All movements are driven by mission; they are missional by definition. Movements cease to exist apart from mission. Programs may endure and organizational structures may remain–but if a movement’s missional focus is lost, the movement is done. You might as well bury it.
Sadly, many organizations, including churches and para-churches, easily lose their missional heart. What called them into being–a cause, a frustration, an inequity–becomes merely a shadow, a faint memory, an archive hidden in the basement. The organization continues to function, sometimes indefinitely, but the ability to affect real change is gone. Bureaucracy takes over; traditions become sacred; walls are built to protect and preserve what no one wants anyway.
It’s no wonder when Jesus and the disciples launched the early Christian movement, they spoke of kingdoms, not churches.
Behold the kingdom of God is at hand. . . And the kingdom of God is like a treasure buried in a field.
One sells all he has to purchase that field and get that treasure.
Does the world look at our church and parachurch ministries as a place to find treasure? Why? Why not? Maybe, it’s because the non-church culture sees our churches as clubs for religious people. When churches lose their kingdom perspective, they operate like clubs on a principle of exclusivity. Church club members come together to celebrate common traditions, common thinking and common lifestyles.
Fortunately, most people don’t associate Jesus with the church as club. They associate Jesus with championing the cause of the poor or with healing the sick. They think of Jesus as a healer, as a servant. They see Jesus driven by an inclusive mission of setting all sorts of captives free.
As one author put it, we must recapture the kingdom mission of the church. The church or para-church can no longer just be out for itself. It must begin again to care more about people than about its institutional survival or its institutional style.
We can’t be like miners feeling trapped in the collapse of the church culture, huddling together in the dark, trying to stay warm and praying for God to rescue us from the mess we’re in. No, we need to be like rescue workers on the surface, refusing to quit until we can effect a rescue of our fellow miners and all those in darkness. People are going to die unless someone finds a way to save them. Let it be us.
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