Occasio

Can Mennonite Brethren be Missional? (repost)

"What is the missional church?" This discussion has recently picked up on Facebook and specifically on Tony Jones' blog. In this post (reposted from July) I offer a definition and a connection to my denomination, the Mennonite Brethren, an offshoot of Anabaptism.

Direction Journal, a publication of Mennonite Brethren higher education institutions, recently published an article of mine titled, "Can Mennonite Brethren be Missional?" The issue it appears in addresses the theme, "The Emerging Church: Critiques and Appreciations" (Spring 2010). The issue and article are now available online.

In the article I give a brief overview of North American church culture, define the missional movement and suggest nine points of similarity between the historic Anabaptist church, specifically the Mennonite Brethren, and the missional movement.

Here's a quick summary of those similarities:

1. A distrust of creedal and dogmatic formulations and a reliance on the biblical witness.
2. A corporate hermeneutic that honors the local community rather than an institution.
3. A holistic witness incarnated as a liberating gospel in both word and deed.
4. The "priesthood of all believers" -- the belief that all followers of Christ are active participants in God's mission.
5. Loyalty to the kingdom and the grand narrative of God's story rather than to an earthly nation-state.
6. The ability to live and worship in a place of exile, persecution, and dislocation.
7. The congregation as the place to live a life of witness and service while being a counter-cultural presence engaged with the world.
8. A community ethic of love and accountability.
9. Voluntary, non-coercive membership in the church community.

And here's a teaser that might get you interested in reading the full article.

What is the missional church? This question is being asked by churches across North America. Is it a new fad? The latest “new and improved” technique for attracting a younger generation? An innovative program for evangelism? Or is it a new way of doing mission work? The word “missional” is used in many different ways: some people understand its historical and theological origins, and others flippantly use it as a label for a new marketing scheme. The purpose of this essay is to answer the question by first examining twenty-first-century North American cultural shifts, then by locating the place of the church within those shifts, and finally by identifying some ways that Mennonite Brethren might resonate with and learn from the missional conversation.

Here's the article. Do you have thoughts, corrections, rebuttals? I'd be glad to hear them.

 

"God in the Neighborhood" #2, technical and adaptive challenges

Sunday marked our second week in the Sunday school class, "God in the Neighborhood." Our purpose in this class is to learn to see what God is up to on the block where we live. Our church has been working at the missional conversation for a number of years and it's now time to transfer what we have learned in our church's neighborhood to the ones in which we live. (See the first post here.)

Each session we open by sharing about the things we are seeing in our neighborhoods.  Aaron told how his reclusive neighbor had been in the hospital for a pacemaker implant. The neighbor's body rejected the pacemaker and doctors had to do CPR for fifteen minutes before he was revived. Aaron's family visited the man when he came home and learned that the only other family or friends he had caring for or visiting him was a girlfriend. The lesson for our group: we might never recognize how many people living near us have similar stories of loneliness and isolation unless we reach out and get to know them.

As we were talking about our Christian witness in the neighborhood Latoya mentioned how many people on her block have Christian license plates and symbols on their cars, yet they aren’t friendly, don’t drive Christ-like and never stop to meet her. On the contrary, she spoke fondly of Elmer, a retired seminary professor who does little to outwardly display his Christianity but invites neighbors and children over for a weekly Bible class. He patiently and tenderly opens God’s Word and meets people where they are at. Here is a man who is known, respected and listened to by his neighbors.

In every class session I teach one resource through which people can learn to know their neighborhoods better. This week we talked about the difference between technical and adaptive challenges. Ronald Heifitz (lecturer at Harvard University and son of famed violinist Jascha Heifitz) suggests there are two types of problems that leaders will have to address: technical and adaptive.

Technical challenges are those dilemmas that are met with known, tested and predictable answers. These are situations that have been encountered numerous times and require common responses. Technical challenges usually require quick fixes, problem solving, consultation with experts, application of models, etc. Examples of this include taking a car to a mechanic when it starts making a strange sound, an accountant doing your taxes, institutions developing five year strategic plans, and churches that go to trendy seminars to learn how to grow.

Adaptive challenges refer to those situations that present new dilemmas; this is territory that has not been traveled before. Adaptive challenges require not the predefined answers of unengaged experts, but the hard work of discernment by those who are impacted by the problem (i.e. a church congregation or people who actually live on the block). Adaptive change assumes that change comes primarily through internal means including understanding the history and culture of a system, assessing the context, and using the creative imagination of participants alongside leadership.

Our church faced an adaptive challenge when kids started showing up several hours early for our Wednesday night youth programs. This presented a problem we hadn’t encountered before. In assessing the situation we found that kids were lonely and bored, ill-attended to by parents (often single parents) and lived in the church’s neighborhood but would rather be at church than at home. Out of this need was birthed something new—a weekly tutoring club and meal that precedes the children’s program and is hosted by church members.

 

There’s also an important warning that comes from this discussion: adaptive challenges cannot be met with technical solutions. One of the great mistakes of the contemporary church is trying to solve the emerging issues of a post-Christian context with the same old systems and programs (but trying to do them bigger, harder and better). Adding drums and a video projector to a worship service doesn’t guarantee increased attendance. Requiring evangelism training of leaders won’t necessarily lead to new conversions.

Next week members of the class will return ready to discuss both the technical and adaptive challenges they see in their own neighborhoods. What do you see in your neighborhood?

"God in the Neighborhood" #1, an overview

 

Through the next ten weeks I’ll be teaching a Sunday school class at my church (North Fresno Church) called “God in the Neighborhood.” I’ll try to provide summaries from week-to-week so that those who attend will be able to find the resources we discuss. Other readers are welcome as well. The following is a wrap-up of today’s session.

NFC has been on a journey for a couple of decades. We have been learning to know the neighborhood around our church campus and asking how we might interact with and serve that neighborhood. This has all come very intuitively for our medium-sized group of Mennonite Brethren (a branch of the Reformation known as Anabaptism), but in the last few years we have begun to think more intentionally and have identified ourselves on a missional journey. As a result we have mobilized and equipped the congregation to serve the community. Some of the projects we have engaged in include tutoring and helping at the local elementary school; providing support, Bible study, counseling and other services at a nearby apartment complex; offering sports clubs in our gym; hosting community nights and meals; and much more. This has provided great joy and given our church family mission and purpose. Members of our congregation are engaged in ministry and growing in their commitment to God and each other. And we have seen many people begin a relationship with Christ and be baptized.

But a question has emerged: How can we help transfer these kinds of practices to the neighborhoods of NFC’s congregants? We have begun to ask, “What does it mean to be missional, not just where we worship, but where we live?” These are the questions I deal with in the doctoral dissertation I just completed, and these are the questions that led to the formation of a group of people that covenanted together to experiment missionally in their own neighborhoods last year. The lessons learned from that group are now being brought to this Sunday school class. The participants of that covenant group will help me teach the sessions.

Each time this class meets over the next ten weeks we will do three things. First, we will share about and pray for our neighborhoods. The goal of this class is to help each attender ask, “What is God up to in my neighborhood and how can I join him?” As people begin to see their neighborhoods with new eyes they will be invited to share what they see. Second, we will engage in a group form of lectio divina. A Latin term, this is a sacred or “divine” reading of Scripture that involves reading and praying through the passage (for a description of lectio see an earlier article I wrote here). We will be focusing repeatedly on Luke 10:1-12. Finally, I will present a resource each week that will help members of the class return to their neighborhoods with new skills. I won’t tell people what they should do in their neighborhoods, rather I’ll give them some skills for deciding what God is calling them to do.

We are expecting a great time as we share and pray with each other. I know that we will all be better friends once we’ve walked this road together. Our goal is not to limit ministry to random cold-contact witnessing with a tract, four questions and a packaged prayer. Seeing God in the neighborhood is so much bigger than that. I can’t anticipate what God will call each member to do where he or she lives, but I can promise an adventure with God, a deeper understanding of ministry and place to process what’s being learned with other brothers and sisters.

Along the way, please leave comments, please try new experiments and please, please ask, “What is God up to in my neighborhood and how can I join him?”