**NOTE. This post had been up then I added to it before I accidentally deleted it! This is a different version of the original.
Here is the skinny. Last week I preached from Mark 6 when Jesus sends out the 12. I of course hit on how the church is never intentioned to be a static organization existing for its own self. Instead Jesus' strategy is to equip and train disciples to send them out like missionaries proclaiming the Kingdom, healing the sick and casting out the demonic or( as blogger Kelly Kanwischer suggests) witnessing to the character and substance of God (and I would add Kingdom of God).
So here is a quote from Erwin McManus (a pastor of Mosaic church in LA) I found thanks to Kanwischer.
What is happening across the world and here at home is that there is an army of cross cultural missionaries who have become the new leaders of the church. Their calling isn’t to pastor churches that focus on the happiness of its members, but to mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission of reconciling the world to himself. We used to send our missionaries out and it kept the mission a safe distance from us. Some how they broke back in and decided they were not going without us.
At Mosaic we have no members only missionaries. There is nothing to join except a community on mission. We have little patience for self indulgent spirituality that insists on everything being about us.
And there are implications. We have a zero tolerance policy for religious jargon or Christianese. We have little room for traditions that mean something to us but nothing to a person searching for God. We will not forsake the Word of God for the traditions of men. We are committed to removing every non-essential barrier between God and humanity. We refuse to allow the Gospel to become lost in our nostalgia or to appear irrelevant because we are.
And I must confess we are less concerned about whether mainstream Christians get us than about whether those searching for God get Him.
And if this makes us the bane of the church than so be it. Paul said he would be accursed if only Israel would be saved. If he was willing to take on hell for eternity, we can take a little heat from the watch dogs of Christian orthodoxy.
Cool is it not? Identifying ourselves not as member but rather as missionaries. Making little space for any traditions that mean so much to us but very little if anything to those searching for God. What do you imagine your community or our community if we began to see ourselves not as members but as missionaries? What would that look like to you? And what traditions do we cling to that mean nothing to the person searching for God? Can you imagine what we might look and feel like if we sought to act, worship, serve and be in ways that communicate the character and substance to those searching for God. What would Sunday morning look and feel like? Any thoughts?
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