I. A New Vision for New Challenges

We find ourselves in a new situation in the church with regard to mission. A new situation calls for a new approach. In his book Missional Map-Making Skills for Leading in Times of Transition, Alan Roxburgh describes the new situation. “Many of us feel like we are suddenly in an unfamiliar land where our internal maps of how things should be no longer match what is going on around us” (x). Roxburgh explains that in the old world, “The role of clergy was to provide religious services to those in the community who came to church. Nowadays, people drive out of their neighborhoods to a church of their choosing, rather than attending the one in which they might have been baptized as a baby. Most simply stay home on Sunday morning” (xii). Many churches and clergy have prepared for a mission that consists of providing religious services to customers who are no longer coming to the store. They are all dressed up with nowhere to go—and they have no idea what to do about it.

This can lead to nostalgia for the past, and the attempt to return to an idealized former age. This is a mistake, both because such a return is not possible and also because it fails to see the problems inherent in that age that contributed to its collapse. It is tempting for traditionalists to see the decline of the church in our culture as consisting only of the abandonment of the timeless faith (cf. 2 Tim. 3:1-5). There is certainly plenty of that. However, a closer look reveals that our practice of the faith has been deeply intertwined with the assumptions of modernity. Its decline is at least partly due to the fact that these assumptions no longer rule the day.

II. The First Assumption of Modernity

There are two modern assumptions that no longer govern our world. First modernity focused on the individual rather than God or the community. Roxburgh explains:

"Compared to all previous maps across cultures, in which a divine being was the source of truth and knowledge, modernity places the autonomous individual at the center as the source of truth and knowledge. …With this shift in imagination came a method by which this rational subject could compel truth and knowledge from the objective world. This form of rationalism came to be known as the scientific method" (9).

The scientific method led to an “atomistic” way of thinking, based on Newtonian physics. Isaac Newton believed that atoms were the smallest bits of matter. In his book, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times, Peter Steinke writes, “To explain the principles of Newtonian physics, teachers often use the example of billiard balls. They bump into each other, suffer collision, but they cannot connect. . . Individuals were considered to be the atoms of society, and immutable principles and institutions were the means to keep the separate parts intact” (21) . From the modern perspective, each individual is seen as distinct from each other individual; each is an independent moral actor.

This led to a uniquely western and modern moral outlook. What each individual does in private is understood to be no one else’s business because it isn’t seen as having any impact on the whole. There was a loss of a corporate moral vision (cf. 1 Cor. 12:26-27). Life itself is broken down into parts. The church going part of a person can be separated from the business part of a person. Faith can be reduced to Sunday church attendance and involvement in various church activities. After church, one might go to some other social venue in which one’s identity and behavior could be distinctly different from what it was at church.

We have moved from an atomistic world to a quantum world. Steinke writes, “Quantum physics, in contrast to Newton’s physics, contends that there is no world composed of solid, individual parts unaffected by and unrelated to one another.” Scientists discovered parts smaller than atoms. “These particles became so small that there were not particles—only relationships. Subatomic particles only come into being because of the presence of other particles. Elementary particles are in essence a set of relationships” (23).

This movement from atomistic thinking to relational thinking impacts mission in two ways. First, the mission used to be to try to get people to come to our church to fill that compartmentalized, atomized part of their lives—"come to our church on Sunday to fill your need for the church part of your life.” Our mission field no longer consists of people who are trying to determine where they will “go to church.” We will have to show how faith impacts all of life. If faith doesn’t touch everything it isn’t worthy of a full commitment, and it won’t get the average person away from football, shopping, youth sports, or more sleep on Sunday.

Second, mission will now be centered on relationships rather than programs and doctrines. We used to advertise our programs to the church shopper. We will now have to display our community. If people connect with us and find us plausible, they will be willing to learn what we are doing and how they can participate. But if they do not connect with us relationally, most will not be interested in our doctrine or our programs.

To be sure, plenty of people are still shopping for a church, but those people are not, strictly speaking, the mission field. The true mission field includes those who say they do not believe in God; those who count themselves as “spiritual but not religious”; those who have stopped going to church because they were hurt in some way by their past church involvement; and those whose lives are too busy for church. It includes the wounded of our culture, who often do not view the church as a potential source for help. For various reasons, many people have come to see the church as irrelevant to their lives. Mission requires the development of compelling communities that present life in Christ in plausible, attractive, and life changing ways—ways that touch all of life, not just a few hours on Sunday morning.

III. The Second Assumption of Modernity

The second aspect of modernity that is central to the idea of a Mission Community is its focus on rational ideas and argumentation. Here I will offer my own experience in over three decades of ministry. I began ministry with the idea that the goal was to proclaim the truth about Jesus and the gospel. If this cognitive truth were embraced by the hearer, this would lead to faith in Jesus and a change in one’s manner of life. This approach was deeply rooted in the modern idea that faith is a set of “beliefs” or “doctrines.” If one could convince the rational hearer of the veracity of the gospel, the rational hearer would be compelled to accept this truth. I discovered in practice that most people aren’t looking to be convinced about the truth of an argument. Most people want to connect with God and others. They want to give and serve in meaningful ways. They want to be loved and to love. They want to be known and to know others. Thus, even when people are convinced by the argument the response might be, “So what?”

I discovered that intellectual assent does not necessarily lead to personal transformation. People will give intellectual assent to the faith. However, their newfound intellectual clarity about God can remain mixed with the same old manner of life. Many Christians hide behind the intellectual arguments because they would rather argue with others about doctrine than face the reality of their own disordered interior lives. Further, trauma and other background issues require more holistic approaches in order to effect change and healing. Simply knowing the truth about God and self does not necessarily lead to spiritual growth or holiness.

I learned that I had it backwards. The experience of faith comes first. The theology and doctrine of the church are the right explanation of that experience. The church began with the experience of Pentecost (Acts 2). The church spent the next 350 years explaining the experience, culminating in the Nicene Creed. The error of beginning with the cognitive is the error of explaining an experience that the unbeliever has not yet had. The New Testament teaches that one cannot understand the deep things of God without the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11-16). The apostles did not understand Jesus’ teaching about the crucifixion until after the resurrection when he “opened their minds” (Luke 24:45). Their experience of the Risen Christ preceded their understanding of exactly who he was and what had happened to him. Thus, mission must begin with the experience of God’s presence, not merely with teaching. The experience of God’s presence will most often be mediated by a community of faith whose common life bears witness to the love, power, and presence of Christ. When people experience God’s presence in a community, they are willing to learn the foundational truths that inform the experience.

This does not mean that right doctrine is unimportant. The wrong explanation of the experience, heresy, is harmful because it leads people into spiritually dangerous experiences. The experience of flying may lead a person to ask how the plane flies. The explanation must be accurate if it is to be relied upon for subsequent flights. The point is simply that mission should not be aimed only at the mind. Mission should aim to bring the whole person into a new community in which the Risen Christ is known and experienced. The teaching is an explanation. “We worship and live this way because this is who God is and this is who we are as a result.”

IV. The Foundational Concepts of a Mission Community

A Mission Community is rooted in two things that are essential to the health of the church in every age: personal spiritual formation and evangelism, the pursuit of holiness and the spreading of the gospel. Most Christians will agree that these things are essential. The debatable issues are the methods of pursuing each, and the manner in which the two are connected. A central assumption of a Mission Community is that the two cannot be separated without great harm to each component. To pursue personal holiness without any concern for those who do not know Christ results in a church that is ingrown—that is too attracted to the mirror at the expense of the window. However, to pursue mission without concern for personal holiness is to spread a cognitive message without any experiential reality behind it. If others cannot see Christ in us, we have nothing to bear witness to. I believe the second problem is the greater problem in our culture. Many have heard of Christ through the church. Fewer have seen him in the church.

In their book Constants in Context, missionary historians Stephen Bevans and Roger Shroeder observe,

Because of so much “malpractice” by the church’s missionaries in the past, contemporary mission thinkers insist on holiness of life and authenticity of Christian practice as a sine qua non for proclaiming the gospel. . . . “no matter how eloquent our verbal testimony, people will always believe their eyes first.” (360).

Bevans and Shroeder note that the monastic movement has maintained an alternative witness throughout the history of the church: “In contrast to [the] sometimes forceful approach to Christianization, the men and women of the monasteries offered a gentle model, one that combines proclamation and witness” (128). The outstanding feature of monastic mission is that the monks remained primarily focused on their own interior lives and their pursuit of union with God. The mission of the Irish monks was “wandering for the sake of Christ.” For them, “both pilgrimage and mission remained subordinate to the spiritual perfection of the monk” (121). Because the monk focused on his own spiritual perfection, to be pursued through ascetical practices in the life of prayer, he had something different to show the world.

The monastic ideal that combines the pursuit of holiness with missionary witness to the world provides a reference point for a Mission Community. A Mission Community is a community in which people commit to living by the Rule of the church, just as a monastic community is bound together by commitment to a common Rule. The monks took vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. While these vows are not required of a Mission Community, the principles they embody apply to all Christians. Every Christian is called to practice tithing and generosity and as a means of becoming free from the love of money, and to practice simplicity in one’s manner of living. Every Christian is called to practice chastity; celibacy outside of marriage and faithfulness within it. Every Christian is called to obedience to God and to each other in the community of faith (cf. Eph. 5:21). It is a matter of degree rather than of commitment.

The church’s witness to Christ has been weak in large measure because its members have not committed themselves to the pursuit of holiness. Thus, the church looks very much like the world rather than being holy or set apart from the world. This is why the mission of the church must begin with its own interior renewal. When the church abandons its own pursuit of holiness, it no longer bears witness to the power of Christ to change lives. This reduces the church to the marketing of spiritual products that are attractive to religious consumers for short term practical benefits. After consuming the religious product, the consumer may not come to church again until he or she needs something else.

The abandonment of the pursuit of holiness also leads to a false activism. The church begins to focus on problems that are “out there” in the world while ignoring its own interior disorder and complicity in the problems. Christians are reduced to being partisans in political and social debates that aim at some merely temporal goal in the world and they cease to be witnesses for Christ and his kingdom.

V. Mission in a Mission Community

The model for outreach in a Mission Community comes from the general approach to mission that characterized Celtic monasticism. In his book Recovering the Past, Celtic and Roman Mission, John Finney makes a comment that gets at the heart of the idea of a Mission Community: “The Celts did not church plant; they monastery planted.” (28). Finney identifies three aspects of postmodern evangelism that reflect a Celtic model:

First, a shift from sudden, dramatic conversions towards conversions that occur more gradually over time (from Damascus Road to Road to Emmaus).

Second, a shift from doctrine to spirituality. “Traditionally spiritual life flowed out of and was a consequence of doctrine. You believed certain things about God and as a result prayed and lived in a certain way” (42). Now, experience precedes belief. People come to believe something is true as a result of an experience. “This means that we can begin with prayer and the experience of the spiritual in ordinary life” (43).

Third, a movement from missions to mission. This is a shift from the periodic crusade and the short-term mission trip to the idea that the Christian life is a continual mission. “To have an occasional mission means that a special effort only had to be cranked up every so often. To be in a position of constant service and mission means being a welcoming, open community at all times” (46).

VI. The Forms a Mission Community Can Take

A Mission Community is an adaptable form for mission. It could be a small manifestation of the church in a place. A few people who live at a distance from a church could establish a Mission Community as the center for their life of prayer. A Mission Community could be a subset of a larger church. Members who live in a given area could form a local Mission Community for the purpose of local mission.

There are few essentials without which a gathering will not be a genuine Mission Community. There must be a genuine commitment to the life of prayer and spiritual growth on the part of the members. The foundational commitment is to live by the common rule of the Book of Common Prayer and to engage in regular practice of fasting and prayer for mission. In our diocese, Wednesday is perpetually set aside as a day of fasting and prayer for mission. Prayer for mission is part of the fabric of the community.

There must be spiritual direction and oversight. The community must remain connected to the Eucharistic life of the church. It is not a “free agent” community, but a community that is taking on a new form, in connection with the church, for the sake of mission.

There must be a genuine desire to share life in Christ with others. This means that a Mission Community must have a social component. The members must share their lives. The social component reflects the practice of biblical hospitality (Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9). This will be a primary means of mission. The Mission Community creates social spaces into which it can invite those who are outside the community. Evangelism in our time will typically move from relationship (developed in social spaces) to prayer to instruction and, lastly, to full Christian commitment. The social space of a Mission Community is an essential door of entry.

A Mission Community is built on perseverance and commitment to living life in Christ in community. Spiritual growth and its organic influence on others take time. We grow spiritually the way plants and babies grow. There must be patience and commitment to the process for the spiritual life and mission to bear fruit. Many people do not have the patience for it, especially in our consumer culture. We are trained to try to manipulate and expedite the process to gain quick results. If we fall prey to this tendency, the idea of a Mission Community will not come to fruition.

VII. A Biblical Model for Mission

Historically, mission has been rooted in the command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” We tend to hear the command “teaching them” to mean that the communication of the Christian faith is primarily a didactic enterprise. We fail to see that the main thing they were to teach was how to pray and how to live (cf. Luke 11:1). Because of this, greater emphasis should be placed on the explanation of mission the Risen Christ gave to the apostles in Acts 1:8: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” These words of Jesus emphasize that the witness to Christ as Risen Lord was not just a message. The apostles received the Holy Spirit. Their very lives, the new way they lived “in the Spirit,” was evidence that Jesus was alive and ruling in the world. The effective witness of the church, and of each member of the Body of Christ, is the outward manifestation of the inner presence of the Holy Spirit. We bear witness to something that has happened to us and is happening to us. A Mission Community is a community that prays and waits for the Holy Spirit to come into its corporate and individual lives. Then it is a community that goes out into the world to bear witness of its experience to others.