I am finding it fruitful to talk just a bit differently when describing what the missional church is up to. Instead of simply saying that a missional church defines itself in relation to the mission of God (Missio Dei), I am asking people to think of the church in relation to the ultimate purposes of God for all of Creation. When I ask church members to write down what they think of serving the mission of God, the range of responses is predictably narrow. The range of answers expands noticeably when the ultimate purposes of God for the sake of creation becomes the field of reflection. Admittedly, it is hard to say “ultimate purposes of God for all of creation” church. And for this reason among others, I think keeping the word missional in play is important. However, I think this points to the fact that leaders need to find multiple ways to talk about the shift that the missional church movement represents.

- Mark Love

Snap!

The sound of the camera invades the environment of the picture I have just taken. I love to take and look at pictures. Moments in time captured and treasured. A picture to be looked at over and over again so I can relive that special moment.

As I think about the kingdom of God, words seem very inadequate for me. So, I must rely on the pictures of life to help me grasp what this elusive kingdom of God is all about.

The first picture is of Quinton. Quinton is a young boy in elementary school. He lives on 51st Street in Tacoma, Washington. He has two sisters. His father is in construction. His mother stays at home. He is much like any little boy—full of energy, always on a great adventure and good at Madden Football. He has a mohawk (it was blue at one time). He dresses in hand-me-downs. As my youth group began to paint Quinton’s neighbor’s house, he was always there to help. The minute we would drive up, Quinton comes running out of his house with expectations of helping us. As the days pass, Quinton and I begin to develop a friendship. We talk about what fun things he did the night before, school and family, all the while expletives rolling off the tongue of his mother. It dawned on me one day, the kingdom of Heaven was being brought near to Quinton and Quinton was eagerly receiving it. He was experiencing a place of peace through the camaraderie of teenagers and adults painting a house. This snapshot of the kingdom of Heaven provides images of love, acceptance and peace.

Another picture came unexpectedly. The location was a community fair. This was not a ordinary community fair. A blowup jumping toy and face painting were the only “fun” activities for kids. The main portion of the fair was designed to help a community of people who had been displaced learn about the resources that were available to them. As each displaced mother, father, child and grandmother entered into the fair, they were greeted with love and respect. As they were handed a bag full of school supplies, a list of what schools were actually open, the anxiety of being displaced began to slowly be replaced by love and support. Each table they encountered brought new information about health clinics, job opportunities, educational services and emergency services. As the stories of surviving a hurricane and the worst national disaster in American history were told and retold, a strange thing began to occur—the sounds of laughter and hope began to fill the air. As we conversed with individuals and families, listening to the stories of survival and hope, an overwhelming awareness of the kingdom of Heaven began to settle in and make itself at home. What we thought would be a day that we would bring the kingdom of Heaven to people turned out that they were bringing the kingdom of Heaven to us. In this particular snapshot the kingdom of Heaven was full of hope, laughter, restoration and love.

These are just two of the snapshots God has graciously allowed us to participate in. These two snapshots have opened the eyes of our faith to see the kingdom of Heaven in the pictures of life.

Snap!

We in Churches of Christ, like many other Christian traditions, have not spoken frequently about the Kingdom of God. We have spoken of personal salvation. We have emphasized individual response to the Gospel. We have described salvation as a plan. We have referred to Jesus as both Lord and Christ. We have insisted upon the church as the location of the saved. But we have said very little about the kingdom of God.

Yet it appears that in order to understand the church as a part of the missional work of God we must begin to grapple at length with

what is meant by the words “the kingdom of God”. This grappling appears to be no small task. In fact, it seems as if it is a little bit like Jacob wrestling with God. He struggled mightily to overcome, finally settled for hanging on, asked for a blessing, and came away with a limp. Jacob received his blessing, but this encounter set his life in a different direction. It seems likely that in our wrestling with the mysterious stranger we call the kingdom of God that our lives too will be re-directed.

So what is the kingdom of God? Scholars and commentators have struggled to define it. It defies our best attempts at nailing it down in concrete ways. Maybe one of the best clues to the elusiveness of the kingdom is that the synoptic gospels portray Jesus himself as speaking of the kingdom indirectly through parables. “The kingdom of God is like…” is Jesus’ favorite way of describing it. He doesn’t say “this is it”. He doesn’t define it. He offers comparisons…”it is like a hidden treasure, it is like a pearl, it is like a mustard seed”. And he leaves it to his hearers to wrestle with it.

So at best we are able to name certain characteristics of the kingdom. It is a hidden kingdom. It grows in mysterious ways. It appears in surprising places. It is something to be received with joy, yet it may bring hardship. It can be entered, but it can never be contained. It is related to the church, but the kingdom is not the church and the church is not the kingdom. Jesus is Lord on the throne of the kingdom and where God’s will is done there God’s kingdom reign is seen. Jesus cautions against believing people when they say, “here it is or there it is” yet Jesus also says, “the kingdom is among you”.

If the Missio Dei is the coming of the kingdom in its fullness and if the purpose of the church is to be a sign, a foretaste, and a witness of the kingdom of God then we must learn to speak of the kingdom with greater regularity and deeper insight. Not so much to define the kingdom, but in order to begin to see ourselves as a church that has been caught up in the great mission of God.

And so to that end as Jesus’ modern day followers we must wrestle with and hang on to this mysterious stranger that has crossed our path. In our wrestling may we receive a blessing.

——

The kingdom of God has an undefined and elusive quality. It is difficult to grasp. I search for ways to summarize the kingdom, to point to definitive examples, and yet I am always coming up short. The frustration spills over into my investigation of the biblical material. I want to have passages about the kingdom cleanly, warmly receptive to my investigation. But at times I do not even know the tense in which the kingdom is being spoken. Is it arrived, imminent or expected? Have people ushered it in here, has it come by God’s will, or has it come because Jesus has preached it? There are practical issues with this problem for me. If I cannot read it pristinely out of the text, how do I communicate it to my congregation? How does it become the guiding light of congregational formation?

What I am finding is that in the kingdom’s undefined and elusive nature, we experience the God who is working for our good. Because the kingdom of God is elusive, it asks me to be more open to God’s kingdom work. If I cannot pin it down and I cannot possess it, then it is not static, it is not stagnant, it is yet to be discovered. Every day I must be open to the kingdom’s movements and fresh demands. Every day I must be open to it remaking my life. Because the kingdom of God is elusive, I cannot latch onto any manifestation of the kingdom and call it absolute and final. I will be more dependent on God since I am inadequate for the appropriation of the kingdom. I will give more attention to listening to others about their lives and their insights into God. I will listen to God in prayer, worship and the reading of scripture so that I can better be aware of kingdom business.

Because the kingdom is past, present and future, I will inhabit three roles. I will be a recounter of kingdom stories, a watcher in the present moment, a prophet anticipating what is to come, and I will inhabit these roles for the sake of the church. I want to tell stories of occasions in the past where the kingdom has broken in so that these stories can nourish our congregational imagination and cause us to dream kingdom dreams. I want to help the church to see that the kingdom is coming in present situations. I want to be one who verbally acknowledges the church’s yearning toward the final consummation of the kingdom. In all these I want to play a vital role for the church, but my ministry necessarily needs to also lead to others rising up to recount, to watch in the present, and to speak anticipation of the future. The kingdom which we proclaim, however, must be greater than the smallness of our individual lives or even collective congregation life. It must be a kingdom we are seeing in the world, at the point of contact between ourselves and the world.

And so: a parable of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is like Miles Davis’s record Birth of the Cool. While there was a time that I thought I understood cool jazz, I really do not. I accept this fact now. But cool jazz thrills me and it has for a long time. I just cannot adequately tell you what it is I really like about it. I think I like how it breathes and is patient. It seems more truthful and real than many other sounds I hear. When I put on Birth of the Cool, almost inevitably it first sounds jerky and discordant. In those first moments I doubt that this is what I want to be listening to. But soon the rhythms of the music become familiar and I have been reoriented to something different and better.

So it is with the kingdom of God. May it ever continue to reorient us to its ways.

Please contact me if you have any trouble leaving a comment in the section below.

~Greg KB

Everyone was involved: some shouting out excited memories, some of the older members studying old church bulletins and memoirs. We stratified our history into groups: pre-1960, then one group for each succeeding decade and the teens as their own group. We arbitrarily assigned adult members to the groups, trying to align people with their date of joining the church, though there were exceptions.

To prepare: We went to members with long histories and honed in on some themes: facilities management; high school bible credit; missions; and others. We really prized earlier work on building history and weekly church bulletins (for 50 years). All of the “stuff” (paperwork, trophies, photos, etc.) was placed in a box (for each decade) and handed to the leaders (who had one planning session). What occurred that we had hoped for was for the boxes to be a rewind of childhood as people rifled through them with ah’s and wow’s –like going through an attic.

Each group had a three person leadership. We had a greeting team that expedited the seating, diluting any confusion about the program. We also had the Steering Team float around the room with two of us by microphone “running” the meeting. The 3 leaders per table were: Facilitator – the spokesperson; Scribe – noted comments on Post-it Note (the kind that adhere to a hard surface) flip charts and later (see below) noted additional comments from other “visitors” to the table; Observer – kept the flow so that the Facilitator didn’t have to halt the process (got the timid involved; engaged those who were “hung up” on a single point, impeding the overall flow).

After about 45 minutes, by design, attendees were invited to move to each of the other tables for observation and input. The scribes hung their flip charts on the wall high enough for group viewing and took notes for any new comments from these “visitors”. This process broke down somewhat after about 15 minutes so we closed with a prayer.

We had stellar photographs that continue to add to the experience.

In both the planning meeting for leaders and the main event, the beginning was met with a fair amount of raised eyebrows, “what’s this about?” etc., but after just a few minutes into the process everyone was smiling and enthused.

Really key to our success was our emphasis that the experience is not about precision or even completeness. Instead, it was a bout capturing stories, that surface meaning, that reveal our hearts and what we have in common and believe in. Example: when our long-standing facility manager was approached about mapping building improvements, etc. over the many decades as part of our planning for the meeting, his reply was a question: “Do you know what the first activity was when we added the East Wing?” Answer: His own wedding reception (large smile).

We are still unfolding the exact process of disseminating the information captured on the flip charts. We don’t really know yet, but we are expecting an implicit benefit from this experience is that members who might otherwise be resisting the missional church initiative because they naturally dislike change will see, without any prompting, how much they have already changed as a church.

Each of the clusters of congregations, comprising 10 to 15 congregations (one in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex and one in the Pacific Northwest), will spend three years discovering, experimenting, and evaluating and implementing the things they have learned while on this journey.

Why “Partnership for Missional Church”

The PMC is a Partnership in that it involves individuals and congregations working together with educators, consultants, and staff from various institutions. Through the sharing of stories we are all supported and encouraged. Times of worship, of prayer, fellowship, these all serve to bind us together on this journey. We are all taking risks, but we’re not alone!

It is Missional in that we are focused on participating in God’s mission of reconciling, restoring and redeeming the world. The process of spiritual discernment helps us discover just how God is sending us into our communities, so that we may be better partners.

The word “Church” is used because we are building on the traditions and strengths of our congregations, not trying to build some new organization from scratch. The central location of mission in this growing world is the local congregation, and this project depends on the dedication of folks in church, both those in the pews and those in leadership roles.

Discovery, Experimenting, Embodiment

The first phase of the process is Discovery. This could best be described as a time for learning to listen. We listen to the witness of Scripture and the leading of the Spirit of God in allowing ourselves to be shaped and formed for sending into the world. We also learn to listen to our partners, those who help us understand ourselves and the context in which we live and work. A number of inventories, self-studies and evaluations will be used to take the pulse of each congregation, which will aid in the second phase of the project.

Experimenting follows Discovery. After learning about who we are, where we live and who we are sent to, the next logical step is to take action. The information uncovered during the first step will hopefully lead us in developing plans of action for innovating missional transformation. This involves more risk taking, and while not every risk will be rewarded, there is as much to learn from the mistakes as from the successes.

In the last phase, Embodiment, congregations will begin moving toward living in God’s preferred and promised future. After discovering and learning from the successes and failures of the experimenting phase, churches and their leaders will develop plans for congregational transformation, and will better know how to focus attention and energy toward attaining those goals.

Of course, the last phase is not truly the last phase. Congregations will need to constantly evaluate their situations and experiment with new actions and activities as their contexts change. As the church moves toward this promised future of being partners with God in his mission in the world, the process and learning and growing will be ongoing.

Follow Along

Since July, a cluster of ten congregations in Central Texas has been hard at work in the first phase of the PMC. A cluster of fifteen congregations is scheduled to begin in February of 2007. We hope to use this space to share some of their stories, to learn from their successes and failures, and to be blessed by looking in on their journeys.

Feel free to drop in and “take a peek” at what these congregations are doing, and join in the conversation. Ask questions about what these churches and their leaders are experiencing.

We hope you’ll come back often to find out what’s going on, and we hope you’ll feel free to contact us if we can answer any questions or concerns you may have.