Mission First?

Paul writes - Kevin Rains, one person (of a number) I’m looking forward to having a few beers and meals with one day up in his part of the world (or down here in NZ), has been “haunted” here by something Gordon Cosby (Church of the Saviour, Washington D.C.) said a few years ago:

Crosby said,

“That in all his years of service he has never (and he emphasized 'never') seen a group go from community to mission. Rather, he said one should organize around mission and community will follow. I'm paraphrasing but that is the basic idea.”

I remain convinced; given our post-Christendom times that Crosby is right! I’ve long been struck by the inordinate focus (time, financial resource, creativity etc) on the gathered Sunday experience of being church. There is little cultural engagement and little missional praxis. Sermon titles and themes invariably centre on the Sunday congregation and their needs, rather than serving to enable, inspire, and equip the church in it’s joining in on what God is doing in the world (the missio Dei).

I’ve written previously on this kind of issue – here and here.

Cosby’s statement is a radical one which turns most current notions of church on their head – it brings us back to a central question – “why does the church primarily exist, and how does its call to exist in this way shape its form, values, and practices?”

Whilst church as community is critically important I don’t think church exists primarily serve its own needs! I also believe that the pull to focus inwardly / congregationally is stronger than the pull to risky, cruciform-shaped ministry in the world for the sake of the world. In other words it’s far, far harder, if in fact it ever happens, to transition a congregation from an inward focus to outward praxis. I also believe community forms more deeply around the shared experiences of rolling up our sleeves and actually joining in on what God doing in God’s world. It’s almost as though we put the missio Dei to the back of our minds, believing that if we just focus on building our church community then mission (now you also need to know that for me “mission” does not equal “evangelism – see the second of my two related posts, linked to above) will just flow from that…

We can’t just close existing congregations down, and in that process de-value the needs of existing congregational members (I would feel compelled to work for change, even if it didn’t yield significant change. I’d also feel compelled to work with parallel congregations and church planting initiatives).

New expressions of church / church plants however have a wonderful opportunity to really grapple with Crosby's statement and to start with a blank piece of paper in their specific context. There seems to me an increasingly important need for us not to uncritically perpetuate existing ways of being church, its values (whether acknowledged or not) and many of its practices.

Comments

[Andrew]

Whilst there is heaps of good stuff in the praxis model, is there not also some tensions? Like what about children and nurturing their faith? What about the intellectually disabled etc...?

[alan hirsch]

Paul and Alan

I am more conviced than ever before the organizing principle of the church is actually its mission and not its ministry. When we organize around ministry we never seem to get to mission even if we intend to. If we organize around mission, we have to do ministry, because ministry is the means by which we do mission. Cosby is right!

[Roger]

I have struggled mightily with this issue for years...
Many years ago I helped plant a traditional church that started out with a strong focus on community. After a time, this bogged us down and we did, I believe honestly, re-shape our church into an effective missional community. However, partly because of our own ineptness, as we became more missional the church grew and we lost much of the the richness of our community life. We continued on our way effectively reaching people but the quality of spiritual life that we were bringing people into was greatly diminished.
I have come to believe that we are better off never setting a priority of one above another-- mission before community or community before mission-- particularly in church plants. I am convinced that these must always be both/and intentions.

[Garth]

Love the quote and firmly believe it myself. In a similar way we are called to make disciples not plant churches. Churches then become a fluent consequence of a burgeoning community of growing Christians.

yet....we still have this imperialistic mindset that must plant churches.

[hamo]

Wonderful quote Paul. I think it is worthy of a link :)

[Todd]

wow guys,
this is a hard one for me. i agree that turning a community that mostly looks at itself to a community that thinks, looks and acts missionally is nearly impossibe. however, i really want to believe that it can be done. we are working our butts off to do this in our community...of course, in the process of this, the people who pushed back against this idea have moved on. perhaps we are doing it, but by almost starting over at the same time. there have been some hard times in our community's story but we see God orienting us more and more towards mission...

what a challanging thought...