PGF Outbox

What 'missional' looks like from my viewpoint

Though my official title is “Associate Pastor of Christian Education and Youth,” (I’m almost positive that’s right…), I think that my day-to-day schedule would surprise many -at least those not in ministry, and especially those who work with youth. I still get the familiar question “What do you do Monday – Friday?” from time to time, and it still cracks me up as the I watch the person struggle with imagining what my ministry entails during the week when I ask, “What do you think I do Monday – Friday?”

The point of all this is really to say that “missional” from my viewpoint is just the day-to-day ministry of presence. It means getting out of the office and working on youth discussions or emails at the local coffee shop. It means showing up at the high school gym for a girls’ middle school basketball game. It means intentionally seeking out church members for coffee, lunch, or a walk in the community center park. It means going to the neighborhood association meeting to hear about hopes for a dog park. It means visiting someone who has reluctantly transitioned into a full-time assisted residence.

It is going out.

But, I think that it also means going out in another way. I think that the extension can happen in many ways – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For me, though incredibly challenging, I find that the going out requires opening up, and honestly sharing who I am, too…my struggles, my issues, and my dreams. Sometimes it looks like breaking bread with someone over a meal that is specifically Korean, maybe risky and unfamiliar to the other person, but for me, home-y and comforting. Sometimes it looks like sharing honestly about issues of racism and marginalization I continue to see even in the church. Sometimes it looks like challenging our youth to think about the people we work with in the Dominican Republic when they are interacting with those that are different from them at their school.

Ultimately, to me “missional,” is activity…that is rooted in God’s triune presence and experienced in community. Going out and opening up looks like:  

• Presence – Being aware, sensitive, and receptive to the Holy Spirit.
• Contextuality – Being authentic and honest, and encouraging others to be the same.
• Intentionality – Being thoughtful and deliberate in my words and actions.

…and hopefully all this characterizes how I do…and am in ministry.

 

Guest blog post by Mihee Kim-Kort

Frontier mission in a flat, globalized world- why does it matter?

For the last 35-40 years the mission world has wrestled with phrases like “frontier mission” and “unreached peoples.”  Today those phrases sound familiar to some people and  strange to others, while still others dislike them and try to find other words to use!  What are we talking about when we use those kinds of phrases, and why does it even matter in today’s flattened, globalized world?

Those phrases and others like them refer to the fact that some 2.5 billion people in the world today live in ethnic groups where there is no body of followers of Jesus within that group that is large enough to effectively live out and proclaim the good news to their own people.  The gospel has spread far and wide in our world, with two thirds of Jesus’ disciples now living in the Southern hemisphere.  Yet there are still many who haven’t heard the good news and can’t hear.  One way to think about this is to realize that, if every Jesus follower today told everyone they know about Jesus, 2.5 billion people wouldn’t hear, because there is no one in their language and cultural group to tell them.

Furthermore, estimates are that up to 90% of these people are among the poorest of the poor and living in situations of oppression, both physically and spiritually.  They tend to be in bondage to beliefs and forces that keep them in their situations.  From their perspective, there is generally no hope of anything better.

At the same time, at most 1% of the resources of believers around the world are going toward efforts to see God’s kingdom come among these people.  Our focus tends to be on those whom we see around us in our communities who have various needs.  Or on fellow believers in other countries, especially when we have met someone from there who has moved to the US or has come here to study.  They have compelling stories to tell us about the needs in their home communities, and we respond.

But who will speak for the people who live outside the realm of our everyday experience?  Perhaps we know of people from a Muslim context who are here, but we often respond with fear or indifference to the thought of reaching out to them.  Again, who will be the voice for people far removed from our context?  That is the role that Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship (PFF) has taken up, to lift up the cause of people groups who cannot ask us to come to them with good news.

As disciples of Jesus we have the opportunity today to be God’s instruments in seeing the good news of Jesus Christ go to people who truly need to hear good news.  And we have the opportunity to do it in ways the reflect the wholeness of that good news of the kingdom, that deal with needs of spiritual bondage and poverty and oppression.  For the sake of those who can’t otherwise hear good news, we need to keep this opportunity before us, alongside the other opportunities we have.

As we do that, we’ll see changes in people as they are set free.  For example, many Presbyterians have supported and visited work among Dalits (Untouchables) in India.  In all my travels I have not seen people whose lives have been so totally transformed in every way.  From seeing themselves as being little more than animals, they now see themselves as people in the image of God, the God who became one of them and died for them.  They have established schools and training programs for various job skills.  They work to live at peace with people who formerly treated them as animals.  God is moving among them in wonderful ways.  And there is a growing movement of people who follow Jesus and worship him in ways that look very Indian, not Western.  The last figures I saw were growth from 10,000 in 1984 to over 2 million today, growing at over 10,000 per month!

So why does it matter if we are concerned to see the good news of Jesus go to those who haven’t heard?  I would say ask the Dalits whose lives have been transformed, or people in Central Asia or the Middle East who could say the same.  Or ask believers here in the US whose lives have been changed through contact with some of those other members of the body of Christ!  And follow them in seeking to see the realization of the picture in Rev. 5:9-12 and 7:9-12, of multitudes having been redeemed by the lamb, from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, and of their joining together around the throne of God in worship.

listen...

guest blog post by David Henson (@unorthodoxology)

In the course of a given day, I probably spend more time tying my shoes than I do actually listening.

Sure, I hear a lot of things. I live in a noisy world, especially with two small children under foot and corporate advertising incessantly trying to get me to buy something that will complicate my life with unbelievable convenience.

But I don’t listen.

Because to even begin to listen, I believe we need a good bit silence, and there is so little of that, in my life, in my leisure and especially in church.

And whenever I come to a point of silence, especially when I am alone, I do my best to prattle on and on about nothing much, because I fear if I am quiet for too long, I might start to listen only to hear nothing but silence in the depths of my soul.

Or perhaps I would hear too much. 

Too much longing, too much doubt, too much questioning. Too many fears, too many hopes deferred, too many expectations. Too much of myself, unfiltered by the noise I have so carefully erected in my life to keep my sanity. 

But mostly I fear that I will begin to listen for God.

And then hear nothing at all. 

But that’s not exactly true. It wouldn’t be nothing I would be hearing. There is a difference between the silence of God and nothingness.

When I was in college, I went to a Baptist church that every week incorporated what it called “the discipline of silence” into its services. 

For anywhere between 30 seconds to a couple of minutes, the entire congregation would sit in complete silence.  When I asked the pastor whether he thought we could ever sit in silence longer than that, he responded that most people tend to be  uncomfortable with too much silence, which, of course, is true.

But I still wonder what it would be like if a group of Christians managed to shut up for longer than a half-hour on a regular basis. I wonder what would happen if some of us committed to stop praying, in the traditional sense, and began listening.

I’m tempted to think there would be some soul-stirring peace that would lead to divine revelations and holy acts of compassion and justice. I’m tempted to think that it would be a profound and difficult experience in which God would manifest in unusual and striking ways. 

But more than likely, as my old pastor commented, it would just be uncomfortable.

And, I suspect, it would be uncomfortable because when I finally stopped filling in the blanks for God while waiting for some divine word, I would realize that God wasn’t speaking. 

I would realize that God was silent and that instead of all these brilliant insights I expected to find, I would discover the profound depth of the absence of God.

And maybe, if that didn’t spook me too much, after a few years of listening in silence, I would realize that my silence is my best and only prayer.

And maybe, in another decade or so, I would realize that in the roiling noise of mass culture and frenetic life, the silence of God is one of God’s most compassionate gifts, and that I would be thankful that God doesn’t talk as much as I do and isn’t so insecure as to need to blabber on and on about nothing.

Maybe, in another decade, I would come to love the silence as a place of refuge, as a cleft in the rock of the storms and sorrows of life.  

Maybe, by the time I am an old man, I would listen and hear the silent voice of God, saying nothing with a soul-stirring eloquence.

--
David Henson
husband, dad, episcopalian, in that order
unorthodoxology.blogspot.com <http://unorthodoxology.blogspot.com>

Reaching Out to a Disconnected World

“Those over-involved with the Internet tend more towards depression.” So says Dr. Glenn McLaren from Swinburne University in Melbourne on a recent podcast from Ockham’s Razor.

It’s worth a listen, especially for those of us who tend to focus more on theological debates than more scientific or philosophical ones, if for no other reason than to give that part of your brain a good workout.

But it’s also worth a listen for those who care deeply about the church and how it is that we can reach out to a flattening world that seems to be almost constantly in flux.

If it is true that the internet is tending to disconnect us as much as it is connecting us, what might our role be? Of course social media is valuable for sharing ideas, information, building relationships, and allowing us to interact with those who are geographically distant from us.

But Dr. Glenn McLaren also suggests that this over-focus on virtual reality is leaving us feeling cut off from that which is real, solid, and tangible. Community? Meaning? Purpose? Vision? Direction?

The further one travels from original source data (actually having an in person conversation or interaction with someone) the more disconnected one feels. Perhaps that is part of the attraction for those who wish to actually visit the Holy Land, to walk where Jesus walked…as if somehow touching the actual ground, walking in the same places, will allow us to cross the divide of 2000 years of separation.

As a church, or as followers of Jesus, or communities of faith, are we not perfectly situated to help alleviate this sense of disconnection?  We practice a sacred meal that is tactile, tangible, and that we can ‘see with our eyes and taste with our mouths.’ We have a faith that has been practiced by the body of believers in community.

Perhaps even more than ever we are called to be present, offering the world around us a way to connect with God and with one another?

 

Subverting the church

A few days later but I'm Josh and I was invited to blog during the Inside-Out Conference.

This is and was the challenge for me on day one: to reimagine and engage with a Jesus that is subversive to the ways that we think about and practice life in the church.

I love interaction with people and the ability to talk in multiple venues with speakers and friends. Today, I had the opportunity to engage in multiple conversations with Alan Hirsch, author of The Shaping of Things to Come and The Forgotten Ways. Personally, I loved our conversation offline in the hallway, in a small group setting with our church leadership team and in a Irish pub in the evening. His plenary session had plenty to think about but my mind was already hoping for more one-on-one conversation. Some conferences give the opportunity for this and others don't. Today I was allowed this great opportunity.

It's late and I need to crash so let me keep this short and simple. I was personally challenged today in specific ways:

(1) Alan asked an offhanded question tonight during his first talk, "What are we doing keeping the people of God from being the people of God?" This is a question we need to ask ourselves if we want to encounter a subversive Jesus...the Jesus of the Bible. What does this mean for an ordained pastor who is already a part of the church organization that seems to be feeding the passivity of people through producing religious goods and services? It's not a question I want to dig into tonight but I need to do further wrestling later.

(2) This insight has been galvanizing over the last few months but today in conversation with Alan and our church leadership team was a definitive moment of clarity. For missional transformation to happen and for the local church to be transformed, it must begin with people like you and me. We (the people of God) need to make the commitment to go on mission together and see where God leads us. As a leader, I think I need to ask the hard questions of people, drilling down so that they start to discover the prophetic imagination that God has given them and then I need to get out of the way of what God is and will do in them. I also need to get in the game and reimagine a prophetic imagination of my own in relationships with people in my world.

(3) One of Alan's suggestions to us was "Experiment like mad." Don't think of it as failure but recast or reshape new initiatives in light of experimentation. Our church needs to let go of the pursuit of excellence and a set of metrics that don't seem to get us anywhere different and be encouraged to use our innovative DNA and risk experimentation that might include failure that we would learn from.

For more info about me or further thoughts about similar topics see my blog.

Off to bed and another great day tomorrow or is this today?

A church that looks like Jesus

Day #2 at the Inside-Out Conference.

When I am confronted with the reality of the church (and my church) and the Jesus I know from scripture, I am challenged with a Jesus that I think would come into our meetings/gatherings and act rather disturbing in our midst as we go about out business. In fact, I'm not sure our business would continue the way we know it.

With both plenary speakers from last year, Michael Frost, and this year, Alan Hirsch, I am left asking difficult questions about what we are doing and why. Why do we worship in the from and fashion that we do? How is missional living shaping anything we do from small groups to meetings to worship services? When will the church growth model of church, we are so fond of, finally go out of style in the U.S.? What will it take to finally change our ways? How much does the church have to decline? How many people have to leave? How many students will not connect with the modern church we've created?

I heard from someone working in the background of PGF that the production crews (made up of a wide variety of people and backgrounds) from last year and this year loved Frost and Hirsch. They were laughing at the their jokes and following with their incredible story telling. I'm not sure all the people at the conferences loved their messages. Honestly, their message is difficult to handle when we start to wrestle with real questions about a real church and what it means to follow Jesus.

What do we do when the message inside a conference is less than good news to those attending but sounds like good news to those on the outside? I believe we need to listen up and hear where the laughter is coming from. If we identify that a group of people who are apparently outside the conversation enjoy the message, then we need to bring this sense of the redemptive work of God to our churches and communities.

Never Content

The Book of Order is part II of the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  Over the years, the character of the book has become much more regulatory in nature, but there are still some really important statements that can help direct our congregations in a much more missional direction.  One example is found in the Form of Government section G-4.0201 which says this:

"The unity of the Church is a gift of its Lord and finds expression in its faithfulness to the mission to which Christ calls it.  The church is a fellowship of believers which seeks the enlargement of the circle of faith to include all people and is never content to enjoy the benefits of Christian community for itself alone."

How does this statement reflect the reality in your congregation?  Would the people in your congregation agree with this statement or not?  If they agree with it, do they live, act, and behave this way?   This statement makes a number of points to me:

Wilderness Leadership

Recently I was talking with a pastor friend of mine about how difficult it is to exercise missional leadership in the church in North America today.  His people are going through a lot of changes.  Their small town has become much more multi-ethnic.  The church membership has become older and smaller.  He, as their pastor, is not as warm and fuzzy as their previous pastor.  A former member left the church some money in her will.  It turned out to be $1 million!  But, the money had to be used to construct a new church building.  So, they embarked on a building campaign, raised some more money, took out a loan, and now the building is almost ready to move into.  And guess what?  Now, all kinds of criticism are surfacing about the pastor and his leadership.  Some of these issues have been raised before, and they have been addressed, but now they are back with a vengeance.  Some are even calling for his resignation.  What is going on here?