How Missionary is Your Church? (An evaluation)

By © Salim Photography/ www.salimphoto.com

The following comes from David Bosch's Transforming Mission.  Usually, I post extended quotations on my Scatterings blog, but felt this was worth posting here.  I found the list personally challenging as I reflected on my career as a pastor and church planter.  I encourage you to do a bit of self-examination of you are leader in a local church.  Forget about your seating capacity and offering plates for a moment.  How does your church measure up to Bosch's keys below:

Manifestations of the Missionary Dimension of a Local Church

1. True worship

2. Hospitality and welcome to outsiders

3. Pastor doesn't monopolize ministry, treating members as mere objects of pastoral care

4. Members equipped for their calling in society

5. Structurally pliable and innovative

6. Doesn't defend the privileges of a select group

7. Intentional and direct involvement in society

8. Moves beyond the "walls of the church" to engage in mission in areas of evangelism and work for justice and peace

So, how about it? How "missionary" is your church really?  Also, I'd be interested to hear from you if you have points to add.  What would you add (or challenge) to Bosch's list?

Haste Breeds Shallowness & a Dash of Prufrock: Lausanne Theology Discussion (5 of 7)

Welcome to the fifth of seven articles in response to the Lausanne Theology Working Group's paper on "The Whole Church Taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World."  If you've not had a chance to read the paper, you can do so by following these links:

"The Whole Church Taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World: Reflections of the Lausanne Theology Working Group" (condensed version)

"The Whole Church Taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World: Reflections of the Lausanne Theology Working Group" (full version)

You can also read all seven parts of this series here.
__________


2. Regarding the Whole Church (Continued)
Finally on the Church section, I just want to stand and applaud for the entire second paragraph on page 21 (full version).  “History shows us that haste breeds shallowness.”  This is so true and so critical.  And yet, my heart just sort of groans within me.  How do we get fully behind such a statement?  This is very much related to what I said before about my concern that we might in Cape Town get excited and feel supportive of such ideas but then not have the follow through to really bring about change.  The reality is these 4,000+ delegates at Cape Town actually represent the whole Church and every segment thereof.  The potential to bring about real change is undeniable.  But is the will there?  Is there the level of commitment necessary to faithfully and perseveringly speak these things back to the global Church? Or will we come back to another Lausanne gathering years from now and simply repeat, “haste breeds shallowness” and confess that nothing has changed?  Am I just a naïve little boy?  Let me share an experience I had recently.

I sit on a council that provides some level of administrative governance for a large group of local churches.  I’m one of the youngest at the table so I try to simply serve, to do what I’m told, to be a help.

"Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use ..."

But in this past year, I was asked to lead a subgroup focused on helping to elevate the local-global value of the entire body of churches.  The idea (at least as I saw it) was, “How can we become collectively more valuable to the global Church and more connected to the wealth of the global Church?”  Well, as our subgroup began the process of brainstorming ideas about how to accomplish this, I heard the news that the Lausanne Global Conversation was soon to be launched.  I knew that this was the answer for our organization. 

I began spending hours studying the site and considering different ways in which we could use it in our organization.  After some time, I brought a full report and recommendation to the council.  All seemed convinced.  There was a unanimous vote of affirmation to pursue or organization’s full engagement with the LGC.  I drove home feeling excited.  All members of the council were to create profiles, add content, create profiles for their churches, and together plan to introduce it to the full body of churches in our organization.  I waited, waited . . . nothing happened.  Not one individual from that council followed through with creating a profile after that meeting.  It was extremely disheartening.

Now this story serves to illustrate two issues.  First, will our Cape Town experience be just like that?  Will there be great swells of affirmation and a massive “getting-behind” certain ideas and calls and priorities and then no follow through?  Will our commitments have any teeth?  And secondly, if we do have the passion and commitment to actually go home and call our organizations, churches, etc. to these commitments, will we be able to persevere when they look at us as say, “Ummm . . . well, not sure if we really want to do that.” For myself, I simply wanted to write off that council – a verse about pearls and swine came to mind.  But I know I don’t actually have the liberty to do that.  I cannot simply drop these things when they are met with opposition or (worse) apathy.

"Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'"

Here is the feeling that fills my heart right now.  As a worker in God’s global mission, I feel in myself a great dependency on my 4,000+ brothers and sisters to not only verbally affirm those things that we agree on at Cape Town, but to use every opportunity and platform God has given them to announce, explain, and defend these things to the larger Church.  I am absolutely counting on my brothers and sisters from the U.S., Europe, Latin America, India, and elsewhere.  I’m counting on the 30-40 from Nepal, the hundreds from Africa, the one from Bhutan. I’m counting on them to go home and proclaim and teach with perseverance to the church where they are that “haste breeds shallowness” and all the other things that God lays on our hearts.

"Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all!'"

In short, Mr. Prufrock . . . yes!!!

Question #5 – Am I ridiculously naïve to think that God could actually give us (the Church) a lasting and significant common ground at Cape Town that we will be so deeply compelled by that we then univocally, unswervingly, and perseveringly take back to the whole Church?

What if we really did bring in the poor, crippled, blind and lame?

I’ve really been blessed recently by the ministry of Joni Eareckson Tada and her “Joni and Friends” network.  I won’t get into the details about why I contacted them, but basically, I was struggling to know how to minister to someone that was going through a period of immense suffering.  I wrote to Joni and Friends about the situation and received a prompt email reply withsome wonderful words of encouragement and advice.  The next week a package arrived in the mail with a number of resources that I feel are going to be tremendously helpful to me. Included was a message by Joni on the subject of hope that I have already forwarded on to the person I’m seeking to help.  Also included was Joni’s book Heaven Your Real Home, which is in my opinion the best book on Heaven that has been written.  Get it and read it, you’ll be glad.

     
Now, let me just throw something out there that has been on my mind today.  You know, of course, that I’m a church planter and church planting strategist in the Chicago area.  Part of my job involves identifying unreached or under-engaged ethnographic/demographic groups and to mobilize prayer and raise up missionaries for those pockets of lostness.  Well, I heard something today in a message by Joni that just really got me thinking.  Joni said that in her ministry they take Luke 14 very seriously.  Here’s what I read there:

 He said also to the man who had invited him, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, "Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" But he said to him, "A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.' But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, 'I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.' And another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.' And another said, 'I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.' So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, 'Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.' And the servant said, 'Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.' And the master said to the servant, 'Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 

(Luk 14:12-23 ESV)

And so I got to thinking, what if we really did go out and do that?  What if we had specific church plants that were focused entirely on bringing in the disabled?  What if some of our dying and gasping churches – with more empty pews than people – shifted their focus on reaching the poor, crippled, blind, and lame?  What if?  Well, actually the Lord Jesus gives us the answer in this chapter.  He says that at least two things will result:

1. You will be blessed . . . for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

2. My house will be filled.

You know, for people that talk a great talk about believing and living by the Bible, we so often fail to practice some of the most straightforward principles.  For people that often get so infatuated with the notion of church growth and spend millions on conferences and books and seminars to learn the latest cutting-edge strategies, we often ignore the simplicity and certainty of Christ’s own words.  You want to fill the house of God?  Go out and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.  Invite the disabled. 


So I am calling on the New Work Team of Chicago Metro Baptist Association and all my readers out there (or maybe both my readers out there), to start praying.  Let’s pray specifically that God will raise up church planters in several different areas of Chicago to plant churches that are focused on reaching disabled people with the hope and wholeness of Jesus Christ.


I've also noted that Joni has been very involved with Lausanne in the past.  I'm wondering if she'll be among the 400 U.S. Americans at Cape Town next year and, if so, whether or not I'll get a chance to meet her.  I'm always pretty bad about that stuff though.  I feel weird about talking to famous people that I admire and usually chicken out.  We'll see, I guess.