Missional Church: Intentionally Missional - Get Ready to be Uncomfortable

By Amy Hamlin

In the last few months, there has been lots of activity surrounding YoungLife and the partnership with Reliant. As exciting as this is, I can’t help the many questions that are flooding my brain. Where do I fit in? Where do we as a community fit in? How do we get from here to there? How can we have the most impact? Are we an intentionally missional church?

Most, if not all, of us have heard about being on a mission for Christ. But doing mission is not the same as being missional. So what does it mean to be missional? Looking for some answers, I went to the web. After reading quite a few articles and blogs, I found that missional communities/churches are being called different things in different places, but the idea is the same: a group of people, doing the mission of God together outside the confines of the regular church building.

Having Googled myself silly, I came across a blog written by a guy named Rick Meigs. I love what he says about how we as a church body deal with being on a mission. "Jesus told us to go into all the world and be his ambassadors (Matthew 28:18-25), but many churches today have inadvertently changed the "go and be" command to a "come and see" appeal. We have grown attached to buildings, programs, staff and a wide variety of goods and services designed to attract and entertain people.” So true! Guilty as charged. So how do we change our “come and see” mentality to “go and be”?

All of a sudden, I am hearing this “but that is SCARY! It means that I might actually have to get uncomfortable and share my faith with someone!”

“Yes, I, too, have that knot in my stomach. But what if . . . ?”

What if you and I replace the "come to us" invitations with a "go to them" life? Meigs suggests that our mission becomes “’a life where "the way of Jesus" informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for Him and others, and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.”’ Sounds good to you, but you are probably still sitting in your chair, white-knuckled and gripping on for dear life. Maybe you need a little more motivation than the Great Commission. Thom Rainer is the president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, which provides church health insights. Some interesting statistics about groups of people that “accept” Jesus as their Lord and Savior jumped out at me:

- 63% of people who accept Christ do so before the age of 18

- 18% are between the age of 18-25

- 26% are 26 years old or over

Wow! Are you motivated to share your faith yet? I see some head nodding, but who is going to talk to “those” people over there you ask? Jesus says, “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8). We are the presence of Jesus in this world. Only through us, individually (that means you) and communally (that means Reliant/YoungLife), does the world see Jesus. That is a great reason why “way of life,” behavior, and practice, not just words, are important.

Welcome to the journey.

Your mission for this week, if you choose to accept it, is to get uncomfortable. You might already know this passage, but just as a refresher, Matthew 28:18-25 says, ¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Jesus didn’t ask us if we’d like to go. To be precise, He commanded us to go. He expects it of each of us. He authorized us to do it in His stead. He provides His Spirit to guide us through the ins and outs of it – right down to providing us with the courage and the necessary words. Are you up to His task for you?

Missional Vocation: Missional Living and Faith

by Natalie McLaury

For the past few weeks, Ryan and I have been sharing our thoughts on Missional Vocation. We’ve applied the idea to the workplace, the community, and the home. The idea of Missional Vocation in the various realms in which we interact is a good one; as Christians, we are called to live out our faith. As Christ’s disciples in the year 2011, we are compelled to follow the Great Commission that was laid out thousands of years ago.

Now that we have considered a few different ideas about missional living, however, we need to take a step back. Ultimately, we cannot be missional in our actions with our co-workers, our neighbors, and our family members, unless we have a right relationship with our Lord and Savior.

If the coaches of the Green Bay Packers were using the same plays season after season, with the same players in the same positions, they probably wouldn’t be very effective. In order to better their team and win games, they have to be continuously learning. The coaches must research new plays, study lineups, and have an understanding of the game that is always growing and evolving. A stagnant team will never be a successful team.

The same could be said about our faith. A stagnant faith has the power to hinder missional living. To be effective missionaries, wherever we are and whomever we encounter, we have to be continuously growing in our own faith journeys. Much like the Packers study the playbooks, we must study our playbook: the Bible. A deeper understanding of the Word will better equip us to live it out. A more consistent prayer life will better equip us to use it as a tool. A disciplined devotional practice will better equip us to keep missional living a priority.

I encourage you, and myself, to be missional. Be missional in your occupation. Be missional in your community. Be missional in your home. But first, be diligent and intentional about your faith, your beliefs, and your relationship with Jesus Christ. Sharpen this and watch God teach you, grow you, and use you.

Hebrews 12:11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Missional Vocation: In the Workplace

By Ryan McLaury

Throughout January, my wife Natalie and I will be pondering what missional living looks like in a variety of vocations. We begin this week by examining mission in the workplace.

We each have a workplace of some sort, although a workplace can take on many forms, depending on age, circumstance, career path, etc. In the last two years, I have worked in the classroom, in the job market, behind a cash register, and in a cubicle. Others work in their homes, hospitals, churches, and so on. The commonality between us is that we all work in some setting.

It’s difficult enough deciding where to work, securing a position, executing daily tasks, and growing in a given career. But I believe that living missionally in the workplace poses an even greater challenge (and is correspondingly more important). Jesus gave us the Great Commission in Matthew 28: 19-20, stating, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Despite Jesus’ command, I often struggle to be an intentional missionary at work. Regardless of the work setting, one key to successfully (and appropriately) sharing the Gospel is earning the right to be heard. Simply developing friendships and showing genuine care and concern for others will earn you a lot of leeway in your conversations. I feel that I have done fairly well in this regard. Okay, so I don’t have any friends at work that I spend time with outside the office, but I have developed informal relationships with numerous coworkers. I feel that I have gained their respect, and they know that I go to church, and I believe I set a good example through my behavior. I have earned the right to be heard, but I too often am not.

Two attributes essential to be intentionally missional are motivation and courage. I am intrinsically motivated when I am reminded that the Gospel is a generous gift from God and that I would be selfish to not share it. Courage is often more difficult to muster, due to fear of rejection and overstepping social boundaries. We must pray for the courage to put aside human comforts. I find this especially difficult in the workplace, but where else do I spend forty hours or more each week surrounded by people in need of the Gospel? We all have been given great opportunities to serve God in our workplaces. I challenge all of us to be heard. Better yet, God commands it.