Finding the church's center:

I'm taking the church I serve through the experience that I and another church partner had when we went to Haiti in January. It has taken us a while to collect our thoughts and pictures and hone our message to where we want it to be. But we're there, and now we put it into God's hands to be able to work it in the fabric of our congregational life and into the hearts of all our partners.

Going through all the pictures and asking a larger question of why a church ought to engage in mission work has been running through my mind this week. Thanks to the God-timing of a conference on "missional leadership" I attended on Monday and Tuesday, my mind was a perfect storm of thoughts on mission. At the end of my thoughts, I find myself here: mission is the church's center.

The question of why a church ought to engage in mission is one that questions the identity and calling of church. What you believe about the role of the church and how it understands itself in this world will help you answer this question.

Here's what I believe about the church's identity and calling:

The church is the community gathered and sent by God to live trust in the good news of Jesus alone. What does the church do? It worships the Trinity as revealed to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And through this worship, it discerns the active reign of God in our world and participates in it. This discernment is not without aid from God's Holy Spirit to show us that peculiar reign of God and gift us to participate in it. I can no more participate in the reign of God on my own than help the Dallas Mavericks figure out their downward spiral. Without God's Spirit revealing to us the reign, we're lost.

In our particular time of being the church, this is an 'out of the box' idea. It's not your normal run-of-the-mill way of being church. The way of being church that is now threatened and crumbling is a majority view of a stagnant church that relegates discernment and participating to few but not all. I advocate that the entire church is to be involved of the triune activities of worship, discernment, and participation. No one is excluded from partnering in this adventure of church.

Everyone is a missionary. Not just those adventurous folks who sell everything and take off to the sub-tropics to evangelize a new tribe. Those folks are certainly worthy to be called missionary, but in the enterprise of a church taking seriously its calling to discern and participate in the reign of God, all have a stake in being God's missionary.

God's plan A to spread salvation to the world includes the primary use of the church. To accomplish this, God embeds congregations in communities across this world to live as embedded missionaries, much in the same way as journalists live as embedded journalists during wartime. They hang out with the troops, they go on missions with the troops, and they serve as witnesses to what they see. God is embedding the church in our world to live as witnesses to the reing of the Triune God who promises to raise the dead and restore all of creation.

If the church's identity and calling is to live as witnessing missionaries in God's world, then all of life is the field of mission. The coworker in the next cubicle who has just suffered the loss of a family member is now your primary target. Pray with her, show her the comfort of God, witness to her about the hope of salvation in Jesus. But don't shrug her off because she's not in some faroff place as one who has never heard or experienced the gospel.

Missionary work is a lifestyle and not a one time event. It's not a week where you pay a lot of money to separate yourself from the comforts of our world to get 'down and dirty' with others. It includes these one time events, and these serve as inspiration and training moments for the rest of our missionary lives. But discerning and participating in the reign of God is the purpose and center of our lives. Ephesians 2:10, the rest of the good news, clues us in on this.

"He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing." (The Message version)

The Forces of this World Have Been Upset ...

Our church sent out 80 servants of Jesus in the last month across the region from New Orleans to Austin and Juarez, Mexico. Most of them were teens, who happen to be some of our most active disciples of Jesus. They're the ones quick to invite their friends to come to worship. They're the ones quick to come to the next Bible Study. They're the ones who sacrificed a week of their summers to bond with friends, get away from parents, and, oh yeah, make a difference in our world for God's kingdom. And people say, "They're the future of the church." News flash *** they're not. They're the church right now!

We really messed with the kingdom of this world this last month. You see, the kingdom of the world has this project to conform all of its citizens into a strict mold that rules out sacrificial love and unabridged compassion. And we seriously messed with 80 of its citizens.

Who knows what kind of impact their week of service will have on their lives today and into the future.... And who knows how their service will impact those whom they served this week and into their futures. We might have set off a revolution that will gain its momentum beyond our watch. We just don't know. God only knows. And this month, God threw another knuckleball to the project of this world that wants nothing to do with a God that loves it. Steee-rike!

Those folks could have been out at the mall buying something they don't need. But they were instead praying with children in apartment complexes who hadn't heard the word of God before. Those folks could have been at another fast food restaurant putting on more calories they don't need. Instead, they were laying cinderblock for an orphanage in one of the poorest communities in the West. Those folks could have been relaxing by the pool, but instead they were burning brush for a camp that gives inner city kids the opportunity to get out in nature and away from the gunshots, the sirens, and the drugs.

We really messed with the world. And I'm happy and scared at the same time. The world doesn't like to be messed with. Look at what they did with Jesus. It doesn't like people who offer another alternative beyond the world's agenda. So, we need those prayer warriors out there to unite over these 80 servants to pray off the attack that the world will launch at them now that they're home and back in their comfort zones. Seven days of intentional Christian community will be the focus of this attack. The world will woo them with temptations to take up the consumptive lifestyle again, with temptations to take a sluggish approach to the faith, and with temptations to 'unholy living' where they can degrade each other with their judgments and their speech.

I pray over them that God's kingdom will embed in their hearts and minds. I pray that their eyes that saw Jesus this week will be the eyes that they use at school and at home and at the playground (which means soccer fields, gyms, and hockey rinks since our kids don't really go to playgrounds anymore). Won't you join me in this prayer?

Peace out!