Changing the Church Culture

Images, metaphors, pictures and stories are powerful because they plant meanings and truths accessibly in our brains.  Jesus’ parables are memorable for just these reasons.   One only has to say “mustard seed” or “prodigal son” or “light under a basket” and our minds immediately go to the truths evoked by the stories around these images.

One of the building blocks of communal culture are the images and stories that we share which explain who we are.   Families, for example, have stories—sometimes humorous, sometimes almost incidental, sometimes traumatic—which are repeated around holiday tables or in transitional moments and which remind us of who we are, how we are expected to behave and what binds us together. 

Churches also have their symbols and their stories.  Some of these, like the cross or a loaf of bread, have long histories and have found a home throughout the entire Christian culture.  These have both wide community meanings and more individual associations, but they nevertheless shape who we are and how we look at the world.  Other stories are far more focused toward a single community.  These may include a particular building or architectural feature, or a repeated story about a key event in the life of the congregation. 

Good preachers and teachers use strong images, metaphors and stories to strengthen their communication and to help listeners remember what has been said.  Indeed, sometimes the story can eclipse the point, because stories can tug at mind and heart together in a way that propositional truth alone cannot.  Recently I overheard one man speaking to another as he was exiting one of my classes, “I’m not sure what point he was making, but that was a great story.”  Oops.  Maybe that story needs a new home.

The point of all of this is that if we are going to be culture changers, we need to find the right images and metaphors to anchor various elements of the new culture in the minds and hearts of our churches.  And then these elements of story need to be frequently repeated so that people begin to associate whole clusters of new meanings with the image.

Around our church we are trying to become a more “missional” church.  But the word “missional” doesn’t conjure up clear meanings in the minds of most of our people.  Even explaining the term often doesn’t help, because our explanations are imprecise and they vary every time we try to clarify the meaning.

But recently we have been using an image which is new to us to explain the “missional church.”  “How do you see the church?” we ask.  “Is the church like a cruise ship whose mission and staff are focused on attracting people to its own programs and giving people a good time so that their consumer impulses are satisfied, their felt needs are cared for, and they believe that their money has been well spent?  Or is the church an aircraft carrier whose mission and staff are focused toward equipping and empowering our people for their ministries every day in the world?”

On aircraft carriers there is a spirit of anticipation, readiness, and a communal life which is intensely supportive, but outwardly focused.  The mission of an aircraft carrier is not to entertain but to equip—not to attract, but to deploy.  Aircraft carriers evaluate success not by the number of people who come onboard, but rather the number of missions engaged.  On an aircraft carrier people listen intently for the orders of the Commander in Chief, rather than sitting in the sun waiting for the next activity on the schedule.

We are discovering that to change our culture, we have to change the way that we think about “the church.”  And one way that we facilitate that change is to provide new images, metaphors and stories to create new associations in the hearts and minds of our community. 

What are your metaphors or stories for what it means to be the “missional church”?

Comments

[Michael Walker]

Steve:

This is a great post. I am terrible with images myself - I wouldn't fall into that category of "great preachers" - so I cannot answer well the question you pose at the end.

But I am drawn to the image of the aircraft carrier. It communicates all the points you mentioned very well. It also, to me, communicates the close relationship between the health of the community "on board" and the ability to successfully "deploy." Sometimes in the missional fervor to emphasize the outward focus of the church and move beyond the days of preoccupation with programs within the church walls (i.e. the cruise ship), we can sometimes forget that apostolic community is almost always necessary for apostolic witness. On a carrier, "sorties" cannot be engaged without the entire crew working together. And it's just so for the church: in the language of PGF, being "internally strong" and "outwardly focused" are inseparable. Thanks for a great metaphor!

[Jerry]

Steve,

I appreciate your searching for imagery. The word "missional" has been quite difficult for our church to completely grasp. Quite frankly I think we should use a completely different word. That said, we've used a bit the sense of our being a "letter" (both Paul and Guder gave us this idea). So, a letter is only a letter if it is sent (a letter only sits in a building to be looked at if it's in a museum and hopefully our churches aren't museums!). Also, it needs to be translated into a language that others can understand. There are, of course, other uses for the image of a letter.

While I think a letter can be a good image, I'm not sure it spurs people on which is unfortunate. That said, I could see how your aircraft carrier could be better at motivating people. There is more of a sense of mission in that image.

However, I am curious as to whether or not the image of a militaristic carrier does not have some heavy downsides. One of the aspects about us being missional that I really like is that there isn't such an understanding of "us vs. them." (the church against the non-church). Frost last year did a great job with his CSI imagery of pointing out that there are traces of God's image in all of us. I like that because it goes against the way I was raised where we are all that is good and the "world" is all that is evil. For me at least, the carrier imagery brings back that notion instead of helping us to see how we are called to "tease out" (to use Frost again)the imago Dei that is in all of us.

Now to be sure no image is going to be perfect, but I do wonder whether or not the us against them is so strong in this image that it might almost be as much of a hindrance as a help. I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

[Steve Hayner]

Hi Jerry --
You have certainly touched on one of the real problems of the image which I suggest. The aircraft carrier assumes an us-them dimension in terms of the mission. But in some ways, so does the "letter". My assumption is that in a "missional church" we begin with an incarnational approach to living. We take seriously Jesus' commission, "As the Father has sent me, now I am sendin you." (John 20) Ultimately the church is a community of people planted firmly within the culture--continuing to fall more in love with God, more in love with one another, and more in love with the work which God is doing and has given them to do within the culture. We don't fly missions to the culture, but rather this is where we abide. This bothers me more than the militaristic connotations of the aircraft carrier, and is why this metaphor (like all metaphors) eventually fails.

[Joel Adams]

I too find the imagery helpful. I too agree it is helpful to a point. I really like the love boat metaphor. Yes, as a pastor I often feel like Judy McCoy the cruise director. I also like your explanation of the aircraft carrier. In many ways I find it helpful.(training, supporting, equipping a missionary people) Yet, like Jerry I do not dig the militaristic aspect of the image. It is like Onward Christian Soldiers, with the cross of Jesus going on before, Christ the royal master leads us against the foe. Although the shift towards a missional posture in todays world is not without a spiritual battle, the militaristic aspect is not the best. However, it does bring to light many aspects of the missional. I too agree it also does not bring out the incarnational aspect. Planes flying outward on a mission and returning to the base does not communicate how in missional we seek to inhabit the gospel in our life context or neighborhood. In fact it really seems a bit like old school empire missiology that missional disassociates itself from. Rather than living with or walking alongside we fly back to our little slice of America.
I wish I had a better metaphor. In fact one metaphor will not do it. Jesus used many to describe the kingdom and I think most will agree we are all still trying to pin that term down. I do like Harry Potter's Marauders's Map. If you don't know it or remember it, its a magical map that when Harry opens, reveals the exact location of each student at Hogwarts School of Wizardry. If the church could have such a map, we could get our identity straight. On Sunday morning, if you opened it, hopefully most of our church would be sitting in their pews, probably shaded towards the back. But, if you opened it at any given time during the week, you would find a true picture of the church. You would find people at work, at home, in coffee circles, at the bank, at school etc. This is important because with the love boat we have gotten way to accustomed to self identifying ourselves as what we do Sunday morning. And what we need is a way of learning to see ourselves as missional church at any given moment during the week. Which leads me back to the carrier. It can imply the main location is the church building or the Sunday event and mission is a program we go off to carry out rather than live out in our everyday context. Steve speaks to this as culture being not an off place but where we abide.
I know this is long. What I wish is to come up with a positive version of ant poison. There is a poison that attracts the ant. The ant gathers or is equipped with this fine poison and takes it back to the nest or lived context. Once there the poison infects the whole nest. Of course it is a terrible metaphor but if someone could just think of something positive instead of poison and instead of dead ants have ants whose life is more abundant, and full of love it would be great. Anyone?
I like that it realizes a missional church can be attractional on one hand and yet for the purpose of resending into the world to carry the gospel we are commissioned to share.

[EvangelismCoach]

Steve:

Awesome conception. I like the images.

Being a more visual society, images and word pictures are what people remember.

All images have their limits (I once used a tornado as an image of a healthy church). In fact, Jesus used multiple images to convey his point, and for 2 centuries, interpreters have been explaining them, adding meaning to them, twisting them, allegorizing them, distorting them, etc. . . .

Yet these images make make your point clear -- which type of church do I participate in, give my tithes to, and support?

Look forward to catching up with you again when I'm next in Atlanta this summer.

Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org