Before I say anything about movement, let me just say that
the weather in Germany is abysmal. It has rained every day that I’ve been here,
and the forecast is grim. The last days of my summer may be spent under gray
skies and wearing jackets. For someone who’s a “fair-weather player” that is
not good news. Nonetheless, I’m making the best of it and am meeting some
wonderful new friends. The Christian Associates world is a fantastic one, and
I’m glad to be a part of.
As I mentioned in one of my last blogs Living into Movement - Pt 1 , I’d like to address the idea of movement from a biblical perspective. Jesus sent his followers into the world with certain aspects or charges to guide them. One of those charges came in John 20. This is post-resurrection. In other words, Christ had been crucified and rose from the dead, but at that time, his followers were unaware that he was alive. They had cloistered away in fear and trepidation that they would be the next to incur punishment as a result of following this rebel, the crazy revolutionary. Perhaps they were concerned that they would be found “guilty by association.” Regardless, he comes in to their presence and he tells them “peace.” Shalom. He realizes their fear and their uncertainty and tells them “peace be with you.” And then he says something that is very important for the church today, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”
These are particularly important words when we talk about movement. I believe for movement to happen a community must have a missional impulse. The unfortunate thing about using the word missional today is that it has been used so much that it’s been rendered nearly meaningless. It means everything and nothing. Like so much in Christianity, particularly in America, a concept gains popularity and we market it to turn a buck. This has certainly been the case with the word missional. It’s almost become like a “filler word.” This is the way I hear many Christians talk, “I missionally want to go down to the missional store and pick up a new missional Mac Book and then do some missional work at my missional third-place.” It’s friggin “missionally” ridiculous.
Let me say this clearly, the word missional is neither a shtick or a model, it’s a theology. When Jesus said, “As the Father sent me so I send you,” he is creating an impulse, and identity; a theological motivation if you will. The word “sent” in John 20 is where we derive our word “mission.” It is the Latin word “missio.”
The theological concept of the missio Dei can be described in three movements: the Father sends the Son, the Father and Son sent the Spirit, and the Trinitarian God sends the church. It moves the center of mission from the church (we’re a “sending church”) to the central theological tenet. In viewing mission from a Trinitarian perspective, it removes the center of mission from the church to God himself. God is a missionary. A famous quote attributed to Rowan Williams (although, strangely I have heard the exact quote attributed to several others), the Archbishop of Canterbury says this, "It is not the Church of God that has a mission. It is the God of mission that has a church in the world."
Therein lies the challenge of the church in the West. Without a proper theological impulse, we find ourselves rudderless and given to consumerism or pragmatism or any other model that might seem to work at the time. If we don’t see our purpose and identity in an appropriate missional way, we find ourselves thinking about mission as something out there. Mission has been to cross the ocean somewhere. The reason we think this way in the West is because we have seen ourselves as the Christianized culture; the center of Christianity. If we are the Christianized culture, where must the mission field be? It has to be somewhere else. So instead of us seeing our identity as missional, as the sent in context, we see mission someplace faraway.
If we have any chance of seeing Christianity as a movement again, we must have the appropriate impulse in place. That is why the idea of Missionality is not a “buzz” concept, or the latest flavor of “churchianty;” it is literally a theological anchor point for us to move forward from. If we do not see our clear identity and center residing in the heart of a missionary God, we will not live the courageous lives that God calls us to. We will ultimately find it difficult to sacrifice for something greater than ourselves. We will not forgo our achievements or accumulations for the Kingdom nor will we serve “the least of these” in the world. We will default to living for ourselves, calculating each one of our moves to make certain that they aren’t too risky. We will certainly not give of our resources and our lives and our gifting sacrificially. We will gravitate toward protected lives; lives postured for security, safety and prosperity, rather than for the grand kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we hope to see a movement happen in our hearts and lives and communities, we must be motivated and drawn and moved by the impulse and life of the missionary God.
