by: John Bost

John's Blog: Repo

I am always amazed by the Holy Spirit, in that when He begins to speak a transformational word to individuals about a forth coming move of God, this word inevitably takes on a critical mass that exceeds the capacity of any one individual.  The next stage should rightfully be the passage of that word to the church at large, the Body of Christ, with pending impact on non-believers, our mission.  Yet when the church begins to deal with this movement at the level of the masses, its fragmentation, even its denominational deception begins to emerge; often turning the movement inward through programs designed to better market the churches, many already off mission.

I recall my first ‘aha’ in 1978 as I began to find little justification in His Word for the means used by churches to reach out to unbelievers.  Often when examined thoughtfully, those programs had some subtle intent more focused on holding current attendees than aggressively reaching and discipling new converts.  Because of the nature of that ‘way of doing business,” Cities have felt little impact and our nation continues to become less God-like in the way it handles itself abroad.

In 1978, then only recently saved (1973), I had begun to serve in what I thought was a “mission” to reach our city.  We had seen the Lord move through the Full Gospel Business Men’s Network with regional impact, even among non-charismatic churches.  Multiple denominations were now in unity, though predominately lay driven and hosted in facilities other than churches.

We were literally turning the city upside down; when abruptly, some churches began to compete, withdrawing from the movement that had become a city wide Interdenominational Prayer Breakfast that met every Friday morning, followed by a City Wide Prayer Dinner once per month.  The movement began to dwindle as pastoral leadership refused to allow walls to come down or to risk church transfer among its members.

I recall in the frustration of that aborted “revival”, committing to the Lord my willingness to become whatever was necessary in order to see and participate in reaching cities.  My words were:  “If the Creator needs permission from a creature, to do in that creature, whatever is necessary to accomplish your will, He has my permission.”  I believe He spoke to me: “Where ever I send you, you seek that city, if not this city, the next, but I will give you a city.”  Now at age 60, I was just recently re-elected for my second term as the Mayor of our small city and have found favor both within the county at large as well as our county seat, Winston-Salem, N.C..  There are means for reaching cities, but seldom are those means seeded by traditional church mission programs.

My city-commitment to God was in 1978, then by 1983, I was enrolled in a graduate program in Community Education and Development.  He then led me into a position as a public relations professional for the public school system within our city.   By 1989, I had completed an Ed. S. in Leadership and Development, preparing me for the role of Superintendent, when I was asked to relocate to my hometown in order to serve in a large church who’s mission was to reach it’s city.  My leaving had little to do with discontentment in my career but more about staying on mission with a sense of calling to reach cities.

It took only about six years for me to realize that the larger our church grew through its “missions” programs, the further off mission it became, moving deeper and deeper into isolation as it struggled to fund its own facility expansions and meet certain global denominational mission initiatives.  Many of these “funding campaigns” were poorly accounted for and often were driven by whatever meteorological crisis happened to strike a particular country.  I know this sounds cold, but the mission of strategic discipleship of new converts who might integrate the gospel within the culture of our own city had long been replaced by custodial care of existing Christians and the denominational bureaucracies developed over time.

My mission was still to impact cities, so I resigned and in fact moved to a downtown location over which I could physically see and intercede for our city, a 24^th floor corner office.  To me, that was the greatest decision I ever made, though the least enviable by those who desired typical career development as a pastor (I had long left my own formal career preparation).  That was in 1996 when little was being said about ‘city-reaching”.

However, Promise Keepers, founded in 1990 had begun its crescendo and by 1997, an estimated one million men gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for “Stand in the Gap,” marking arguably the largest gathering of Christian men in modern U.S. history.  This pent up sense of mission among laymen had found a relief valve and it looked as if America would be turned upside down for Christ.  Once again the church responded with programs that turned this energy on their own campuses, allowing just enough “other than church” impact to hold its own men captive.  Again, the numbers soon dwindled as Promise Keepers became more about consulting local Men’s Groups than impassioning individuals as it once had in sports arenas across our nation.



Ironically, when asked to draft this blog entry, I first turned to the internet, only to find an entry with the same title as the one I had selected:

Mission vs. Missions

Posted by Brad Brisco

http://missionalchurchnetwork.com/mission-vs-missions/

“Mission must be understood not just as something the church does (as missions, or more accurately witness or evangelism), but as an inherent aspect of the very nature of the church. The critical issue relative to ecclesiology is to understand that the missionary nature of the church has an impact on all of the functions of the church.”

“As the church engages in worship, education, fellowship, service, and witness, it does so with the sense that its very presence in the world is an act of mission on the part of God to offer redemption to a lost and broken world. This understanding shifts the focus from a ‘theology of missions’ to a ‘mission theology’ and from “church-shaped missions” to a ‘mission-shaped church.’”

(Rethinking Ministry: From Church-Shaped Missions to a Mission-Shaped Church, published by Christian Reformed Home Missions, Jan. 12, 2009).

Even within the above quote, there seemed to be questionable language used to define “the very nature of the church.”  The nature of “the” church should be the personification of the Christ, yet too often the nature of “a” church simply mimics the culture of its own denomination, taking on the mission downloaded by its own Beauracracy, some even refer to this as the “book of discipline.”  There seems to be little room for the expansion personal calling into care for one’s own local community, the literal place of their calling.

The American church has for so long been defined by the colonialist nature of America, which has manifested in a means, called foreign missions.  Yet fortunately, we have done so poorly at communicating Christ, (even among Muslims we are perceived as immoral infidels), that we are again becoming aware of the need to correct this “mission drift” and  turn our work more toward our own cities and rightfully so, as only about 16% of American Christians are categorized as “captive” in Barna’s most recent book, The Seven Faith Tribes: Who They Are, What They Believe, and Why They Matter, with only about 43% attending 3-4 times per month.