Seals team training.
I’ve been reading a Seal Team 6 book. Walls are to be breached, with the mission at hand! Let me jump over some walls and describe a bit of what I see as a missional church plant, and the walls to getting there.
Our mission is to create missional communities, otherwise known as “church.”
The two best online places describing missional communities as a practical theology of church (ecclesiology) are: Neil Cole’s work with the Church Multiplication Network and Ed Stetzer’s writing on the Missional Manifesto. And, I would recommend a book, Launching Missional Communities – see the b0ok’s thesis statement here.
I would propose this objective of the missional community as a form of organizing a new church plant:
To be organically created together by the Spirit and to be missionally minded about working for God’s purposes in the world. Practically speaking, it is to gather a bunch of people about the size of an extended family and impact the world through Christ’s call, passion, and mission.
This bunch of people you would usually gather are those not in church on a Sunday morning! And it means you can’t be in church on a Sunday morning, at least most of the time, either. In other words, the ones you are gathering probably don’t think very positively about church and may not have really considered the demand a relationship with Jesus might put on everyday life. But by plugging them into a “missional community” rather than a church with walls and buildings and set programs, you can quickly release the community to experience and go with Jesus – no red tape allowed.
Most missional communities seem to start with 2 or 3 people. It’s small, mobile, tactical, and lightning fast! As the group grows, it stays tactical and lightning fast. What does that mean? There are no committee meetings or approval systems. The group hangs out together, ideas naturally crop up, and people say, “Well, why not! Let’s do it!” Many argue, and I would be one of them, that this real church at it’s best, based around the early, New Testament church model.
What would make this missional community a “United Methodist church or charge”?
Theologically speaking, developing missional communities was John Wesley’s method. He called it a “Class.” They were serious about caring for the poor, orphan and widow, as well as learning and becoming disciples. He would not have called the “Class” a church, and resisted the Methodist movement of discipleship and mission becoming a separate entity or church from the Anglican Church.
The question is before the United Methodist church on how we can reclaim some of that tension in seeing the world as our parish, the priority of disciple transformation, and rethink how we define what a church actually is.
In the United Methodist Church we define a local church this way:
“The local church provides the most significant arena through which disciple-making occurs. It is a community of true believers under the Lordship of Christ. It is the redemptive fellowship in which the Word of God is preached by persons divinely called and the sacraments are duly administered according to Christ’s own appointment. Under the discipline of the Holy Spirit, the church exists for the maintenance of worship, the edification of believers, and the redemption of the world.” (The United Methodist Book of Discipline, 2008, Part V, Section 1, ΒΆ201, p. 133)
Does a “missional community” provide an arena for disciple making? Yes. Is it a community of true believers under the Lordship of Christ? Yes.
Is it a redeeming fellowship? Yes.Let me elaborate. Guess what? American communities are missing ingredients of fun and care, even in the best of them, when Christ is not honored. The boat-hood where we live is feeling the transformation power of Jesus who brings individuals into a healing and loving sort of community. Personally, I’ve been surrounded by a “redeeming fellowship” (the local church) for so long, that I forgot the difference it does actually make. Missional communities of unchurched people experience that for the first time, and gosh do they notice the difference.
Sacraments? Yes. Preaching? Maintenance of worship? Worship may look quite different and may include prayer as people dish out food to a hungry person. It may include the words, “May God bless you today as a blanket is handed to a homeless man. It might be in offering Christ’s wisdom about a family relationship as the group shares breakfast. Or it might be holy conversation with a group aboard someone’s boat. But, yes, it adores and worships Christ as Lord and Savior, Leader, Creator, Helper, and Healer.
A missional community is the church as defined by the United Methodist Church because it follows Jesus first, and practices as John Wesley organized for mission and “scriptural holiness.”
Structures in the United Methodist Church Which Hinder (aka, walls to clear)
So … what are the walls in the United Methodist Church keeping missional communities from being planted? Here are three.
- The structure itself and how to “classify” a missional community which are able to jump Conferences in a single bound!
- Old perceptions of “what defines church”? (Don’t we all want to be a mega-church, in one location?)
- Our practicing division (not necessarily theological division) between laity and clergy.
More in Part 2.
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