The Hsu’s Views

“It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church” Moltmann 1977:64

Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. (Aagaard 1973:13)

There is a church because there is a mission, not vice versa. (Aagaard 1974:423)

To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love.

David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 390.

I’ve been wrestling with needing to define the term “missional,” largely because I get nervous when I hear the word used without a healthy understanding of the term. Too often, the word is thrown into a conversation as if people knew what it meant (I’m probably very guilty of this.) And people listen politely, don’t ask for a definition (because, speaking autobiographically, I would give a long multi-syllabic response which only furthers the confusion.)

I’m most alarmed when “missional” is used as a synonym for “missions” or any outward Christian expression of love, care and concern toward others. These are good things to do, but is very different from what missional means.

Missions can be seen as a “department” of the church that funds various evangelistic or social service activities. It is seen as a subset of what the church as an organization does. Missions is a noun. Missional, in contrast, is an adjective that attaches the idea of “God with a mission”, with “followers on mission.” The shift in thinking is that while missions is something you do… and is often outsourced to professionals or those really committed to God, missional describes the way a disciple lives as one that organizes his life around God’s mission.

I think it is critically important that the church in N. America moves away from the idea that we can fulfill our mission in the world by proxy through missionaries, and personally assume the privilege/responsibility as followers of Jesus.

Alan Hirsch has written a great post about the difference between the “emerging” church people and those who are “missional” church people. Both groups share the desire to find a more relevant way to following Jesus in this new world, Hirsch maintains a distinction between the two. He argues that the “emerging” movement is a renewal movement, whereas the “missional” camp is a missionary movement. In the post, he further elaborates on the distinctions and pleads for restraint on willy-nilly use of the term “missional.” He writes:

And my advice to all you folks on both sides of the debate that mix up the term, be warned! What you are doing is only making it harder for the Church to come to grips with its deepest sense of call and purpose in this time and place–no less! You are therefore mucking around with what could be one of the most significant ideas that the Church has to grapple with if we are going to survive, let alone thrive, in the 21st Century. For God’s sake, be clear in your use of the term or can I suggest that you stop using it.

The post is quite articulate and deserves a good read. Note also his pairing of Missional with Incarnational. The incarnation of Jesus highlights the fact that the best medium for the gospel to be communicated is in the life of a person that dwells among others. Missions might be about going out and doing stuff, but comes back. Missions can also connote an activity or event where the proclamation of the gospel is primarily a bunch of facts one needs to know. In contrast, missional is about going out… and staying out… developing relationships with people and incarnating the gospel message to others.

How do you balance an understanding of the gospel that calls for individual response, with an understanding that includes the redemption and transformation of creation? Or put another way, is the gospel just about saving souls, or is there also a transformation of the ills of society and creation as suggested in a Kingdom theology?

Tim Keller sets out a few of this thoughts in this article for Leadership Journal. No surprise in my response. I enjoy the analysis and the attempt to proclaim both aspects of the gospel.

In this podcast from the folks at Audio Ur, Skye Jethani , David Swanson , and Matt Tebbe discuss Tim Keller’s article.

This is the second of a two part entry. The first is here.

Ellul continues to describe the scandal of X (true Christianity) by evaluating how our need to create systems and order runs counter to X.

“When we are told that the church has ministers, and its life is organized around them, well and good. But at once we have to remember that these ministries are a gift of the Holy Spirit and not a permanent or organized thing. This leads us to invert the biblical movement. We set up pastoral positions or benefices with rectors and bishops, etc. We then fill these posts with people we think are suitable. But this is the opposite of the movement presented in the Epistles, in which the Holy Spriit gives to the church people who have the gifts of love or the word or teaching, and the church has to find a place for them even if it had not anticipated doing so. If, after a while, the Holy spirit does not give someone who has the spirit of prophecy but gives someone who has the gift of miracles, then the church must change its form and habits!”

We should probably embark on a conversation about the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers but we won’t. But what is important to capture is the idea that there could/should be a flow and flexibility in the offices of the church in relation to the giftedness of the people God has placed into its midst. Should God work within the confines of our human structures, or should our structures flex and support what God is doing?

Within many of our denominational structures, we have placed such importance on our ecclesiology that we put “Congregational” and “Presbyterian” in our names. I think it is a healthy for the church in North America as it moves into what has been called a post-denominational posture. Perhaps it will allow greater flexibility for God’s people to exercise and release their gifts as the Lord so blesses people and congregations.

Ellul continues to show the weakness of structures that are an attempt by humans to create order and sense for themselves.

“No doubt some will reply that God is not a God of disorder, incoherent, or abitrariness, but a God of order. Of course he is. Unfortunately, the whole of the Old Testament shows us that God’s order is not that which we conceive and desire. God’s order is not organization and institution (cf. the difference between judges and kings). It is not the same in every time and place. It is not a matter of repetition and habit. On the contrary, it resides in the fact that it constantly posits something new, a new beginning. Our God is a God of beginnings. There is in him no redundancy or circularity. Thus, if his church wants to be faithful to his revelation, it will be completely mobile, fluid, renascent, bubbling, creative, inventive, adventurous, and imaginative. It will never be perennial, and can never be organized or institutionalized. If the gates of death are not going to prevail against it, this is not because it is a good, solid, well-organized fortress, but because it is alive; it is Life — that is, as mobile, changing , and surprising as life. If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.” Ellul — P. 157.

These comments thrilled me because I dream of a reimagined church that moves and functions more like a movement than an institution. I’ve been on a journey of learning about Complex Adaptive Systems (Thanks Lee) and Chaos theory. Alan Hirsh’s work in The Forgotten Ways regarding apostolic movements is exquisite and exactly right.

In short, I have felt that our structures, our organizational theories have been been efforts to create order and control, but in the process we placed limits on God and his people, choking the movement of God’s Spirit. There is order and structure, but in a very different way than what our Modern minds have been able to recognize and appreciate. Scandalous.

What would a movement of Christ look like that took seriously these organic, viral, mobile, fluid bubbling, creative, adventurous leanings. Would our structures look more like scaffolds than cathedrals, flexible and responsive to the Lord’s movements? Perhaps as denominations and local churches are freed from religious bureaucracies focused on self-preservation, they will be able to increasingly direct their energies to God’s Kingdom agenda.

“If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.” I’m sure that the Holy Spirit would never allow the Church to get to this place… on the whole, but in North America, it feels like a dangerously large percentage of the Church has reached this point.

I’m working to subvert the further institutionalization of the church. I want to reimagine a way of following Christ that allows or even embraces chaos and disorder (in human terms). Does this make me an anarchist?

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) was a French thinker, sociologist, theologian and Christian anarchist. Despite my aversion to anarchy in general, Christian or not, I decided to pick up a copy of his book, The Subversion of Christianity, largely because I saw his work referenced many times in multiple books.

Centrally, he argues that the true and best expression of how to live as a community that is shaped by the gospel became distorted at a very early point due to many different reasons. He persuasively argues that Christianity became subverted by pagan practice and beliefs, focused on moralism, and created it’s religious forms and structures in man’s image.

In Chapter Eight, he continues his thesis that much of what true Christianity, or what he calls “X” throughout the book, is very usually the opposite of what is natural to us. “It is thus a scandal.” Or in the words of Kierkegaaard, nothing displeases or revolts us more than New Testament Christianity when it is properly proclaimed.

In this context Ellul writes that what might be natural to us is order. It is something we want and expect, but “X, when it comes to us, cannot be organized. We can have neither stability, routine, collective permanence, association, nor group cohesion if we want to live by revelation, if we put X at the center as the sole truth.”

“When we are told that the Holy Spirit constituted the church at Pentecost, we like that. But when we learn that the Holy Spirit is like the wind that blows when and where it wills and we do not know where it comes from or where it is going, we do not like it.”

“When we are told that the church consists of those whom God calls, we applaud, but who are they? Who can trace the boundaries? We may say that the church has a center, Jesus Christ, but it has no circumference.”

Ellul is saying we want to clearly know who God is and where he will lead us, but the scandalous truth of God is that we can’t put him in our boxes to satisfy our need for order. Similarly, our desire for some clear categories of who are actually “saved or called” is a desire for order that perhaps cannot lend itself to a clear cut answer. The Church’s answer might be construed as those who are baptized… but even that might be seen as merely a human construct to create categories for who is saved or not.

I think it is fascinating that Ellul, in speaking of who is “in or out” uses language that is eerily close to language of centered-set and bounded-set that is being used today in missional discussions. The scandal is that we can only clearly define the center, Jesus Christ. It is only our need for order/categories that we look for some circumferential border defining who belongs and doesn’t. The scandalous bit is that the determination is God’s business, not ours.

More tomorrow in part two.

I enjoy a great spiritual formation study with a handful of men on Monday mornings at 6am. We have been working through Dallas Willard’s book, “Renovation of the Heart.” We have been talking about the need to have our mind (thinking, images, ideas) transformed. This is especially important as we work to identify false ideas of God that lead to us live defeated lives. Willard writes:

Ideas and images are, accordingly, the primary focus of Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a holiday. Thus when he undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being. -Willard p. 100.

We must then work to have a correct understanding of God. Tozer writes:

That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God… I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

I’m quite stimulated by this book.

“To avoid mystery is to avoid the only God worthy of worship, honor, and praise.”

“It is time to reject the dignified, businesslike Rotary Club deity we chatter about on Sunday morning and search for a God worthy of awe, silent reverence, total commitment, and wholehearted trust.”

“God made us in his image… and we have returned the favor.” Jacques Ellul.

These were gathered at a meeting with some CRM colleagues last year. I don’t know who was quoting whom, but I thought they were worthy of posting since they continue to prompt me.

I’m reminded of how effectively I create categories into which I parse God. While a natural and necessary component to learning about him and his heart for us, more often than not, it is my categories that prevent God from being God in my life.

Have I domesticated God by trapping him in my categories? More than likely. Am I limiting or controlling him to work in ways that I expect and can explain? How does this effect my ability to be surprised by him?

Sometimes I’m inconvenienced by God working outside of my categories. Just who does he think he is anyway?

Here is a great talk by Michael Frost given in 2007 at the Global Presbyterian Fellowship meetings in Atlanta. He does a great job of detailing how we must calibrate everything in our churches around the organizing principle of mission.

If you can watch into the first 15 minutes, you will also be treated to a reminder that God is one that chases, seeks and pursues us. This understanding of God as one who is not far away, but here and at work in our cul de sacs and workplaces has a profound impact on helping us think missionally.

I’ve blogged elsewhere that I like the word Missional, but I’m concerned that it is used in such a broad way that it loses it meaning. Mostly I’m concerned with how “missional” serves as a sort of synonym for “outreach” or “missions.” When used this way, it simply describes the same sorts of activities we have always been doing in our community, and “missional” gets robbed of its power.

(for a quick explanation on Missional and Attractional, head over to an article at Allelon. The second point is a good quick explanation.)

What so much of the church needs today is not just an outward orientation. If we see the number of churches in our country become more outward focused, serving its community in the name of Christ, then that would be awesome. But if this outward activity merely gathers people back to the sending local church, then being missional in this sense is merely “attractional” and it is still the same posture and the same attending problems that churches should be trying to rethink.

I think it is important that we pair the notion of missional with the idea of the incarnation so that we are talking about a missional-incarnational approach to being the church. Why so important?

One of the most profound lessons we learn from the incarnation is that a person or a people is the proper medium for the gospel. The gospel is not just a message or a word, it is an incarnated one. God could have sent the gospel as a document, or written on tablets as the first Law was given, but he didn’t. God did send his Word, but it was incarnated in the person of Jesus.

This has huge implications… (more…)

I had a chance to listen to Francis Collins’ presentation at Stanford on Feb 5, 2008. Entitled, “God and the Genome,” Collins presents his reasons why he believes in God as well as insights on why he believes in evolution.  Fascinating.

He will be speaking in San Diego at Point Loma Nazarene University on April 11, and a daylong seminar the following week on April 19th. Details.