Seeking Missional

Last night my husband and I shared dinner with Michael Frost.  It was a gorgeous evening on the San Antonio Riverwalk.  We talked about our families, the fact that an American host took him to the Outback for dinner one night, and missional churches (of course). 

Michael shared one observation that I found interesting.  He said that in his experience the churches that struggle the most with missional transformation are the ones "medium" in size.  Most people think it is the mega churches who are caught in the attractional mode, seeking to their numbers (attendance, cash, and buildings) going up.  But in his experience, the mega church pastors are restless.  Most reach mega status and think, there must be more to being the church than being big.  

New church developments, on the other hand, can begin with a missional foundation.  They organize around small groups that serve.  Small established congregations, with the right leadership, can also make the transition from attractional to missional without too much difficulty because they are nimble. 

Medium churches, however, have a harder time.  Michael posed two theories.  Medium sized churches sometimes have their eyes locked on the large church, committed to getting "there."   The programs, worship schedule, and services are just large enough that people imagine them a little big bigger and a whole lot more effective.  On the flip side, some churches have their eyes focused on the past.  They don't want to get too big, remembering when everyone was known by name and the pastor attended every pot luck and graduation ceremony in town. Because they don't really want to welcome more people into the community of faith, they focus on maintaining what they have. 

In either case, medium sized churches struggle to transform from institutional churches focused on maintaining their own community to missionaries focused on serving their neighbors in the name of Jesus.  

Of course this is a generalization.  Every established church struggles to transform. Even new church developments that are planted with missional DNA sometimes lose their way. 

 

But what do you think about Michael's observation?

Comments

[Megan Holliday]

I agree! I am a staff member of a medium church and find we struggle sometimes with both of those concepts. Our senior pastor has experience in the program-driven church, but that is not our focus any longer so it seems to me we have a harder time moving on from our past "glory days."

[Joey Sherrard]

There is a lot of truth here. I wonder if another part of it is that ethos is much more difficult to transform in medium contexts. In the best mega-churches identity and direction are well-communicated and people often choose between either joining the new vision or leaving. And in smaller churches, the communication ends up being more direct and consensus unavoidably has to be built.

But in medium churches unanticipated vocal minorities can object to progress or key people can be missed or bypassed... and thus the missional vision is blocked.

[Scott Keeble]

Great point Joey.
In a smaller church setting, the pursuit of consensus can be a compelling journey. But it seems like in a medium sized church, the pursuit of consensus is more a recipe for the status quo. (feel like I read that somewhere recently.)

[Joel Adams]

In my judgment, ethos is just as hard to change in a small church. Less people does not make consensus any easier. What I am more aware of than ever is consensus is not the journey at all. The journey is with those willing, ready and wanting to go. Some nights if I wait for an unwilling child to get into the bath, I may be in for a late night. But its seems that whenever there is one willing, before long all three are in there yelling at each other to move over. How do we cultivate their imagination for the journey? How do we give them an imagination for the sent people rather than the mega-church? How do we hold the unwilling and allow them their resistance so that they must make a decision? Peace.

[Doug Resler]

For about nine months now, I have been participating in the MCAP program through Missio which is the coaching network involving the Tangible Kingdom guys, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay. We recently submitted our final summaries and one statement from a pastor engaged in missional transformation of an existing church really stuck out to me. "Don't announce a revolution, just start doing things differently. Gather the few that get "it" and start doing it." I wonder, to Joel's point, if this isn't a way forward in terms of cultivating imagination for the sent people and at the same time holding the unwilling in that place where they must make a decision?

As an aside, we are living in this tension right now as an NCD. This has caused me to wonder if the tension isn't so much about church size as it is about the individual ethos of the local congregation.

Good stuff, folks...got my wheels spinning yet again!

[Rev. Jim Conner]

I had lunch with the president of the Outreach foundation earlier this year and asked him "What is the greatest need/request by our mission partners around the world" answser "Training". When our church participated in training church leaders in Egypt from around the Middle East and Sudan that was what they asked for as well. "Come to my country and I promise you 5,000 people every day" said a man from Sudan we need this desperately. Too manyof our mission partners tell me how American come to build buidlings but fail to build relationships and as a result fail to grow the relationsihps and mutual upbuidling described in the scripture.
I am grateful for presbyterian missionaries and others who have encouraged me to ask what is wanted and needed before offering our best ideas.
So here we are with this enormous supply of educated seminary grads and highly trained people a glut if you will and a world church desperate for training and resources. I ampraying that this will be the lead topic among presbyterians as we seek to serve the church in countries that are the 'least of these due to economic circumstance but apparently not so spiritually.

Jim Conner
Arcadia Ca