The Forgotten Ways: Example of Incarnational/Missional

What is a missional church and how do we find a mission?

I have been struck by a comment made once, though I don't remember where, regarding "community" and/or mission. It said something like this:

Community does not come out of community for community's sakes. No group or organization every lasted long or made great impact in the world by focusing on community. Too often, the church, focuses on creating community and eventually falls into narcisistic entertainment of "what I need for it to be community for me."

Instead, we must be focusing on the mission God has given us. Us individually, and us as a body or church. Once we embark on that mission we will find that community happens.

And community is never planned for or structured. Instead, community happens, and then a structure is borne out of that community. Unfortunately, over time, the structure becomes a box that limits, and eventually suffocates, community. Not because community doesn't happen or is not wanted, but because the mission has been replaced with a focus on maintaining the community. Once again, the mission is forgotten, and a narcisistic focus on "what I need for the community to continue for me" is focused on.

Churches need to pray for and follow what mission God gives them, not focus on creating community. The mission is not for our community, but to go out to tell people about Jesus and only in the going do we find "community" or the relationship of church that Jesus demonstrated and intended."

Hirsch makes some statements on that idea of being "missional" or "incarnational" (incarnational meaning living out your faith within the lives of the people and the world we live in - like God was incarnational as Jesus, we become incarnational in the world we live in).

We decided that in the context of Melbourne, a city obsessed with food and eating out, that we ought to try and see how we can engage our culture on its own turf (missional), rather than expecting them to come to ours (attractional). What drove us to this conclusion was asking missionary questions, namely, "What is good news for this people group?" and "What would the church look and feel like among this people group?" Both these questions assume that we dont' fully know the answers until we ask them in the active context of mission. They require that we pay attention to the existential issues confronting people as they experience those issues. And that we try to shape and form communities of faith so that htey can become an organic part of the cultural social fabric of teh people group we are tring to reach.

So, what is good news for the people around you? We can't know this until we know what the "existential questions" are, which simply means, what are the really really hard questions of life that they are asking? It could be as simple as, "Where am I going to pay my next bill?" or something like, "Is there more to life than this drudgery of working 9-5." Maybe they struggle with marriage, raising children, finding passion, depression, or whatever.

But we must go to them and live with them to find out. Then we ask, "What would a church look and feel like among this people and their struggles?" In other words, what would it look like for a people who had good news to my questions of life to live together? What would they be doing? How would they be living? How would they be spending their money?

What is good news for you? What would the church look and feel like for you?