An
opening prayer; Lord, help us to become a people,
a community who takes seriously what it means to
really love one another above ourselves, a
community who looks out for each other, feeding
one another, carry each other’s burdens,
bandaging each other’s wounds, and celebrating
the beauty of the kingdom as it invades into the
lives of our families. May this not just be an in
house endeavor, but rather for the sake of the
world.
Prologue
In
plain view just outside the circle where we
gathered stood a large white board. Written in
bold black marker were the words of a fiery
Pentecostal theologian. IT SIMPLY READ:
THIS IS WHAT WE DESIRE TO BE
“A community of redeemed people among whom
God can live and who in their life together will
reproduce his life and character in all its unity
and diversity. Everything in the life of the
church is to be done allelon. We are to be members
of one another, compassionate to one another,
regard others above ourselves, live in harmony
with one another and slaves to one another in
love. God is not looking for a set of unconnected
individuals, but rather a people who will bear his
image and be a radical alternative to the
culture.”1
So began our journey in the winter of 2002 —
twenty or so travelers who took a chance and tried
to navigate through the untamed river waters of
what is commonly referred to as “
Missional
Church
.”
A new starting point
It’s over! Those words would prove to be
prophetic and would set the tone for the rest of
our lives—literally! Everything my wife Jeanette
and I did was outside of our city. Our kid’s
school, my office, the places we ate, our friends
and church. In a matter of weeks we refocused our
lives and moved everything into our local
neighborhood and started a small community of
faith.
On Saturday evenings, in an old white Baptist
church, we would gather from
and finish sometime before
. We often sat around in a circle and dialogued
about the kingdom, sang, prayed, and broke bread
together. We would allow space to be honest and
vulnerable, sharing our pains, hopes, fears and
dreams.
I guess the process would be called
deconstruction. We set ourselves on a journey— a
mission to discover what it really means to be a
Christian and what it means to be the church.
Below is just a quick snapshot, a small
reflection.
What
does it mean to be a Christian?
Our challenge here was to rediscover the simply
but profound story lines that scripture contains;
creation, fall, redemption, and future
hope—dramatic narratives that we apply to all
areas of life. As Christians, we seek to let the
biblical Story shape our imaginations—as actors
we enter into the Christian story, excepting it as
part of our own existence. Or, in the image Paul
uses, we are now in the position of young
architects discovering a wonderful foundation
already laid by a master architect. Our role is to
creatively work out what sort of building was
intended and faithfully build upon that
foundation.
We asked questions like, what does it really mean
to be a Christian? What is the gospel? Is the
gospel just about saying a prayer—giving some
mental assent to one theory of the atonement—so
that when you die you’ll go to heaven? Or, is
the story we live in a larger all encompassing
story about becoming the people of God—radical
followers of Jesus—joining together in reshaping
the world as his disciples. A people called to
reflect the divine nature and redemptive love of
our Triune God—to become humanity as God
intended.
As a community we spent many hours thinking and
praying through scriptural passages such as: Gen.
1&2 (the nature and purpose of God with
humanity); Gen. 12:1-3 (the purpose for Israel);
Is. 5 & 7 (Israel as the Light of the world);
Matt. 5 (Israel as Salt and Light) John 20:21
(“As the father sent me, so I send you.”);
Rev. 2:5 (the people of God in the renewed
cosmos).
What does it mean to be the church?
In
North America
the church is typically defined as a person, place
or event. Some studies suggest that as much as
eighty percent of the time, money and energy of
many churches go to make weekend services happen.
At worse, in the words of George Hunsburger, this
turns the church into a “vendor of religious
services and goods,” instead of a kingdom
community sent on a mission. This, of course plays
right into the hands of a Western individualistic,
consumer-oriented society.
Our task was to become less “event oriented”
and place more emphasis on forming and shaping a
loving community deeply concerned for one
another’s needs—a new collaborative order of
interdependence, shared responsibility, mutual
instruction and commonality. For many people,
however, community can become annoying. Can I see
past people’s weakness and instead see them
through the same shade of glasses that Jesus does?
Am I willing to let others see my weaknesses? Can
we really commit to allelon one another? How could
we use ordinary situations to come together and
celebrate the life of our community? Ordinary life
can be wonderful and powerful—it brings a sense
of closeness, a sense of what it means to be
“family like.”
How could we form a loving community, but also
recognize it exists “not just for” each other,
but for the sake of the world? We explored
questions like, What does it mean to be a
missionary? Is a missionary someone who goes to
the third world? Is the PTA mom or dad who coaches
soccer considered a missionary?
Many of us still viewed “missions” as an
activity of the church, one of several
programs—instead of seeing our vocation as
ambassadors of God’s kingdom—“a sent
people” who routinely embody God’s redeeming
love and hope, compassion and reconciliation,
harmony and justice to our neighbors and the whole
of society.
As a community we de-emphasized “planned
evangelism,” and instead celebrated, encourage
and enthralled each other to make room for our
neighbors, co-workers—those around us in our
everyday lives. One person in our community
captured this point with humility as he shared his
experience.
Our lawn looked like a tropical jungle. Our
neighbors hated us to the point of actually
threatening us with a lawsuit if we didn’t
“take care of our stuff.” But hey we were busy
doing church. Our neighborhood is actually pretty
cool. People do things together for 4th of July
etc. We never participated. We waved and smiled at
them and headed to another town to go to church. I
was a part of the newest church evangelism
program—we would drive 45 minutes each week to
give away free cokes to people we didn’t even
know and completely neglected the people that
lived next door to us. We lived in our
neighborhood for almost five years without knowing
anything about our neighbors, without caring or
showing love. This has changed. We now make a
conscious effort to be the church—to love our
neighborhood and neighbors. Not in a philosophical
way only but in an actual way where we focus on
our neighbors well being, not first and foremost
to “evangelize” them, to sell the Gospel to
them, to have them join our Church, but really
more from an angle of love. We’re not perfect in
this. Our lawn gets a little unruly sometimes, but
we are repairing relationships with our neighbors.
We now participate in the life of the community we
live in. We hang out more with neighbors doing
“over the fence talk.” We feed our neighbors
pets when they go on vacation. We are planning
this year to go to the local 4th of July
celebration. Things have changed. Things keep
changing and we’re excited.
Epilogue
I wish I could say that our time together was
without problems or pain, but that would neither
be accurate nor realistic. Here are some things we
have learned along the way.
That
theology does not stand outside of community.
God’s desire to call into being a community
shaped and nurtured by the Holy Spirit. We
need to be careful that we don’t just become
a discussion group.
To
intentional guard against the propensity of
becoming isolationist. Often many people want
to retreat in small little groups—to tired,
afraid or arrogant to establish/build new
relationships. We need to be hospitable to
those that visit. People want to be able to
watch, listen and observe without the danger
of forced intimacy or sharing. We must hold in
tension a bounded set and centered set.
We
must not become romantic about community. True
community is a dangerous way to live. People
will fail each other and that may bring up
past hurts. We must be gracious to one
another—at times giving each other space.
We
must be careful to not fall into an
“us/them” mentality. People often despise
or put down the “traditional” church.
There is no place for this in the kingdom.
The
role of “authentic spirit centered
leadership” is crucial. Smaller communities
sometimes often see leadership as unnecessary,
but it remains crucial for authentic spiritual
formation.
As
I reflect upon our time together, much of what we
have explored has been helpful and in many cases
life changing. The words on the white board are
still deeply painted on the canvas of our hearts.
They are a powerful and profound symbol of our
journey and life together as a community. At times
it seems to be the life jacket that held us a
float.
My hope is that we will allow the Holy Spirit to
comfort, challenge, stretch, and nourish us
throughout our journey. My desire is that we would
not sit upon the shoreline and say were satisfied,
but rather “choose to chance the rapids and dare
to dance the tide” — boat people convinced
that the danger of untamed river waters are minor
compared to the regrets of never taking a risk. My
prayer is that maybe, by God’s grace, we could
truly be some of those people and some of those
churches.
1.
Gordon fee, Paul the spirit and the people of God,
pg 66
about
the author
Mark
is the founder and Director of Allelon,
a private, nonprofit foundation. The ongoing
desire of Allelon is to resource, equip the whole
body of Christ and to offer companionship for
missional church leaders from a wide array of
organizations and denominations that are working
towards a missional kingdom paradigm. He and his
wife, Jeanette, have six children and live in
Eagle, Idaho where
they lead a small missional community of faith
called The Landing.
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