"Emergent" & "Missional" ... like peanut butter & jelly ...Laurel & Hardy ... The Lone Ranger & ...you get the point

It has been a few days since I have checked in. This interim week between travels has gone well. Mornings have been spent at various area coffee shops reading, note-taking, laptop surfing, planning and drinking java and chai tea...and bumping into a few of you. On Tuesday morning, almost unconsciously, I pulled into Dunn Brothers Coffee Shop on Metcalf commenting to myself, "Hey, that looks like Rick's red camaro." Turns out that it was Rick's mothership...and beside it was Liz's hybrid...and...it was Atonement's weekly staff meeting! Knowing that if I ventured inside I'd have alot of s'plaining to do and ribbing to take, I renegotiated plans and headed to Homer's (where I bumped into a few church members).

I have also bumped into two of the more stimulating and helpful books that I have read in the past few years, Emerging Churches, by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, and Shaped by God's Heart - The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches, by Milfred Minatrea. I am not usually one to juggle two readings simultaneously, but alternating between these works has served to convince me how utterly necessary it is for an emergent church, if it wishes to be successful and faithful, to be missional...and how missional churches are often, by nature, emergent. And if these terms are strangers to you, I commend you to these works. They are wonderfully helpful foundation reading. (Would be glad to loan them out in August.)

Jonathan Campbell, an emergent pastor in Seattle, captures some of the heart of the emergent church and a large segment of the current American culture stating,

"We have come to see that it is all about Jesus and not just a methodology. It is not about mission, not about church, but it's about Jesus and his glory, his life. To know Jesus is not an event, a ritual, a creed, or a religion. It is a journey of trust and adventure. We don't believe in any religion anymore - including Christianity - but we do believe in following Jesus. We no longer need religion with its special buildings, dogmas, programs, clergy (ouch!), or any other human inventions that displace genuine spirituality. Why do we need a name and address to be church? We've come out of religion and back to God."

This is a bit edgy for mainline traditionalists, for sure. But when you consider that 95% of nonchurched persons recently surveyed had overwhelmingly positive sentiments to express regarding Jesus one quickly concludes that cultural aversions are not to the Lord, but the Lord's church. As I have continually suggested, the old attractional model of evangelism just isn't going to be effective in growing the church of the future (or present) no matter how appealing we make our programs or sermons series or worship services. A large percentage of the persons we work with and live near (or perhaps live with) just aren't coming through our church doors...period. If we care about these sheep (these sheep being the ones that Jesus left the 99 other sheep in the wilderness to retrieve) then we have got to find a way to bless them where they are...i.e. outside the walls of church. This is where the "missional" church is pressed into service.

Bolger and Gibbs write, "In emerging churches the direction of church changes from a centripetal (flowing in) to a centrifugal (flowing out) dynamic." That is, we shift our paradigm from attracting crowds to equipping, dispersing and multiplying Christ's followers to bless the world beyond the church walls. Atonement is most authentically and faithfully the church only when it leaves 9948 Metcalf Avenue. This is not just an encouragement to shift paradigms for the sake of salvaging the church of the 21st century, nor is it just another program or programmatic adjustment. This is about living into the apostolic vision of the movement Jesus originally intended us to be. We become missional not for the sake of the church, but out of faithfulness to Jesus' desire to advance the kingdom. What results missionally could look completely different from church culture as we love and know it, the culture that has not only failed to interest a growing segment of culture, but has also, it seems, succeeded in repelling it.

One of the most significant challenges for the church is reevaluating the way we evaluate. Our institutional behavior is largely determined by what we measure. If the mother church is most interested in measuring how many sheep we congregations are attracting (and enrolling and turning into pledgers and confirming) then we will necessarily become attractional in our mission in order to fill out the report card favorably. If, however, we are measuring the number of lives that we bless, the number of children that we teach to read, roofs that we place on houses, hungry stomachs that we help fill and followers of Jesus that we encourage and teach, then our behavior will look quite different. It will be much more centrifugal. But we shall need a new report card from the mother church. Centrifugal impact is always more difficult to assess. It is also points toward the kingdom and not toward any particular pastor or congregation, meaning there are some clergy egos that may take a hit. Additionally, putting roofs on houses in the name of Jesus doesn't inherently result in increased money in the club's offering plates. In fact, it may draw or redirect current congregational resources. How do we deal with this?

Globally the church of Christ is by far most vibrant where it is described less as "institution" and more as "movement". In China, India, Russia and Southeast Africa, sometimes in places where it is illegal for religious groups to assemble in numbers greater than ten or so, the church is exploding. It is difficult if not impossible to accurately measure, but the shock waves of the work of this expanding movement is being felt throughout the kingdom.

So these are a few of the thoughts that I am wrestling with this week.

My plans for the approaching days are intentionally undetermined at this point, but it appears as if I will be headed north this weekend to Minneapolis to take in two emergent experiences Sunday evening. The website for House of Mercy states, "Founded in the spring of 1996, House of Mercy offers a discriminating blend of high church and low, of tradition and innovation, sincere worship and healthy skepticism." They meet for worship at 5:00 pm. Thirteen miles away is one of the premier emergent communities in the country, Solomon's Porch. They worship at 6:00 pm. So unless the preacher (more likely, 'teacher') is short-winded, I'll miss the benediction at HOM.

Then I will have a week to travel about Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan before dropping into lower state by the following weekend to experience two more congregations, "Water's Edge" and "Mars Hill," both in the greater Grand Rapids area. (I will try to post on this blog links to all of these ministries.)

If you are a traditional Lutheran Atonemenite plodding with me through this experience and losing sleep at night over the fear that Pastor Joe is going to work to turn our congregation inside out...don't buy the Sominex yet. I trust that a congregation becomes more missional not by supplanting its tradition and values but, especially in the tradition of our denominational tribe, more firmly embracing them. More to come.

If you are traveling the morning coffee circuit this week, perhaps I'll see you.