Our continuing journey

I hesitate to talk about "our missional journey", partly because missional has become a somewhat overused buzz word and partly because our journey might not look that missional by some standards. But a missional journey it is all the same. Our particular journey may not be as intentional as some, but it is moving along. Sometimes we don't see the movement, it just seems to happen around us. Perhaps that's a good thing. When people ask us what we are doing, I usually reply that we are learning to live in the community as ordinary people and that we're trying to see what God is doing and join in with him.

We've never tried to define that with any sense of accuracy or precision. On the other hand, we've always known that it has a lot to do with building friendships that are not predicated on an evangelistic goal. We are friends because we are friends and not because we're looking for an outreach project. Somehow we have to balance that with a sense of intentionality, the idea that we want to share our faith with the folk we've come to know, but never as the sole goal of being friends. As I've said, we are friends because we are friends.

So it is that we find ourselves doing things we might never have imagined doing 5 or 10 years ago. I coach tennis and I look after a rugby team doing therapy and pitch-side first aid. We'd never have thought that this is how our journey would take shape. And even if we did imagine it, it's interesting how it's grown through others and not ourselves. I was asked to get involved with the rugby club through a contact made through my time volunteering as a student therapist at another club. I tried to start some adult tennis on my terms, but that didn't work and then along came someone else asking about courts and lessons and here we are.

It makes me think of one of John Kramp's "laws of lostology" from his book Out of their faces and into their shoes. Over time I've probably adjusted his original intention, but a quick look at my blog post about the book reminds me that what we are currently trying to do is to be involved in the search (Law 23). Simply by being out there, wherever "there" might be, in our case it's a tennis court or a rugby pitch, we're putting ourselves where people can meet us and we can meet them. Conversations happen, friendships form, relationships build. Always praying and hoping that an opportunity will arise to share something of our faith that will nudge people towards the kingdom.

Is that enough? For some it isn't. That's okay, I can live with that, I can give thanks for the difference. I'm not one for measuring my missional effectiveness only by how many times I get to share the story of Jesus, important as it is. I want people to hear, the understand and to know they have a choice to make. But I'm also convinced that we are often only part of one person's journey and leaving them ready for the next step is a crucial part of our responsibility.

So we will continue to take a slow approach. We won't try to pouch things along any faster than they are able to go. Sometimes that will probably mean that we won't push hard enough, but rather that than push too hard too often. It's a learning curve anyway.

If the Ark isn't a symbol of God's power, what is it?

I'm talking here about the Ark of the Covenant and not the large vessel Noah built and has become the subject of heated debate with the release of the film, just to save any confusion!

The story of the the loss and return of the Ark in 1 Samuel is still in my mind as I think about the implications of the story. There are plenty of theological books available that will discuss the Ark, it's significance and meaning. What I've been doing is thinking about why Israel took it into battle and why, when it was captured, the events unfolded as they did. Perhaps some of the answers lie in the relationship between God and Israel and God and the Philistines. Perhaps not so much.

I guess some of the problem lies in the simple fact that we can make what was sacred into something far more superstitious than sacred. There's an almost logical reductionism that causes us to interpret and then reinterpret things to the point that they bear little resemblance to the original. And it has to be said that whichever side of an argument you present, you face the danger of interpreting texts and objects in line with your presuppositions and prejudices. It's only natural.

So, without this turning into an in-depth bible study, what does the Ark represent? What is it's significance? Well, at it's very heart it is the resting place of the God-given law code for Israel. That law describes life under the covenant between God and the people. It's a treaty document you might say, and it describes the responsibilities of both suzerain and vassal, master and servant. Failure to live up to the terms of the covenant brings consequences.

But there's something else at work with this particular covenant. There's an escape route if you like for when things go wrong, for when the people fail to meet the expectations of the code. A rite takes place and blood is sprinkled on the Ark. Now, I happen to think that Ark contained both copies of the law. Typically treaties of the era would be written out in two copies, one for each party. I think both god's copy and the people's copy are in the box. both people and Lord have only one reference point, the Ark and so when the blood is sprinkled both copies are "covered" by the blood of the sacrifice.

Now, when God looks at the law he sees the blood first. There law is "hidden" beneath the blood. It does not disappear. Rather than being judged against the law, the people are now judged against the sacrifice. Mercy, and grace, triumph over judgment, to paraphrase James.

Perhaps that's why the Philistine statue falls over, because there is no blood to cover the law and so judgment prevails (You shall have no other gods...). But even where judgement might prevail. God remains gracious and even the Philistines work out a way to send the Ark back. Even in their misdirected faith and practice, God seems to find a way to be gracious towards them. Perhaps this is a symbol too of what is to come when he will make a covenant that is wider than a nation.

You see, I find it fascinating the way that God interacts with people. The way he seeks to save and not destroy. The way he works with where they are rather than where they ought to be if only they knew  better.

Missional church life is not just about doing more mission or doing more social action. Part of the missional DNA is to inhabit the neighbourhood not just visit it. To find ways of incarnating the gospel, living the grace of God n the mists of a community that is mixed up and messed up. To find a way of demonstrating a better way to live from within. We are in the community, we are for the community and are with the community as together we journey with and towards God. This is not a universalist position before someone accuses me of such. It is an assumption that everyone is somewhere on a journey with God. That God is at work in my community.

For the record, I think God loved the Philistines just as much as he loved Israel. I think he wanted to show them a better way, to bless them in ways they couldn't imaging. It was just that the example he longed to set for them through the people he had set apart wasn't working.

You might be tempted to say the same is true today.

Where are we now?

A video conversation with Reggie McNeal about the missional movement. In this video he makes some interesting observations about the journey so far and shares both concerns and hopes for the movement going forward.

The hardest thing for most people as far as I can tell is getting  grip on a completely new way of seeing the church. It's not about adding more programmes, but fundamentally shifting our paradigm for what it means to be the church. Moving from a church-centric narrative to a kingdom narrative is one of our challenges. Seeing ourselves as 'in', 'for' and 'with' our communities is also a challenge.

Defining God's Mission

It's somewhat presumptuous of me, or anyone to think that we can actually define what it is that God wants to do in the world. We can however look at what he has done and what he says about what he does, and try to interpret that in a way that helps us participate.

For a long time now, my guiding principle for understanding my relationship to the mission of God has been in the form of this simple question: Lord, what are you doing, and how can I help? It comes from reading John 5 and the statement of Jesus that he does "only what he sees the Father doing". I've been around church long enough to have sent enough time conceiving grand plans on the assumption that God would naturally bless whatever it was we were planning to do. Rarely, if ever, did we stop and ask ourselves what he was already doing in our communities and neighbourhoods.

With the advent of missional church language and through a process of reflecting on why evangelism was so hard and how we could make it a more natural expression of our discipleship, I began to discover a working vocabulary that has helped me redefine the mission and my relationship to it. It is not complete yet, ad I guess probably never will be. I also must report that as yet we haven't seen anything spectacular, we haven't planted a thriving new church with a whole new outlook on community engagement. We're still on the journey and I'm none the wiser about what God is doing in my neighbourhood.

But, over the years, I've come to a few realisations and conclusions that have helped me see God's mission differently to way I saw it back in the 70's and 80's. Those realisations include the following:

• First, generally speaking, church works for people who like church and it doesn’t work for everyone else! 

• Second, people who don’t yet know Jesus aren’t really unhappy, unfulfilled and having a bad time. They actually seem to enjoy their lives far more than the average Christian enjoys theirs. 

• Thirdly, the simple fact that God is on a mission and has a church through whom he wants to work, and with whom he wants to work in partnership.

The church's mandate is to partner with God in his mission rather than seek to plan and do the work for him. Mission is much more than just evangelism. John Stott once defined mission as everything the church does. I didn't fully comprehend the implications of that statement at the time and even questioned whether it was true, but that was mainly from the perspective of looking at what the church was doing and wondering if it was actually part of God's mission. Looking back, I think I understand more fully how this fits in the context of we might now call the missional church.

The other thing that shifted my perspective was the concept of servant evangelism and the idea of ordinary evangelism. The latter is best summed up in the words of Jim Henderson, which I'll paraphrase from memory:

If ordinary people can't do it (i.e. evangelism/mission) in ordinary ways, ordinarily it won't get done.

I do believe that taken together, these concepts have helped me understand more deeply where I fit in big picture of what God is doing. It needs seasoning with some intentionality and a few other things,  but overall being ordinary, doing ordinary things, but understanding them to be part of trying to see what God is up to and partnering with him is the natural environment for my part in his mission.

As to defining that mission, well I got asked to preach this last Sunday and I chose to share our story in the context of talking about some of these things. I defined God's mission this way:

To let everyone know that God is for them and not against them. That he loves them with a passion and we can make this known through the things we say and do and the quality of the relationships we share.

That mission is redemptive (restoring the broken relationship between humanity and God through the cross of Christ) and it’s active (God came looking, Jesus said, “Go!” He sent the church to the world, not the world to church.)

This is the kind of church I believe Jesus wants to build. A church made up of people who will partner with him on his mission to bless the world and share the message of his redemptive love and sacrifice. Being missional is about making disciples who make disciples so that the world can be saturated with people who love Jesus. It's not about doing more mission. It’s not just about becoming socially active or engaged.

We do what we do because we are the people of God partnering with God in his mission to the world. That mission is primarily a mission of incarnation, where God comes to dwell amongst the people he loves and seeks to redeem them into relationship with him.

Four interesting principles for missional communities

From the blog of David Fitch comes an interesting piece about one particular missional community and the principles behind it. Here are the principles, (edited slightly):

• He got a job. Wayne Gordon came to Lawndale humbly, expecting nothing and got a job in the community. He said, “because I didn’t need money it gave us freedom to do things. We didn’t have to focus on getting people into church seats and tithing.” He was able to be “with” people on their terms not on terms dictated by needing to get a church going that was self-sustaining.

• He inhabited humbly incarnationally. He came to be “with” the community resisting any colonialist impulses. He came to listen to the community, hear the issues, and ask God how he could cooperate with His salvation in this neighbourhood.

• He gave it time: He said “the number one reason things don’t happen is we don’t give it enough time.” He said “if you would have come here when we were fifteen years into it, you would have said nothing is happening here.

• Money comes from God: Wayne talked about money as being a provision from God. For Wayne Gordon, faith does not mean we take crazy risks. Faith means we trust God that if we’re meant to do this we will wait long enough and God will provide the money. He said average time a project takes to go from initiation stage to completion is seven years. It takes perseverance.

When people ask us what we are doing or what we've done about planting a church in our community, we have very little to show them or to say at the moment. It can sound like we've done nothing. What we would say is that we believe that God wants us here, we believe that he is at work in our community, the thing is we just haven't worked out what he's doing at the moment. We've consistently said this is a long-term project, and we're not expecting an overnight success (no matter how nice it would be to be able to point to a flourishing community!) Time is really important in this process.

The other point that struck a chord with me comes in the first principle above. Succinctly it describes two of the big issues with legacy models of church planting. One is getting people into a building and the second is on who's terms do we do mission. So much of our historic mission has been done on the basis of inviting people into our controlled environment where we set the agenda. As the communities we try to reach continue to move further away from our the locus of our building-based activities we are faced with the stark choice of staying in our buildings and becoming increasingly irrelevant, or leaving the building and connecting with our communities.

You can read the whole post here.

Thoughts from Luke 10

Having decided that our next step is to develop a prayer strategy for our community, we've set out a table of streets, grouped by location from our map. We have just over 150 streets in our community and we want to pray for each one of them. It's not that difficult to work out the logistics and a bit of trial and error goes a long way too. But what underpins the principles and ideas? Well I've been reflecting on Luke 10 as I think about this and here's what I've explored so far.

1. Not alone

It's not a solitary mission, but a shared mission. Jesus sent the disciples out in pairs. That's not rocket science, but it is a reminder that taking a partner with you is strategic.

2. No empires

He instructed them to pray for others to join in. This is not about building an empire but sharing a mission. It's not a case of the workers are few so I'll go it alone, but rather the workers are few, let's pray for more workers to join the party.

3. Go vulnerable

Jesus said to go without spare shoes and luggage. When we go it's not about what we can give to the community out of our abundance. Perhaps that's because it forces us to be dependent upon God already being at work. When we turn up with a ready-made solution what room is there for God to do something extraordinary?

4. Always bless

The prayer strategy that we are going to use is simply to pray God's blessing down every street. We're not "treasure hunting" or seeking to drive out darkness. We just want to ask God to bless the people amongst whom we live. There is a time and place to confront darkness and challenge evil, but let's start by blessing people. That seems logical and valid to me.

5. Don't agonise over the response

If a place is not a place of peace then so be it. We're not going to judge, just to bless. whichever way it goes, the kingdom is here whether people notice it or not. I have this intermittent privilege of serving families at a time of loss. That now includes doing the occasional non-religious funeral. I've blogged about that elsewhere. I'd hope that all the funerals are non-religious in a way because religious usually means rites and rituals without any real depth of faith. On the other hand all the funerals I lead are strongly rooted in a Christian faith perspective even when God is not mentioned and prayers are not said. Why? Because I'm there and I pray. Not at the funeral, but at home, in the car, at the crematorium, just not in the service or with the mourners. I don't agonise over the lost opportunity to share the gospel or missing element of fait, I just do what I can and leave the rest in God's hands.

6. Be prepared to be amazed!

God does some extraordinary things. He has the habit of showing up when we least expect him to and doing something equally unexpected.

So, how complicated is it to walk down your street and ask God to bless the homes and businesses in it? Are you afraid you might bless someone who doesn't deserve it or who might be doing something that doesn't honour God? How righteous do your neighbours need to be before they are worthy of your prayer of blessing? I'm sure that somewhere in our community someone is probably making illicit adult films, planning crimes, taking drugs or evading tax. IT seems to me that praying for them is the very thing I ought to do.

Here's one last crazy idea. In our village we have a Kingdom Hall. What might God do if I pray a blessing on that place!

Allergic reactions to church

Every so often a link passes across my RSS feed that catches my attention.  Quite a long time ago I blogged about a talk by Reggie McNeal about the missional church. It was a talk that sat and listened to one Sunday morning while on sabbatical in 2008 I think. Well, here's a link to a series of talks he gave at a conference in early November. According to the link the videos will only be available until the end of January, so if you're reading this post January 2013 I'm sorry if the link no longer works! Many of the stories he shares and the challenge he presents are in his books and probably available via other links too, so it shouldn't be difficult to find him somewhere on the web talking about these things.

Here's the link.

I noted down a few things from what he says in the first session.


Talking about the rapid growth in the number of people in North America that consider themselves unaffiliated to any religious movement, he spoke about revealing a "precipitous allergic reaction to institutionalised religion". People are not allergic to God or spirituality, just institutionalised religion. If that is true then painful as it may be to hear, no matter how well we might be doing church, people are not going to come. It's a false premise that better worship, more multimedia, shorter sermons and clever drama will somehow attract people into our buildings. It won't. As McNeal says, "Fewer people are interested in becoming congregationalised."

We're building better auditoria than ever, in some parts of the world at least, but people aren't coming. Church has become a vendor of religious services. If doing church well was going to change this tide it would have worked by now. The question is not about how to do church better but how to be church better.

The church is not the point. The mission of God is the point. The Bible begins and ends without a church. No church in the garden, no church in the city.

Instead of  telling the stories of God showing up and showing off (this is one of his favourite ways to describe the nature of God, not as an arrogant deity but as a God who just loves to bless beyond our capacity to imagine). We need more present stories of God-sightings and fewer historical retellings of Pentecost!

Anyway, as usual with Reggie McNeal there are lots of stories and lots of jumping around in his topic, but it's worth settling down with a cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate and a suitable low-calorie snack to listen to what he has to say.

Holy Yoga

I know, I know, yoga and Christianity doesn't mix well, particularly for evangelicals, but as a form of exercise it remains fairly popular. So what are we to do?

One approach is to reject it as a distraction or deviation at best, fraught with pitfalls and dangerous mystical beliefs and practices. An alternative is to think redemption. That appears to be what one group is seeking to by developing a Christian based alternative.

I'm in London today to see for myself what holy yoga looks like and to meet a Christian practitioner. Should be an interesting morning!


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What might it look like?

We were joking the other day with some friends about what we might be doing next now that formal ministry seems to be over for us. Amidst the swinging from crazy ideas and incredible vision to sheer panic and scary dreams about the future, we find ourselves reflecting on all sorts of things. The truth is that rather like one of the legendary large artworks of the inimitable Rolf Harris, it's difficult to, "see what is it yet."

In my dreams, it looks very different to the usual experience we have of church. It's rooted in relationships, built around common values and shared experiences. I know this is what all church experience ought to be, but it isn't. That's the truth. When faith becomes institutionalised it requires an organisational system to maintain itself. That system generates demands and expectations that are sometimes in danger of becoming the defining criteria above the core message. It's the nature of an imperfect expression of being the body of Christ with which we all have to do battle whether in or out of the local, traditional expression of church. Whatever we do in the coming years will not be perfect, it might not even be better.

Having a blank sheet of paper does give us the opportunity to begin from scratch and ask ourselves what are the key things, the non-negotiables that we would want to put in place. I don't have a definitive list, but one of the things I know will be important is a resolute determination not to criticise and moan about the established church. It doesn't help anyone. I also know that whatever happens, it will probably not happen spontaneously but will require a degree of intentionality about it. With that in mind, I think we will need to be able to describe the boundaries and the ethos of the thing really early. Like now would be a good time!

So here are a few thoughts about some key ideas:

Firstly, whatever group assembles, we will need a clear, shared vision that we all buy into. If some of us ultimately see the end game in terms of a gathered group of people in one place of Sunday mornings singing songs and listening to sermons, and others don't, then we would need to get that sorted pretty quickly.

Secondly, we would need to be fully committed to spending regular, quality time around a shared meal. Call it what you like, but relationships are built over time and not through worship services alone.

Thirdly, we would need to agree to live as an extended family. Put simply, we care for each other without abdicating that responsibility to one person alone.

Fourth, it's shared leadership. More like parenting maybe that CEO-leadership, but based on a plurality of leadership gifts distributed among a group of leaders.

Fifthly, and remember these are not in any specific order, a deep commitment to pray and to incarnational mission.

There's a lot missing I know, but it gives you a flavour of the things that are going through my mind at the moment. To those who have listened to me over the years, some of it will be instantly recognised from previous conversations.

More to come, I'm sure.

Taking your church Missional

Taking your Church Missional is a downloadable paper from Leadnet.org. It makes interesting reading. The focus of the paper is the cost to the church leader. Here are some of the more challenging quotes to whet your appetite:

In his book, The Present Future, Reggie McNeal warns, “It takes enormous courage to give spiritual leadership in the North American church culture, because the church is increasingly hostile to anything that disturbs its comfort and challenges its club member paradigm.

“The biggest thing to realize is not to model yourself on the traditions of the past, but on Christ—what he did, how he would love people and talk to people. And that gives validity to the model,” says Lee Clamp.

“For years we have trained our congregational members to come to the pastor when the system becomes off- balance—a personal problem, a complaint, a boiler issue, a janitorial issue. Becoming missional means spinning off small satellite clusters of folks who offer their assets to the larger group. It is a cost because people have grown accustomed to running to the pastor. Redefining the call of the pastor finds new ways of working together, with Christ—not the pastor— being the centrifuge that keeps the system turning.”

“Leaders are shifting away from being the doers and concentrating on leadership development. God puts the passion in people—we’re not going to do it for them. Well-meaning churches have had the hired gun mentality, but now we are equipping people for works of service. It’s a transition from catching people to releasing them, and getting people to see their own personal mission.”

“Going missional sounds risky, doesn’t it?” Reggie McNeal. “That’s because it is. You will bet your life and ministry on it. But you may also discover that committing your life to the missional journey will help you find it.”

So there you go. I'm not commenting on the validity of these comments, but I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to get your head around some of the issues that face you as a leader as you seek to shift your ministry towards a missional focus.

You can find the paper in the resources section of the website. It's free and there are plenty of other papers worth a browse too.

Missional Community

I know I worry some folk when I talk about simplifying church and missional church and doing life together and other such crazy talk. But it is precisely because I am passionate about the local church reaching its full potential as agents of of God's kingdom that I am drawn to ask deep questions about how we do church.

Anyway, here's an inspiring article that tells the story of one small missional community, how it began and how God has been at work through it and in it.

A story of one MC.

Transformation from the inside

Take some time to think about this:

We often want to force change on a culture when we see it does not align with Scripture.  Forcing change from the outside is like kicking down a brick wall – it is possible, but it is going to take a long time and it will hurt.  Instead of forcing external change, we need to plant the Gospel within a culture, disciple people to obey what it teaches, and enjoy watching God transform that culture from the inside out.  Although the process of discipling this way takes time and is not easy, the transformation is deeper and more lasting.

You can find a video along with this quote here.

How can you plant the gospel in your cultural setting so that it can bear the fruit of transformation from the inside out?

Everyday Church

As I think about what to do next in terms of Sunday mornings, I began to think about a series based in Peter's letters. To be honest, I've often shied away from them so that I don't have to try to explain about spirits in prison and the place of the ark in salvation history!

But those things aside, Peter's first letter has alway struck me as an important reflection on life as a Christian in a non-Christian world, and that's just the kind of world in which we generally live in the Western world. We may have some modernistic view that the world around us was once Christian and that the church ought to have a preeminent place in society, but such a world, if it ever truly existed, is long consigned to the past.

Anyway, thinking about Peter's letters, I came across Everyday Church along with one or two other resources and set about reading them through. I haven't got too far into this book, but I do find it refreshing and interesting and thoughtful and helpful as I prepare to outline my ideas.

The book is not a commentary but rather a reflection from a missional perspective on the implications of life for the Christian community in a hostile environment. Seven chapters cover the ideas of life and hope on the margins, what "everyday church" looks like in this context ad some thoughts about the next steps to take. Community, pastoral care, mission and evangelism are all explored.

A few things have caught my eye in the early pages. firstly the idea of storying. Storying is the process of understanding the culture of the people you are trying to reach and then creating a set of Bible stories that cover the key turning points in the story of salvation, along with bible stories that address the barriers and bridges to belief in that culture. I want to find out more about this, o I will need to do a bit of research but it sounds interesting.

The second thing that has caught my eye is a series of questions we need to ask ourselves. Boiled down, they become:

• Where are the places and activities in which you can met people ('the missional spaces')?
• What are the patterns and timescales of your neighbourhood ('the missional rhythms')?
• What 'gospel' stories are told in the neighbourhood (stories about why we are here, what has gone wrong, what are the solutions and what are the hopes)?

There are of course many more questions, but these questions draw us into a deeper engagement with the world around us. It forces us to ask "What does the gospel lok like and sound like for the people of my neighbourhood. It forces me to stop asking why they don't conform to my story and to ask how I can influence their story with God's great story.

I shall continue reading!

Simple ways to be missional

It can be very frustrating trying to define what is missional when by it's nature it defies definition in a programmatic way. It can also be frustrating trying to understand it when it can't be defined with ease. So, in the end you just have to keep describing it in the hope that eventually everyone will get it.

Enter a helpful article by Jonathan Dobson on the Verge Network. In this post he outlines the following 8 simple ways to be more missional:


1. Eat with Non-Christians.

2. Walk, Don’t Drive.

3. Be a Regular.

4. Hobby with Non-Christians.

5. Talk to Your Co-workers.

6. Volunteer with Non-Profits.

7. Participate in City Events.

8. Serve your Neighbours.

Take a step back for a moment and you will quickly see that you cannot be missional and remain locked into the Christian ghetto.

More of Reggie McNeal on Missional Church

Came across this video of Reggie McNeal talking about missional church.

What caught my attention in this video was the discussion about "Cross Domain" partnerships. The idea of working with the community rather than for the community. When we work for the community we are less likely to engage the community, but when we work with the community, engagement is set to rise.

So I guess the question is: Where might God be calling us to work with our community as we partner with him in his redemptive mission?



There are some other resources available too, particularly a paper about engagement. This can be downloaded from here. The paper is called: Fast Forwarding Your Church’s Engagement in the Community

Missional Community

There is a great video over at Missional Church Network that gives a great insight into what it means to be part of a missional community.

Definitely worth a watch.


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Heart, treasure, focus and fixation

The issue is not about the church model or even the building but rather whether or not the life of Christ is getting out of the box [the church] and into the culture.

Most Christians perceive the church service as "the main event" and thus the central locus for Christian life and activity. And they look to the pastor and staff members as being primarily responsible for organising and conducting outreach and evangelism. As a result, the mission of the church is professionalised, and outsourced to the "clergy" thus leaving the majority of Christians out of the missional equation... In short, our actions say that what we do inside the building is more important than what we do outside the building.

Right here, right now p217-217

Jesus said that our hearts will follow what we treasure most. If church treasures the gathering above everything else, where does that leave the missing who don't fit our culture of church?

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Connecting with the missing

As anyone who reads what I write or listens to what I say, one of the things that bothers me most is the issue of connecting with the people Jesus misses. Sometimes we call them lost, although I know from personal conversations that this is not a word they would use to describe themselves. In fact, for some, lost was what they felt when they did go to church! That aside, and the vocabulary issues relegated from a priority position they probably don't deserve, the question remains: How do we connect with, spend time with and generally reach the missing? Couple this with the concept of being a missional community that focuses on people rather than programmes, and although the question doesn't go away, it asks us to make some shifts in our thinking.

In the traditional pattern of being the church, we'd most likely look to a programme by which we could get these missing folk into church. We'd assume that if only we got them through the doors, the rest would be fairly straightforward. Preach a clear gospel, invite a response and there you have it. Instant Christians. But we all know that this isn't how it is.

Now I'm not saying that these things are not important. But I think we'd all have to agree that the major missing ingredient in all of this is that we just don't get people into church. So no matter how good our celebrations might be, how clear and compelling our gospel presentation might be, they are just not there to hear it.

So how do we rediscover connecting with ordinary people in ordinary ways that, by the grace of God, might lead to gospel conversations and opportunities to help people find faith? I think one solution lies in the antithesis of the Christian ghetto. In other words, we have to spend quality and quantity time outside of the church community, and here's one suggestion about how to do that.

Find something you really like doing and do it with unchurched people.

Are you interested in learning a new skill? Find an adult education course, go, make friends, learn the new skill and maybe an opportunity will arise. Instead of starting a church-based walking group, join the local ramblers or start a community walking group. No evangelistic agenda, the kind of thing that requires an epilogue at the end of each walk, just a group who go walking together.

I remember Jim Wallis saying something along the lines of: Find out what you do best, and then do it in a way that makes a difference. Perhaps we need a similar motto for rebuilding our friendship base in our communities.

Do what you love doing, but do it in a way that builds relationships.

So, with that in mind, I guess I ought to start up a social tennis group in the local park, given my recent foray into the sport!

Foundations and footings

I watched a video of Ken Robinson talking about education that I may have seen before, but I can't remember. Anyway, the link came via a friend and I'm really glad they sent it. The basic premise of Robinson's argument is that our educational systems educate creativity out of us. The result is that by the time most of us reach adulthood we are only interested in the right answer and generally afraid of getting the wrong answer. So we simply learn not to think creatively, because that might lead us to the wrong answer. It's a really interesting video and there is much to learn and apply to the church.

What also interested me was something he said about what originally drove public education and how it came to colour how we deliver and measure it. Two things determined all public education policies. One was the enlightenment the other was industrialisation. To some extent you hear echoes of this every time an industrialist wades into the argument about the outcomes of education. Anyway, I'm moving away from the point I want make.

Some time ago I began to ask questions about the nature of leadership in church and I wonder if we'd been building on the wrong foundation. Instead of building on apostles and prophets, we were building on pastors and teachers. But Robinson's point made me wonder how we got there. Where did we start? What turned a missionary movement into an institution? Was it just the result of moving from the margins to centre of society after the conversion of the Roman emperor? I don't think so.

For the most part we have to acknowledge that we are essential a selfish people. We not naturally predisposed to think what might be best for others at the expense of what might be best for us. You never hear the wealthy say to government, "Raise our taxes so that the poor don't have to suffer." On the contrary, we wriggle and squirm our way towards an economic construct that assume that if you make the rich richer, it will trickle down to the poorest parts of society.

So I think we need to take seriously that simple truth that we do what meets our needs first. And that is true of church. Perhaps we have built upon the wrong foundations, but we have done so because it suits us. It creates a comfortable environment for us and we can simply blame the world for not recognising the truth we preach. And that needs to change.

I have long held the view that those of us who know Jesus as leader and forgiver will have an eternity to sort out our problems and issues. An eternity where we can enjoy the fruit of our relationship with God and possibly even improve our backhand! On the other hand we are surrounded by people who only have a lifetime in which to make that choice. So what should be our priority? comfort for ourselves or engagement in mission for the sake of others?

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Two great questions

I came across tow great questions while reading a post about missional communities:

• To whom do you want to be good news?
• What does good news look like to those people?

I've rephrased the questions slightly, but the essence is still the same. We might even rephrase the first question again by asking:

• To whom has God called you to be good news?

Of course we'd probably answer that globally and therefore generally. "Everyone," is what we'd most likely say, but that misses the point. If God has placed in a particular community, then maybe that is where he'd most like to partner with you in mission.

And the question is important because good news might look very different in one community compared to another. It's also helpful because it asks us to stop making the good news a set a beliefs we present, but a life we live.