Redeemer Family,
Last week, I wrote a little article about Gospel Formation to help us move a bit deeper in our understanding of the “both/and” nature of whole-life transformation through Jesus. If you missed it, you are welcome to go back and read it here. If you read it and are hungry for more on that topic, I would recommend this article by Dallas Willard as a next step.
Today I’d like to move forward to a different, but intimately related question, “What is missional presence?” One of the ways we talk about our life together is that the Church of Jesus is called to be a missional presence in the world. But what does that mean? “Missional Presence” sounds somewhat lofty, abstract, and vague. How can I tell if I’m doing it? How can I tell if it’s working?
Mission, a Fraught Word
The first challenge with the phrase is the word “mission.” Often the word mission is used exclusively to describe a person (usually a white westerner) who travels to another country in order to engage in cross-cultural evangelism. We are accustomed to calling this person a missionary - and rightly so. A missionary is someone who is living every aspect of life intentionally as a kind of missional presence. Whether they are grocery shopping, talking with neighbors, taking their kids to school, coaching soccer, or ordering a latte; everything they do, they do as a missionary - with the motive to represent the transforming love of Jesus to everyone they encounter.
Establishment Mentality
Now, those of us who grew up in what we might call “Establishment Christendom”¹ in the United States or Europe think of this kind of missionary as special, a kind of super-Christian. The tendency is to think that most average Christians live “normal” lives here that are categorically different from the lives lived by professional missionaries. The problem with this kind of attitude is not what it says about overseas, cross-cultural missionaries. Those dear brothers and sisters deserve our financial, prayer, and relational support. Many of them are doing great work and that is to be celebrated. The problem lies in what this attitude says (or does not say) about everyone else, the Christians who live in their homeland. It says they are not missionaries.
The Christian Life = A Missional Life
Ah, here is the problem. There is no such thing as a follower of Jesus who is not called to a missional life. All Christians are to live all of life with the motive to represent the transforming love of Jesus to everyone they encounter. “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” - Colossians 3:17. The Bible, and especially the New Testament epistles, have much to say about varying spiritual gifts (prophecy, teaching, leading, giving, mercy, healing, etc.) and varying ecclesial offices (Bishop, priest/presbyter, deacon), but nothing about some being called to missions and others not.
A better, fuller understanding of the Christian life would mean recognizing that every man, woman, and child in the Church has a missionary calling and is to live with a missional “lens” through which they see every aspect of their lives.
Seeing Through a Missional Lens
Back in my youth ministry days, I would take high schoolers, college students, and adults on short-term “missions” trips to New Orleans to do Katrina relief work and to Nicaragua to partner with a ministry there. One of the things that I noticed on those trips was how everyone (and I mean everyone) took on a whole different view of life during the trip. The participants were eager to understand what life was like for the people we met. They listened with empathy and compassion as they heard stories of trauma, suffering, and loss. They never complained about the rough accommodations (no air conditioning), the simple food (rice and beans) or the long days of hard work. Every interaction was viewed as an opportunity to share the love of Jesus because we were there as missionaries. When people didn’t want to talk to us, ignored us, were rude to us, or treated us with disrespect because of our faith, we didn’t get offended and we didn’t think less of those people. After all, this kind of thing is expected in missions work! And so we prayed for the Holy Spirit to soften their hearts towards the Gospel and we prayed that God would make us kind, gentle, winsome people so that we wouldn’t get in the way of what He wanted to do in their lives. In sum, during those weeks we viewed every aspect of our existence as directed towards the purposes of God - partnering with God in His work in the world.
And, as so often happens, we gained more than we gave. Invariably, towards the end of those trips, the reports always went something like, “I came here to serve, but these people served me. I came here thinking I had something to offer, but instead I was the one who needed to learn.” In other words the missional work was not only an outflow of the Gospel Formation in these people’s lives, it was actually part of the formation. Mission wasn’t just something we did, it was something that changed us.
But then we returned home.
And at home we were no longer missionaries, we were just back to being normal Christians. We went back to our normal jobs, lived in our normal homes, and took up all of our former habits and practices - just the normal, non-missional stuff of life. We took off the missional lens and put back the “establishment” lens. And you know what happened? Of course you do. You’re way ahead of me. All of our interactions, and indeed our whole experience of life, returned to what it was before. Other people’s problems became burdensome or annoying. People who disrespected the Christian faith became political opponents to conquer in the next election. Discomforts, failures, and disappointments became a sign that maybe God isn’t real. We would look back on the short-term mission trip with disillusionment (was what we experienced there even real?) and begin to refer to it in derogatory terms (oh, it was just a mountain-top experience, normal life isn’t like that).
Which Lens?
Now, of course intense emotional seasons of faith are not sustainable, nor are they meant to be. We are not to be spiritual thrill-seekers moving from experience to experience trying to “keep the feeling alive.”
However, I and many others have become convinced that this dynamic is not actually fundamentally a problem with the short-term missions trip, but rather with the rest of what we call “normal life” back at home. It’s a problem with the lens, the filter through which we understand and interpret all of life.
The Establishment Lens — takes the Gospel and the Church for granted as good and important features of the landscape, and wants to move on to more pressing questions like, “Should I redesign my kitchen?” “Will our party win the next election?” “Do I have enough in my retirement account?” “Why won’t my neighbors turn their music down?” I’m not saying that the Establishment lens is always selfish, often it is quite generous! Generous Establishment questions might sound something like, “What can our church do about homelessness in our city?” or “Will our church support missionaries to build schools in Peru?” These are great questions. They should be asked and answered. But can you hear that these are not the questions of a missionary who is on the field?
The Missional Lens — sees the Gospel as the most important thing every day of the week and twice on Sundays. The Gospel is what the missionary clings to in order to make sense of their life. The Gospel is what gets them out of bed in the morning. The Gospel is what motivates them to know their neighbors (even, perhaps most especially, the irritating ones). The Gospel is what shapes their interactions at the grocery store, in the coffee shop, at the PTA meeting, with the other parents at soccer practice. Seeing one’s life through a missional lens fundamentally changes one’s posture towards everything and everybody. The mission field isn’t somewhere else, it’s right here. You’re on it. It’s where you live.
(Note: Some of you will read this and think that I’m against sending international missionaries. I am not. Some of my best friends have served as international missionaries. I’m not lowering their water level, I’m seeking to raise ours).
The Surprising Twist
At this point (if I haven’t lost you yet!) you are likely feeling either one of three very different things:
You’re fired up and ready to get out there and mission with the best of them. No one will mission as hard as you.
You disagree with everything I’ve written and are drafting a nice long email to point out my errors. I can’t wait to read it 😀
You’re feeling exhausted and worn out by life and this Parish Newsletter has served to heap guilt and shame on your head. On top of all the heavy burdens you’re already carrying, now you’re supposed to be a missionary too? It makes you want to lie down and take a nap.
Two quick responses and then a slightly longer one:
To the fired-up person. I love your energy, but check yourself for a minute. Missional presence is not about conquest. This is not about winning or proving, but about participating in what God is already doing - right where you are, with the people around you.
If you disagree with much of what I’ve written, it might be good for you to know what kind of sources have shaped my thinking. Here are just a few (if you like reading):
If all this missionary talk just makes you feel guilty, tired, and just a little bit resentful about being made to feel guilty and tired… then I have wonderful news for you. Jesus says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light and he is not lying to you. This is not a bait and switch. The invitation to a missional life is not one of adding more and more missionary activities into your already-full calendar. But rather one of transformation - where the Gospel transforms and re-frames the way that you approach all of your calendar and all of your relationships. It’s not about addition, it’s about having new eyes to see and new ears to hear. Questions like, “Where do I see God already at work in my neighbors/coworkers/friends/family member’s life and how can I be a part of that work?” become missional questions that change the way I approach every relationship.
The wonderful good news for tired souls is that, when your posture shifts from Establishment Christendom to Missional Presence, your inner life shifts from anxiety to trust, from restlessness to contentment, from fear to hope. Establishment Christendom frames missionary work in terms of “taking ground,” “winning souls,” and “changing culture.” It can therefore only be done by the strongest, sharpest, most extroverted Christians. Wimps and losers need not apply.
Missional Presence returns missionary work back to its source in the Bible - where the people of God are salt and light, a city on a hill, a lamp on a stand. In this paradigm, “mission” is not relegated to certain forms of Christian activity, but rather it is a way of being, a way of life, a posture, a way of inhabiting the world as God’s new humanity.
Full Circle
Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re persuaded. If you desired a life of missional presence, how would your life take on that posture and shape? How does one become a missional presence?
Answer: Gospel Formation. The good news of Jesus’ redeeming work on your behalf so deeply transforms and changes you, that, over time, you come to inhabit the world in a new and different way. The old self dies and a new self is born. There will still be moments (or even seasons of life!) when you revert back to your old ways, but through partnering with the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit of Jesus in your life, you metamorphosize into a new creation.
Your new-creation-life-in-Jesus is a missional presence in the world, as you point beyond yourself to the source of life itself - God.
Redeemer Family, I love you dearly and I’m so very proud of you. Wherever you are right now and whomever you are with, the Spirit of the risen Christ is in you to make you His missional presence. Through Jesus, you can become this right here, right now.
In the Father’s love,
¹By Establishment Christendom, I mean a churches that enjoys a respected place within society. White protestant churches in the USA and parts of Canada and Europe, Catholic churches in Spain and Italy, Orthodox churches in Greece or Russia - are all examples of Establishment Christendom.
