We are Missioning

very cool! shine on

Very cool David. To count conversations means letting go of the outcome and leaving it in God’s hand. Love that.

so, let me get this straight: you’re committed to your commission to mission above and beyond any mission of being missional. and to avoiding buzzwords at all cost.

(just in case that seemed overtly harsh, it wasn’t intended to be. and i actually agree with lots you said. i might want to be part of this if i didn’t have to be too earnest about it. being earnest feels awkward, but maybe that’s because at some level i’m afraid that ‘being real’ will become fake the moment it unfurls and comes into its own. but maybe i should go back to my own blog, write a post called ‘”earnest scared stupid” and talk about this on my own dime.)

It’s easy to label with current buzzwords. Its harder to actually live it. I like your description of living in relationship in “every part of our lives”.

-Alan

As you say, the key is action. The action must be in conjunction with God’s own, not action alone.

i guess i’m struggling with what ‘missional’ actually is as a concept, and what makes it different from other words to describe christian life. is there any conceptual difference between “missional living” and redemptive living? or is it more along the lines of the oxford definition: “relating to or connected with a religious mission; missionary”? does this wiki article sum it up or no? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missional_living

that article frames it as what i understand to be a less harsh word for ‘evangelical’; more palatable to the postmodern or ‘emergent’ christian since it doesn’t infer the less ‘relevant’ practices and belt-notch attitude evangelicals sometimes have espoused. is that fair?

I think your best place to go for a “working definition” of missional is Michael Frost. There are some great videos and podcasts of him around and I think he does a good job explaining it. Fred Peatross also wrote a great little primer on the subject.

It’s more than just a different name for evangelism and it’s more than just changing the outer garments of evangelicalism. Many people have co-opted this term inappropriately (the problem with labels).

what you’re describing doesn’t sound any different from what’d i’d see as a general conception of mainstream evangelical christianity though. i mean, to me that compartmentalization is something that i’ve always seen opposed by the bulk of church leaders. the whole ’sunday morning christian’ pastors always talk about.. you know. i’m still not getting it. to me it just seems like one more division, one more wall put up by labelling oneself and ones like-minded friends as ‘missional’ or ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘independent’ or ’sovereign grace baptist’ or whatever else. the very fact that it requires such explanation to me seems to make it less than inclusive.

i should shut up until i listen to this frost fellow talk about it and look at those links you posted tonight, dave, but i thought i’d give my initial reaction anyway.

well friend, I can tell you that it’s NOTHING like the evangelicalism I was in for 25 years but I think your “it sounds like”… statements are a bit odd seeing as you’ve clearly never studied or experienced any of this

makeesha, i should apologize as i was responding to dave’s comment with that last post rather than the last half of yours. it’s true, my ‘it sounds like’ statements were based on the conversation here and the minute bit of outside research i did. that’s all they were meant to infer–not an all-encompassing knowledge of all things ‘missional’. if i had that, i wouldn’t even be asking these questions or making these exploratory comments. i think i already mentioned that it sounds like (haha) i’ve got a lot more research to muscle through before i’ll be able to get a well-rounded view of what this ‘missional’ movement is all about.

however, it does seem like from the explanations so far that ‘missional’ is a new label for an old concept. that concept being to live devoted to acting on the gospel of god’s profound love for people and his commission to us as his followers. and in that case i hope more and more christians become ‘missional’, but i don’t understand the need for a new buzzword to describe what’s always been at the heart of christianity, whether you’re anglican or catholic or anabaptist, etc.

but maybe missional is more of a cultural (or subcultural) label than a belief-driven or theological term and that’s why i’m having problems separating it out from other concepts. actually, now that this is occured to me, i’m thinking it probably is the case, seeing as you’ve commented that i’ve “clearly never… experienced” missional living. (i’m reasoning this because one may only think and talk theology or belief systems, whereas one can experience culture.) food for thought. i’ll try to read some of those resources dave posted before engaging in this discussion again though.

there’s nothing new under the sun indeed

“missional” is Gospel IMO but most of evangelicalism has really gotten off track in this area so I think the best thing I can say is that missional people are learning to live the Gospel in our current context. We are learning to join the missio Dei - the God of mission, where He can be found. Of course this isn’t new, but our human understanding of it I think is - - now, maybe not for you, maybe not even for me but I’m finding solace and encouragement and camaraderie in a group of people who are together bucking the trends of modern evangelicalism and emerging into something bigger and better than the ways we’ve done christiantity before

I get prickly about criticisms sometimes and I shouldn’t.

I’ve also gotta be honest with you - I find it annoying when people say things like you have - insinuating that we don’t need “buzzwords”. It seems to me you have very negative feelings about labels and calling them buzzwords is your way to invalidate them. We all use labels, we as humans NEED labels, we need distinctives for our social groupings. They are not only needed but helpful. Yes, they can get annoying and even be unhelpful but I find that some people, and I may be unfairly lumping you into this category, some people who don’t understand something or don’t identify with a label or group feel the need to belittle them by saying they’re just using buzzwords. That’s very disrespectful to me. So I guess I feel a little disrespected by the way you’ve categorized this particular term. And I don’t know you, you might be using sarcasm as humor but it’s coming off in my ears as passive aggressive.

well, i did start out using sarcasm as humour with my first post, then realized it sounded critical, which was the reason for my second post. but yeah, i do have an aversion to labels and getting things all “pinned down”, at some level. not sure if that’s what’s driven me in this conversation or not. i’m bad at self-psycho-analysis.

i will say that with this particular label, missional, it seems very counterintuitive to me. gets me confused. i a little less so now, but that’s cause i was thinking of it as a refined belief system, rather than, as you say, the name for a christian ’social grouping’. that makes more sense to me, even if the word’s full meaning is still hazy. as for my calling it a buzzword, that’s how i usually see it presented, and i’m reacting to that. it’s always these hip, avant-garde 20-something-focussed ‘communities’ posting that they’re ‘missional’ on their website, usually with no context as to what the heck they mean by that (and maybe they’ll even get it flash-animated). as if its a codeword that you have to ‘get’ before you can join. haha. please keep in mind i say a lot of things with my tongue half in my cheek. i’m not at all trying to belittle the ‘missional’ way of living christianity—just playing with words, their perceptions and meanings. it’s true, we all need labels, and i guess this ‘authentic, progressive christianity’ ‘emergent’ ‘ordinary radicals’ etc. modern movement of back-to-the-social-roots-of-jesus’-teachings is in need of a uniting moniker, if this ‘missional’ bit is it. i suppose its as good a label as any.

my final word on this - our missional community is neither hip nor completely “young” - I think that critique is a lazy cop out.

I understand your feelings I just think it’s a silly point to stick to - the fact is, there is the label and it is useful, no one is saying you have to use it and I couldn’t care less if you think you’re missional or not or if you want to connect with me because I am.

it wasn’t a critique of your missional community, and that’s great that you guys aren’t hip or young, i guess. my comment was simply communicating my experience with them thus far, and letting you my ideas about why i’ve reacted the way i have in this whole discussion.

in my experience, i find these communities are churches with names like LiFT or XPRESSION or freedomize or whatever, that skew toward white people in their twenties and thirties. not even sayin’ i wouldn’t enjoy being a part of one of these types of communities, but they definitely do ooze a certain coolness factor and sport a lot of techy, indie or avant or artsy innovations, ideas and image (brand, even, if you will), as i’ve seen it. calling something hip though, i realize, is always a bad move. virtually no one is comfortable with saying they’re hip. hipsters would die before admitting they’re hip. but non-hip people usually don’t say they’re hip either. it’s kinda like calling someone fascist. no one’s going to fess up, whether they are or aren’t.

but regardless, that’s been my experience thus far, and i’m not going to pretend i haven’t observed it just so my comments are PC and inoffensive. i guess that’s a fault of mine to speak too forthrightly sometimes (although thanks for spinning that when you endorsed me for city council, dave )

what exactly you’re saying its a ‘cop out’ from, i’m not sure… a cop out from getting involved maybe? it’s possible that i’m using it as a defense mechanism, i’ll admit. i’m not sure that it is, but i’ve been alienated from churches before, it’s true, and have grown wary of glitz and glam and seeker-sensitive and powerpoint and housegroups and whatever else. just seems like the church pops from one contrived piece of distraction to the next, inventing little devices to make ourselves relevant rather than simply immersing into relationships, forgetting labels and judgements and divisions and this and that and the other thing. it’s like we try to add layers in order to shed layers.

i guess that’s why i’m trying to reduce my christian faith to its simplest, most reduced and distilled truths and practices and terms so that i don’t need to ‘niche’ to find meaningful relationship and community. and maybe my critical attitude and wariness is hampering that. that’s something i should contemplate more, i think.

at any rate, thank you for challenging me on my attitudes and the perceptions i might have been causing for myself. it is always nice to have someone rise to the occassion and call me on things the way they see them. i appreciate it.

this and our twitter conversations are helping me out, dave. yeah, i guess maybe i’ve been painting with too wide a brush on this topic. although, i’d still say that a term like this is easily co-opted unless it stands for something clear and unmistakable, which i don’t see it as having right now. i see that muddying of the waters as being a real issue in the years to come if this ‘missional’ term gains any kind of wide traction as the word to describe relevant church community. perhaps it already has; i don’t really know.

maybe i’m just talking ahead of the game. prophetic blog comments, maybe. haha (if apostle paul lived today, would romans have been written using wordpress or blogger?)

i think i’d like to go to freeway some sunday coming up. i’ve been there for gigs or coffee, but never for a service… sorry. gathering.