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I’ve been thinking about how local churches are organized, and I found myself troubled by the divisions that have been made for ministry. We create departments for the major areas of ministry (for instance, our church has “Worship, Community, and Mission”). It has taken me a few days to figure out what’s been troubling me. Here it is…
When I think of the “Church” (that is, a local manifestation of God’s People, not the “church universal”), I think of the people who are set apart for a purpose: to be God’s redemptive community on earth, especially in a specific locale.
This people are a Missional Community, living in the midst of people and loving and serving them with a view to be a redemptive blessing in their lives. Our redemptive work is the proclamation of the Gospel to our culture.
This “incarnational view” of church informs what we should be doing with our local congregations. each church is to be the incarnation of the body of Christ for their local community. The ministry is to be indigenous to this community, made up of people in this community to reach people in this community with the good news of Christ.
So, what are we supposed to do? We are to be a “Missional Community.” It boils down to this.
So, when we split up (in a very modernist way) our ministry into separate spheres (Worship, Community, Mission, etc.), we are pulling apart that which needs to be a cohesive unit.
I cannot imagine “community” without it being “missional.” I cannot imagine “mission” without it being by a community and for a community. And I cannot imagine “worship” outside the definition of Romans 12:1, where our lives are lived out sacrificially for others, as our “spiritual act of worship.”
In my view, the departments of the church need to serve the one purpose of Missional Community. This will ruffle some feathers in our churches, but the church’s departments all feed the overall purpose: to create and sustain a Missional Community.
The “Worship Department” is really just those in charge of the musical portion of our gathering time, where we come together to praise God.
The “Proclamation Department” is really just those in charge of preaching the gospel of joining in the Missional Community of the Church and instructing those involved in the Missional Community how to live out that calling.
The “Global Missions Department” extends our mission beyond our locality to those areas of the world that need our help to be reached.
The “Kids,” “Youth,” and “College” Departments proclaims the gospel of joining in God’s Mission to the younger generations, giving them purpose for their lives.
The “Care Department” intervenes when members of the Missional Community are hurting.
But the overall goal is to create a cohesive ministry of people working together to live out the gospel in the midst of the people we are trying to reach. When we are a Missional Community working for the redemption of all things for the blessing of those in our cities, we are being the incarnation of Christ for their sakes.
We need to think about the implications of isolating up our ministry into these three separate divisions: Worship, Community, and Mission.
This post is mirrored at Vanguard Church.
Tags: Church Life, Missional Community
Is Right Practice the Antidote to Easy Belief-ism?
(mirror posting from Vanguard Church)
Michael Wittmer’s first book is one of my favorites of all time. In Heaven is a Place on Earth, Wittmer maps out a biblical worldview by combining a proper understanding of the imago Dei with the biblical story of Creation-Fall-Redemption.
His follow-up book is called Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is not Enough. In it, he tries to strike a balance between conservative evangelicalism and the emerging church. His premise is that the evangelicalism of the 20th Century pressed too far one way, and that “postmodern innovators” (his term for the leaders in the emerging church movement) are overreacting by swinging the pendulum too far the other way. He states that his book is a “friendly warning” to the postmodern innovators of the emerging church. He states,
“I am thankful for their emphasis on authentic Christian living. Their vision for what the church can become is both exhilarating and challenging. My only concern, and the point I will press in this book, is that their quest to correct abuses of previous generations must not lead them to err on the opposite extreme. Perhaps our parents overemphasized right belief more than good behavior, but that must not become an excuse to teach good behavior at the expense of right belief. If we continue down this road, it may not be long until our liberal method leads to liberal conclusions. Authentic Christianity demands our head, heart, and hands. Our labor for Christ flows from our love for him, which can arise only when we know and think rightly about him, Genuine Christians never stop serving, because they never stop loving, and they never stop loving, because they never stop believing.” (pp. 19-20)
Wittmer’s book is a welcome addition to the conversation. Whereas D.A. Carson’s book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church was poorly researched and reactionary without truly understanding the movement, Wittmer is actually conversant with the emerging church. He understands it, and thus he can authentically deal with one of the major issues for evangelicals who want to embrace the emerging church: The tension between belief and practice.
Evangelicals have placed a high emphasis on “believing in Jesus,” and this “belief” has often (in a modernist world) been articulated as believing certain propositions about Jesus. According to many evangelical churches, if you can state that you believe that Jesus died for your sins and trust that he satisfied God’s wrath against those sins on the cross, you are “saved.” This is topped off with saying a “sinner’s prayer,” and an assurance that from now on, no matter what you do, you’re in… you are guaranteed your place in heaven.
The “postmodern innovators” of the emerging church have reacted to this by saying that Jesus is more interested in our actions than in what we can state to be truth. In Brian McLaren’s book The Last Word and the Word After That, the character Markus states that conservative Christians wrongly believe that “on judgment day, all God will care about is opening up our skulls and checking our brains…to see if we had the right notion of salvation by grace through faith in there somewhere.”
Wittmer states that McLaren’s answer to this incorrect understanding of faith is insufficient. Wittmer writes, “McLaren counters this extreme view by claiming that God judges people on the quality of their works rather than on what they believe.” (p. 35) Wittmer’s point: the postmodern innovators so underemphasize right belief and so overemphasize right ethics that they swing the pendulum too far the other way.
But does McLaren actually advocate “works righteousness?” No, he does not. In fact, McLaren very much advocates faith in the person of Jesus Christ. He has said, “I believe people are saved not by objective truth, but by Jesus. Their faith isn’t in their knowledge, but in God.” (source) This is an excellent quote, and gets at the center of the issue.
The question that Mike Wittmer is going to have to deal with is this: Does faith in our knowledge about Jesus save us?
I believe it does not. I believe that faith in the person of Jesus is what delivers us.
But, here is where it gets very tricky: What basic facts do we need to “know” in order to place our faith in Jesus? This is what Wittmer gets into in his second chapter. Watch for my interaction with Mike Wittmer on this in an upcoming post.
