paradoxum

I've come to believe that the success of churches like Redeemer combined with the Institutional Churches failure to engage people in any sort of "meaningful ministry" is giving rise to the "missional" movement. As emergent types began to exit from the Institutional Church they began to deconstruct everything about the Institutional Church. Inevitably, the whole notion of "ministry" came under scrutiny (and rightly so).

In typical form, the Emergent Church (EC) reacted against the Institutional Church (IC), and in so doing, the whole notion of ministry moved from doing things IN the church FOR the church to doing things IN the world FOR the world. When new ecclesial movements begin, I find there is very little "both/and" thinking and lots of "either/or" thinking. This has certainly been true in my own personal experience.

In typical form, the IC sees the "success" the EC appears to be having in doing "missional" work, and then, they see a "successful" church like Redeemer doing "missional" work and they jump on the bandwagon with both feet! Before you know it, the IC is "missional" and suddenly "every member in ministry" is defined as every member doing "missional" work in the community.

The EC's critique of the IC leads them to a renewed sense of "ministry" or "mission", and their apparent "success" in this area eventually draws the attention of the IC. What began as a reaction against the IC, is eventually absorbed into the IC. Now, that hasn't happened yet, but I believe it's not too far away.

On the one hand, getting people out of the church and into their community is good no matter how it happens. However, the point of the Gospel is not to get us into "meaningful ministry" INSIDE the church walls, or to get us into "missional" ministry OUTSIDE the church walls. The point of the Gospel is to OVERWHELM us with the goodness of a glorious God. The point of the Gospel is to move us to WORSHIP God in prayer, praise, and service to others.

I don't hear much of this kind of talk in the missional conversation (THAT is one buzzword filled sentence!). I hear lots of talk about how we aren't doing this or that, or about the oppressive power structures of this world that need to be resisted, or things we need to be doing in the world, etc. Brian McLaren's new book is a case in point (subtitled, Jesus Global Crisis and a Revolution of Hope), where he attempts to answer two questions: "What are the biggest problems in the world?" and "What does Jesus have to say about these global problems?". I don't know that these are illegitimate questions (but don't we know the obvious answer?!?!), but the answers I seem to be hearing (overtly or covertly) seem to be moving the emphasis of the Gospel away from a classical Protestant understanding of the Gospel.

I am NOT denying that the Gospel impacts how we live in this world, it clearly does. The key question is HOW it does that. The IC tried to get people to serve in the church ("meaningful ministry") to sustain ministries (programs) that could (in theory) impact the world. The EC seems to be trying to cut out the middle man and just get people to go straight to serving the community / world. It seems to me that BOTH of these approaches miss the context necessary to achieve the desired result.  

I believe the results the "missional" movement will get are probably the same results the IC got: a large group of guilt ridden people trying to feel better about themselves by doing what they think God wants them to do.

So, what's the problem? I think the problem is that we are preaching "missional" without giving that message the context it must have to keep it from turning into a new law. The problem is one of FOCUS.

To be continued...