Dear Friends,
As I practice my social distancing I have been reading and thinking a great deal about what is next for the church. In my reading I came across this quote I want to share with you:
For years, the mission of the church in the United States was largely defined in terms of offering attractive programs to retain its members, building appealing structures and services to draw new members, and participating in some type of benevolent pursuit to appease the conscience of the few individuals looking to make a difference in the world . . . recent developments have contributed to a rediscovery that the mission and purpose of the church do not stem from charting institutional health through traditional quantifiable metrics. Rather, the Church ought to understand its role primarily as a partner and co-participant in the mission of God, whose desire is to redeem humanity, restore creation, heal brokenness, and invite Christians everywhere to embrace their true identity in Christ. (Twibell 82)
Years ago I was at a church event where the host church was celebrating their opening of a children’s play area. They proudly announced how many kids in the community had come onto their turf in the last year. I commend the church for its desire to do something for the community. As I drove around the community I could not help but wonder, “Is this really what the community needed? Did they need it most on the church’s turf? What could the impact have been if they had built in another part of town and resisted the temptation to brand it with the church’s brand? What if it had been about the community rather than the church?”
I know these are hard questions, and some might even say unfair, but as a pastor, I see regularly that people are tired of our efforts to attract them to come to our events. We have lost people’s trust. They are onto our games.
And now we, the Church, have been given a great gift. We have nothing to invite them to. Our buildings are closed, our programs suspended. All we have to offer is ourselves, our love, our compassion, our concern, our generosity. We have nothing to offer but Jesus who, when saying why he came, quoted from the prophet Isaiah and said:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
(Luke 4:18-19, NIV)
I am concerned whether we are learning from the lessons this time is teaching us. What if, when we are finally released to “life as normal” we don’t go back to our old ways? What if, instead of expecting people to come to us on our terms, we went to them on theirs? What if we continued to live outside our walls seeking to find new and ever more ways to love and serve our community joining in the mission of God to “redeem humanity, restore creation, heal brokenness, and invite Christians everywhere to embrace their true identity in Christ?”
What if?
Blessings,
Stephen
SOURCE:
Twibell, Simone Mulieri. “Missional Act in Spiritual Formation: Moving Beyond Mission Trips into the Realm of Missional Living.” Missional Disciple-Making, edited by Michael J. Breen and David M. Gustafson, 3DM Publishing, 2019, pp. 82–104.