up. however if it was indeed obvious to everyone that “It can happen anywhere” you wouldn’t have needed to say it.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Evangelical churches are well oiled marketing machines. Their ulterior motive is to fulfill the great commission to increase church attendance. More converts mean more revenue.
Why do traditional and deadmergent churches continue to struggle to attract worshippers ? Because shallow ‘believers’ prefer services that feel like being in MTV or a rock concert.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Evangelical churches do mission because we are told to do it.
We are serving God by doing it.
‘traditional’ and liberal churches has either simply forgot why they meet or probably do not know why they meet.
March 20th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Homer, who do the evangelical churches do mission to? Who needs to be “missioned”? And how do you know that this group or type of person needs to be “missioned”?
March 21st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
people who do not know about Jesus and even some people who claim they do know about Jesus
March 21st, 2007 at 3:21 pm
The difficulty I have with a simplistic statement like that is that I know people who claim not to follow Jesus, but by very heart and nature are much more followers of Him than many who do claim to follow Jesus. Perhaps the Jesus that many people reject is the image of Him that much of “church” portays of Him - which I could argue is a misrepresentation of Him. No wonder many reject Him.
It is often said that God looks at the heart, not the outward. It is not our place to judge who is a follower and who isn’t. Sure, we can use people’s conscious words and admissions as a guide, but it is God who is the ultimate judge.
I know that when I group people as “christians” and “non-christians”, I very easily act one way around one group of people and another way around the other. Agendas creep in and it actually muddies the water when it comes to truly loving people. No-one wants to be considered a target to be converted!
The church should be less focussed on converting people and more focussed on transforming themselves into the people God wants them to be. Mission will be an expression of the people we are transformed into….
“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.” Matthew 23:15
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:55 am
Wayne,
in John 15 We are told we need to bear fruit.
Those that do not are cut off.
Simple enough!
Jesus himself said those that believe obey his commands.
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:09 am
And that fruit would be love, joy peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith… right?
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Plastic fruit from a distance looks like real fruit until you take a bite from it. Many people claim and appear to have fruit but in reality do not. Others seem to have it covered up, but the seeds are there to produce a hundred-fold crop.
Good luck to you Homer as you become the arbitrator of good fruit and who you will “missionalise” and who will be your cronies….
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I haven’t at any stage said I was judging at all however there are easy ways to judge as we are called on to do so.
Obeying Jesus instead of hating him is one.
Confronting the world instead of embracing it is another we find in chapter 15.
not too hard to understand.
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:59 pm
You make some excellent points BBEP@LP. Confronting the world instead of embracing it is a very hard one indeed. We are told to be in the world, but not of it. We are to follow Jesus’ example, where he spent his time with those who were cast out from society, but whom represented all that is wrong with the world. If we keep in mind what wayne said about the plastic fruit, then one could assume that those with plastic fruit would do everything they could to appear that they are out in the crowd, bringing God’s love to them, or bringing them to church etc. Those with real fruit would not appear to be bearing fruit at all, except to those who actually have tasted of that fruit. Why wouldn’t anyone else be seeing the fruit? Because those with the real fruit wouldn’t be showing it off. You’d have to taste it before you realised it was real.
There’s a friend of mine who is an amazing guy on the outside. But his fruit is in the wrong basket. The purpose of ministering to people (or being a “missionary”) is to take God’s love out of the church and into the world. Sure, there need to be people running the church, and accepting those who go there to find God. However, if the ones who are striving for God and won’t go to church to find him are rejected by you, then you’re doing more damage than good.
This friend of mine and I went to high school together. We were both at CCC at the same time, both rose up in ministry. But he’s so far into church that he neglects his friends, whom he used to be a huge example to at school.
BBEP@LP, what is your opinion of this situation: my friend who does a huge amount for the church, is very close to God, but does not go to those who could really use him, or me, who goes to parties with these guys, occassionally gets drunk with them, but on the whole have had each of them at some point come up and tell me that they think that something I said was profound, or that they see God in me… out of us two, who is doing the missions? Or do we need both?
Sometime I wonder what the state of teenagers on the Northern Beaches would be if everyone from CCC’s youth groups would neglect their Friday night “I’m better than you” fest and go out to a party and spend time with their friends, without the need to start preaching at them with words, just plain loving on them?
I think what you said is actually hard to understand, and I’m not particularly articulate at this point as I’ve been working very long hours recently. In fact, I’m tempted to delete everything I just wrote, but I’m going to throw it out there… exactly what does confronting the world consist of? And what does embracing consist of, and what should we do to avoid it?
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:29 am
Good questions emanresu. Keep asking them, because the pursuit of answers to such questions may just lead you on a journey toward living the Kingdom…. (I actually think you already know the answers deep down - go with your gut instinct…)
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:30 am
if you do not talk to people about Jesus then it seems to me one is not showing much love at all.
Remember evangelising is a gift. Joseph for example showed through his work in prison his committment to God.
It is much easier to talk about Jesus if you stand out at work because you are different in your work ethic and approach.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:57 am
It’s fine to talk about Jesus, but if you are misrepresenting him, then your talk about him actually turns people away from Him. Jesus doesn’t force Himself on anyone, He just loved people. He left it up to people when they were ready, and if they weren’t, he let them go (e.g. the rich young ruler).
Having an agenda to tell people about Jesus and an ambition that leads us to do so could potentially be bordering on misrepresenting Jesus….
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:38 am
Jesus got on the wrong side of the religious heavies becuase of his propensity to hang out at parties with the wrong people - As Christians we tend as a whole to want to isolate ourselves from contaminatoin that we are scared will get us if we are friends with peole who drink too much or swear too much or fart in public spaces and blame the person next to them - I have done that - gees it’s fun.
Jesus hung out with the outrcast - those rejected by the religious culture of the time…I think we have set up a whole system that is far more like the world view of te pharisiees than it is the early church or Jesus for that matter.
Parties and drunkeness it is for me - staying at church all cloistered and protected achieves nothing and benefits no-one. You can’;t confront the workd with it’s wrong focus’ if you aren;t out their identifying with their workd and situation…the church should be an antidote to the hyper individualism of the culture around us - but we can;t be an antidote if they never see how we respond to this culture!
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
“out of us two, who is doing the missions? Or do we need both?”
I’ve done both (usually between a Saturday & a Sunday!) and find that often, one group doesn’t particularly understand the other aspect of me (the churchies probably get the others side of me less).
At the moment, I can honestly say that it’s tearing me in 2. I see value in both, but I’m trying to pick the one that I’m meant to.
Tough choice…
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Jesus didn’t force himself on anyone ?
One had to choose between Jesus or the world.
He was the door. If you didnt go through him you couldn’t get to the kingdom.
He said he brought dissent to families ie people would embrace him and others wouldn’t.
He was the true vine and only through him could you bear fruit.
You cannot talk to people about Jesus unless you live in the world but you must remember most of them do not want light but prefer darkness.
Jesus said he came to help sinners repent which is why he lived amongst them and why we must too.
We must however endeavour to live lifes worthy of Christ and to embrace the world.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm
“most of them do not want light but prefer darkness.”
That’s often stated, but I’m not sure I entirely agree… I think most people think they ARE living in light. To tell them that ‘their light is darkness’ is where the conflict begins.
You are quite right in that we all need to know what is true light, and what is ‘darkness masquerading as light’.
Too much light is hard to look at. Too much salt ruins food.
There needs to be some kind of balance. Jesus was effective in His ministry because (aside from being God!) he demonstrated a heart for the lost, not just a heart for the light.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:59 pm
“We must however endeavour to live lifes worthy of Christ and to embrace the world.”
Sounds very much like a performance based religion rather than a transformation of being….. I say die to our pathetic attempts at living lives worthy of Christ, and instead be content to be and wait for Him to reveal our path of transformation. This requires a great deal more faith that God will actually come through and reveal our path, and even more faith to then walk it than it does to just go to church and keep our treadmill of religion turning…..
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Wayne, we are told to imitate Jesus.
I wouldn’t say that is performance based in the least merely we are living lives we should in terms o the grace that has been given to us.
performance based is where WE can gain entrance to the Kingdom.
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
One can be saved by grace, but still seek to live their life according to a set of performances. I can have friendships because I feel like I “should”. I can do mission because I feel like this is the thing I “should” do. I can love people because I feel like I “should”.
We “should” all over ourselves!
How much better when these things come from who we are rather than things we “should” do!
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
“How much better when these things come from who we are rather than things we “should” do!”… and perhaps therein lies the rub - how to tell the difference in ourselves (from who we are compared with what we should do) is difficult enough, let alone trying to judge the ‘performance’ or not of another.
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Religious organisations are historically better at telling people what to do and what to believe than they are at encouraging people to identify what God has planted within them… to recognise what makes them “come alive”… to spot their God-given vocation and live it out in joyous obedience…
But there’s some faint winds of change afoot. Let the wind blow.