The message of the Church is one of Life! It is a life and death issue. How is it that the church is perceived as it is today? People who are asked about what the church means to them in casual chats are generally disinterested or find it irrelevant and walk away.
But not everybody followed Jesus either! So we are in good company. However, we have the words of life in him. If we pour our lives into those around us, inside and outside the church, surely something will happen! Surely something will happen in SE Edinburgh! Surely God’s spirit will work when God’s people open their hearts to him and ask him to move.
Be encouraged! The Bible is filled with stories of times of great darkness, when God was silent and his people were marginalised. It seemed that nothing would happen. But take a story like Chronicles 2:20. An amazing story where God’s people got together and asked God for help and the spirit of God worked in dramatic form!
The spirit of God is like the wind. We just want to be there when the spirit shows up, but what we really need to do is to give ourselves for the spirit to show up!
Underlying everything I want to say is that God has not called us to a maintenance ministry but he has called us to a missional one. A maintenance ministry is intent on preserving the institution of the church in all its particular forms. It often focuses solely on what we do on a Sunday and this often focuses on getting people into church buildings with the hope that they like what they find. It has been the model for Church since Constantine/beginning of Christendom. Foreign missions have essentially followed this model as well. But eventually, it became apparent that the shape of that foreign mission was synonymous of a western style church. To believe in Jesus was to do church in this way. This Church centred mission goal is to get people into church but often it does not work as we would like. The assumption is that we get converts by getting them into our churches and so the institution must be preserved. However, far from being the centre of mission, the Church is the instrument. God is a missionary God. The Church becomes a critical instrument in God’s work to be a blessing to all the nations (Abraham), not that it will become a great institution in itself.
So an important question is what is God up to in my own church? How do we engage in God’s mission in the world?
The church has to listen to the Spirit’s word. That should be the mindset, not maintenance. The church can be at the centre as long as there are enough people to sustain it. Where churches are full that works for a while and we don’t have to think about mission and evangelism. But now, hardly anyone attends church and often churches have more listed elders than attendees. We have been forced to consider mission even though we still structure our churches in a maintenance mode.
Furthermore, the language of the Bible and the Church has disappeared from society at large and even inside the church. Non judgemental language of empathy and understanding has replaced it. The teaching of the church (Biblical literacy) has basically disappeared from inside the church as well as well as in society.
Churches react to this in a couple of different ways.
Some resist changing the form of the institution as this is being faithful to God, and so they carry on with the forms they are comfortable with even though the reasons for them so often have been long forgotten. Another way is to find cool ways of doing church to attract new and younger people. The mentality of this group is that the more programmes we put on, the more people we can get into the door. Often the motivation is the same, to get more people in order to sustain the institution in its present comfortable form.
This Church centred mission goal is to get people into church but often it does not work as we would like. The assumption is that we get converts by getting them into our churches and so the institution must be preserved.
Ephesians 4 tells us to equip the people to do the work of ministry/service. The work of service is to build up the body of Christ to reach unity in faith and knowledge and to become mature or, as Mathew 28 says, “to make
disciples”. In other words, what we need to do is to equip leaders to serve, paid and unpaid alike, who will lead and walk the journey of life as disciples.
Biblical leaders are those who are honest with people about living in a world which is full of worry and greed and they lead others into a life which is being a disciple of Jesus. They are people who are living out the eternal life now.
One of the biggest problems in transformation is that we are not bothering to think about our lives as disciples. We are just doing church! However, we can connect when there is army of disciples who can turn people to Jesus
and who make worry and greed not ways of life but rather of death.
Disciples are made as we move away from single leadership and follow the guidance of Ephesians. Discipleship needs to get in our blood so that we are not only thinking of our own transformation but how can we help others
to transform as we make our own personal journeys.
Leaders should have three things: They need a deep sense of calling. This needs time and patience. Secondly, they must be of the strongest Christian character. This includes willingness to be led, readiness to admit faults
and to forgive and to reconcile, willingness to serve others behind the scenes without any praise, and thirdly they must be competent in the content of gospel.
Mission only takes place when we dig, study, learn and grow and become competent in the content of the Gospel and have something to give. It is more than just knowledge. What the people inside the church think they need and the people outside the church think they need does not drive a missional church. A missional church is there to guide the church solely in the direction of what God is doing in this world!
