Transforming the Church

“The church is a work in progress. Like a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel, the church bears the visible imprints of the invisible fingers of God.” –Stan Nussbaum

God is constantly transforming the Church towards a missional mindset changing the way the church sees its relationship to the word. There are two key perspectives my church has on their mission that need to be shifted based on Stan Nussbaum and David Bosch’s model “The Relation between the Church and the World”. First, like many churches, my church sees its members simply as Church people, not Kingdom people. The members are very involved in the church but they limit their work. Members may help every now and then with some form of Kingdom work (donating money, raising awareness, doing a mission trip, etc.), but that is where the line stops. They aren’t living as if they are Kingdom workers either because they don’t feel called, which isn’t the case because living missonally is a call to every Christian, or they just don’t want to commit to more than what happens in the church walls. There isn’t an “on-off switch” for doing missions. You aren’t just a church member, you are part of carrying out the kingdom. Second they struggle with their view of what the “world” means. They see the world of evil, not the physical and social world. I hear conversations of how “evil” the world is or how justice was served to a criminal when really it is much more than that. The world is full of hurting people, people just like our congregation members.

My church needs a shift in these thoughts but the only way that would come about is if their minds were transformed into a mission mindset. Help they may need for this shift would probably be lessons taught or sermons preached, or extra classes on it. I believe my church may have these views because they are unaware and oblivious to the fact that they do not have a missional mindset at their core. The members individually need to be informed and the church as a whole needs to come together to transform the way they view themselves and the world.

Christology and Theology

            My favorite aspect of Christology that is most important in my own theology of mission is probably the teaching ministry of Christ. The Missio Dei just really sticks out to me through the way Jesus lived out what he taught: making disciples, loving the poor, seeking justice, doing life with the sinners, etc. This has been my favorite thing to study in this class and probably what I put most emphasis on in my life. Focusing on this makes my goal of mission the same main things Christ focuses on that I named above (which there are many other things he teaches on). Because of this, my main mission activities are things like making disciples, doing life with people around me no matter who they are, going out into the community to love on people through actions of hospitality and lovingness, etc.

One of my biggest strengths from having Jesus’s teaching ministry as my favorite aspect of Christology is that doing community work or living life with people are at the true center of my heart. I absolutely love doing these things. Living out that side of God’s calling for Christians is naturally not a burden for me but a huge blessing and super fulfilling, unlike people who that doesn’t come naturally for. My limitations for my choice of focusing on Jesus’s teaching ministry would probably be things like I don’t emphasize Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, or return enough. I’m not one to naturally try to talk to non-Christians about God’s love for them and how Christ died for them. I’m actually terrible at that. I’m good with discipleship and teaching about what Christ taught on, but I’m terrible on things outside of that.

Critically Considering Missions Photographs

Watching this video going into deep detail about one specific picture helped me realize how important looking into what a photo is portraying is and also how much really lies behind a simple shot of people. We’ve talked about this in class but never had time to go into this much detail over one photo. A photo legitimately does say a thousand words, probably many more than that.

                Sometimes when looking at a picture or glancing at a person we may immediately make assumptions about them that may not even be true. For example, at first sight of this photo he describes in the video I would have thought it was a family, mother and father with three daughters, and a servant in the background, but there is so much more behind that. On top of that, no matter how hard you analyze someone or something you never truly know who they are or what it is until you’ve experienced them or it. 

Turning the World Upside Down

“These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.” Acts 17:6

                Jesus and his followers painted a wonderful picture of what it looked like to “turn the world upside down”. They loved people more than they loved laws. They threw the client patron system out the window (in a sense). They spent time with the untouchables. The list goes on and on. In our world Today what would that look like? Most would answer this question somewhere along the lines of “the world would hate you”. I wouldn’t exactly say that (although in some places maybe), but I would say the world would definitely be confused and curious. Today it would look like loving the poor (spiritually poor or economically), spending time with people in their world, meeting people where there at, a person being so transformed by Christ that they can’t help but share what God is doing in them to others, etc. Roberts even names a few things his self: “A church that turned the world upside down would… look mystical… look glocal… be multiplying… be collaborative… be filled with ecclektricity.”

                When asking someone in my community who doesn’t go to my church “what is my church known for” I think they would emphasize on community outreach, taking care of college kids, and taking care of the poor. I go to Immanuel but I haven’t been there long so I don’t know much about the church but these are three things I have seen over and over in the past few months. They do so much in the community like working with the food pantry, serving people in many ways, park events open to anyone where they serve free food, and working with children. They also have a booming college ministry with many that help provide money, food, places, and encouragement to the students. The third, taking care of the poor, is intertwined with both the first two.

Engaging in Nations

What would it look like if I stayed in my current ministerial emphasis and used that job to engage a nation? Well I’m majoring in Religion, concentration in missions so with that I could end up being a mission’s coordinator at a church. If I used that to engage a specific nation I guess I would be forming teams to go over there. I would help in training, organizing, preparing, etc. I would be raising funds to send the team or to send supplies. I’d be researching and communicating with people in that nation. I’d probably visit a few times myself. I would be praying for and having others pray for them too. Raising awareness to the needs of that nation would be important also. That is probably just a short list of things I would be doing.

When asked why my potential church/youth group/ministry could not adopt a nation I would not have an answer. There are no reasons why not to, or at least I cannot think of any. Roberts emphasizes that you don’t have to go to help nations out. There are many things that you can do if you don’t feel led to actually go.

Dreams

Have I ever dreamed of being a missionary? I know many have and I hate to burst that bubble but I haven’t ever thought about being a long term missionary and more than that I never even wanted to, at all. Up until recent years I never even imagined being a short term one either. But interestingly enough, my thoughts of what missionaries did were the things that Roberts said you can’t do in most places that need missionaries. For example: not being allowed to “build church buildings… teach Bible studies… pass out tracts… do backyard Bible clubs”. I kind of like that missions need to be more based on personal, individual relationships than these things. 

My Practices

A friend said the other night, “going through a dry season is a choice”. This statement made my mind start to analyze my life lately because I personally feel as if I’ve been going through a dry season. I started to question myself: Why is this? What am I doing differently? What am I distracting myself with that is taking my focus off of Jesus? I then, ironically, got distracted and forgot all about this statement.

                Reading this book and thinking about my practices in my quiet time that statement came back to me. Roberts says, “I’d read my Bible and pray my list every day. But it was never passionate and alive on a consistent basis. It seems there were always the ups and downs that came with that mentality.” I thought, “Oh, that’s me!” If I’m being honest, sometimes (and in sometimes I mean a lot of the times) I don’t allow Jesus to be enough. My practices of doing my quiet time: pray, read, pray, then journal maybe. One thing I know I need to fix in my patterns is if I miss my quiet time, as much as I try to deny I feel this way, I subconsciously think, “Great, now I can’t do any work for God today. I haven’t spent time with him to allow him to empower me.” Sometimes I seriously live my day for the time I’m going to read my bible, and not in a good way. Not in an excited thinking of what I’m going to get to learn or anything, but in a “I am worthless if I don’t read, therefore I should try to do nothing for the kingdom today till I can read.” And then if I miss enough days in a row of not reading I get really discouraged and like I shouldn’t even read. Such a wrong way of thinking.

Robert explains how he changed the way he did his quiet time. This is what I need to do. I’m seriously going to start now. I don’t know exactly what to change but I might try to ask myself some of the questions Roberts asks his self. I think I’ll ask God to “talk to me, reach me, tell me, convict me, show me, guide me, make your path plain” just like Roberts does.