Taking Heat from the Watch Dogs
eric posted on July 3, 2009
“Taking Heat” written by Erwin Raphael McManus
One of the most curious things I have experienced about the church in the U.S. is the reaction that becoming a truly missional community has on most churches and perhaps especially vanguard theologians. One of the surest ways of becoming suspect to mainline evangelicalism is to actually reorient the church around the mission of Christ.
The first core value of the Mosaic Alliance is “Mission is why the Church exists.” When you throw into the mix that we are focusing on reaching those who are farthest from the gospel (and therefore from Christian culture) then things start getting really interesting.
The challenge of course is that we far too often confuse approach with orthodoxy. It only feels biblical if we do it the way we have always done it. We create our own rituals that confirm our orthodoxy and that becomes the measure by which we judge everyone else’s work.
For some reason it is easier for us to be more open when it is a missionary in a far away country. When our friends from Mississippi move to an unnamed city in the Middle East or in Asia we get it. They have to learn a new language, they begin to dress differently, and they begin to learn the culture.
They also begin to look for connecting points between the religion and beliefs of their people group and the truth of the Scripture. They start with where the people are and slowly begin to build trust and confidence so that those they are burdened for might become open to the Scriptures and the gospel and ultimately to Jesus.
Some places and peoples are so open that mass crusades draw thousands. Other places require a different approach- a far more specialized approach. The difference is like that of a general practitioner and a surgeon. Our tension is often influenced by the great results we see among wonderfully open people. We begin to assume this is the approach that God affirms for every place and situation and everyone must adhere to this same process. But you don’t use the same approach to treat the flu and to treat cancer. Nor do you get the same results. In fact the one that is more critical and more urgent is also the one with the most unknown and the least success. In the end the one who failed may be the one who endeavored to accomplish the most noble of tasks.
What is happening across the world and here at home is that there is an army of cross cultural missionaries who have become the new leaders of the church. Their calling isn’t to pastor churches that focus on the happiness of its members, but to mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission of reconciling the world to himself. We used to send our missionaries out and it kept the mission a safe distance from us. Some how they broke back in and decided they were not going without us.
At Mosaic we have no members only missionaries. There is nothing to join except a community on mission. We have little patience for self indulgent spirituality that insists on everything being about us.
And there are implications. We have a zero tolerance policy for religious jargon or Christianese. We have little room for traditions that mean something to us but nothing to a person searching for God. We will not forsake the Word of God for the traditions of men. We are committed to removing every non-essential barrier between God and humanity. We refuse to allow the Gospel to become lost in our nostalgia or to appear irrelevant because we are.
And I must confess we are less concerned about whether mainstream Christians get us than about whether those searching for God get Him.
And if this makes us the bane of the church than so be it. Paul said he would be accursed if only Israel would be saved. If he was willing to take on hell for eternity, we can take a little heat from the watch dogs of Christian orthodoxy.
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Great post, Erwin, and some challenging thoughts there. I love the last line. Reminds me of Ed Stetzer, speaking to the Southern Baptist Convention a couple of years ago. He said, “Paul was willing to give up his own salvation so that others might be saved, yet many of us aren’t willing to give up our Sunday morning preferences so that others might be saved.”
I think the idea you asserted is right on: it’s uncomfortable because missions no longer means simply throwing money at the people who are actually doing it, rather, it forces us as the Church to be missionaries here, to bring the hands dirty part of life right inside our auditoriums, living rooms, etc.
Thanks for sharing!
Pure McManus. Pure Truth. Thanks Erwin. You are forever a blessing!
“At Mosaic we have no members only missionaries. There is nothing to join except a community on mission. We have little patience for self indulgent spirituality that insists on everything being about us.”
Thank God for your missionaries! And I’d say there are people all over the world grateful for the vision to become more Christ-centred.
As long as I’ve been alive, the extent of the average church member’s “mission” has mainly been to turn up on a Sundy to send a few out to do the harvesting,appoint a mission committee to oversee fundraising and prayer points, and listen politely when the missionaries return on deputation and are allocated 7 minutes during the service to share their story with the hope of raising $X more per month in order to return to “the field”. (I’m talking from an Australian context, it may be different elsewhere).
The more we “Christians” all get that we’re part of a worldwide movement of people on mission, Christ’s mission, the more the world (our communities, nations and other lands) will benefit.
I, for one, hope that the “sit-back-and-let-someone-else-do-it” days of mission and church membership/partnership are well and truly over.
I am thinking about the irrelevance of activity I have undertaken as a means to please God. I became more about fitting the mold that was created for my life to be poured in. I am no longer a babe and my calling and purpose has been so clarified that it brings meaning to my dreams. I understand the how so much of what I was doing followed scripture, but it was as rote as the religion that I left that demanded works.
What I have found, that Jesus allows me the freedom to be who He called me to be, rightly or wrongly, I did not find that by “doing” church…but by serving and being on mission.
I agree with what you say here but I haven’t always. I thought that church existed for worship, community, sacraments, etc and that mission was just another activity. In a missional church where mission is the organizing purpose,how do these other functions fit?
Well said - since my encounter with Catalyst West Coast & Origins, I am so aware of my neighbours and my community; I realize that as a disciple of Christ I have been a tremendously lousy neighbour — busy running past my “mission field” in order to go work at the church where I am a pastor. I am so tired of bubble-wrapping the message and “stroking the saints” in order to be politically correct — fulfilling church policy — keeping it safe, comfortable and tidy!!! God has called us to so much more; thanks for keeping it in front of us through Origins. My neighbours have now started inviting me to dinner and parties; I’m volunteering at Fringe Festivals and getting out there… thanks for the incentive and motivation to stay on the front lines!
Amen, I followed the path Christ put me on, and set a blaze here in my own backyard. But what I found was that the Watch Dogs brought the hammer down and I ended up on the street because it made them uncomfortable. I can only hope and pray that no one will have to go through that. It almost destroyed my walk, my faith and God’s mission for me. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to experience. We fly over to many mission fields to get to other mission fields. We need Christ in the US now more than ever. I couldn’t agree with Erwin more. Bring on the heat.
[...] http://originsproject.org/?p=409 [...]
Erwin,
You said, “We will not forsake the Word of God for the traditions of men,” and I assume you would say you would not forsake it for anything. However, this commitment conflicts with your commitment to avoiding “traditions that mean . . . nothing to a person searching for God”—that is, unless you intend the word “nothing” to be taken literally (which, of course, would vastly diminish the number of Christian practices to which you are referring). In any regard, much of what the church is called to do (e.g., the ordinances) is unavoidably and necessarily foreign to unbelievers. Moreover, a total disregard of traditions or practices that edify believers means a total disregard of the church and thus a total abandonment of the gospel mission workforce, which obviously would undermine the mission. That said, I think the cultural gap between believers and unbelievers is not as wide as is often assumed. I’m with you on making sure that the church’s culture reflects this narrow disparity.
On a different note, one of my mentors, who happens to be a seminary prof at a prominent evangelical seminary, conveyed major disappointment over your message at the Exponential Conference this year because of your apparent attempt to wiggle out from underneath the exclusiveness of the gospel to those who have embraced Christ by faith and the reality of hell for those who don’t. That, rather than an emphasis on the missio Dei, is what will increasingly arouse the indignation of your orthodox co-laborers in the gospel.
P.S. This prof is one of the biggest proponents of missional ecclesiology at our seminary, and I am doing a Missional Church independent study with him this summer.
P.P.S. Your book, Seizing Your Divine Moment, played a large role in my planting of a very outside-the-box church about 3-and-a-half years ago.
Clearly those who step out of their own culture and want to be effective in whatever project they are attempting will let many of their own ways of doing things fall to the ground. What is more challenging is to change the priority from a religious one that is focused on conformity and order to a spiritual one that is focused on transformation and movement. Being changed, unleashing potential, discovering and becoming who we were meant to be.
Sounds like another one of the core values of Mosaic.
We have been given four missions:
Creation Commandments
1. Exercise dominion over creation bring our world to its full potential … the cultural mandate.
2. Love God and love neighbor.
Redemption Commandments
3. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn. 13:34-35) The New Commandment
4. Go and make disciples … the Great Commission.
Missional has to include all four.
“…mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission of reconciling the world to himself.”
But reconciliation is not just between God and individuals. We are reconciled into God’s reconciling community. Reconciled communities reach out the world draw people in … and this presumes a community exists for individuals to be brought into. As #3 above suggests, it means communities that are inwardly focused enough in their care for each other that others are drawn to the community. That community is going to have rituals and language that in some measure differs from others because the community has a different narrative. The mission is both about gathering in and sending out.
Which is more important to breathing … inhaling or exhaling? So the church has erred in its obsession with inhalation. Let’s not compound the error by focusing purely on exhalation.
Erwin you are bang on. Those of us connected to the Nazarene church who are trying to live out the denominational value of being missional have recently been under attack by a group which claims that being missional is little more than a smokescreen for introducing eastern spirituality to the Church! (I wonder where they think Christianity came from, the Mid-West of the States? Israel was in the East last time I looked!)
One of their main attacks is that we have been preaching “another Jesus” that is a crime I am happy to plead guilty to. I don’t want to preach a Jesus who wants to make us comfortable and happy while he meets our every need. I am abhor the emasculated Christ I hear about in so many comfortable churches. I want to proclaim and follow a radical Jesus who calls on us to pick up our cross and follow Him in the way of sacrificial servanthood.
I hear you ,we all will answer for our time.. For what it’s worth I am for you, keep keepen on.