transitioning to missional 2

• Author: Brad
• Filed under: church, church planting, evangelism, examining, Great Commission, incarnational, leadership, mission, missional, missional church, pastoring
• Date: Feb 10,2010

I’ve been reflecting some more on Brent Thomas’ thoughts on how to transition to “missional” if you are an established church.

In his post, Brent talks about how many pastors see the gap between the reality of what is and what they want to see happen missionally in their churches. It reminded me of a passage from The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.

For pastors who feel discouraged, this should be of help:

We used to spend most of our time with…bold church planters because we thought it would be a waste of time to try to teach the old dog new tricks when you can release the young hounds into new, unrestricted land. Yet, over the the past six years, much of our work had been with existing churches and more traditional pastors who don’t want to settle for irrelevance. They are men and women who deeply love people – the “lost” – but also have responsibilities to love the found ones.

…I used to judge these leaders as weak, or unwilling, or even worse, unloving toward the harvest field. But now I’ve come to believe that they are just as important as the brave, arrogant, pioneer pastors. They are the shepherds; the ones who can help the pioneers take risks. They are the ones with the resources, people, and facilities who can help out the fledgling mushroom eaters.

Would it be okay to consider there are degrees of missionality?…Is it possible that God doesn’t need nor ask everyone to start something new? It is possible that God needs millions of leaders to care for a host of Christians who won’t be able to make the turn into new forms of church?…The transition within the U.S. church doesn’t require that we all travel on the same ship, but we must all sail on the same sea.

…The call…is not to get everyone back on the front lines of mission, but to get everyone involved in mission. Whereas some would say we need to move past our existing church forms, we disagree. We just need to see them as they are, accept their weakness, and their strengths, and find ways to help them contribute.

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community, pg. 34, 36

So established church pastor, find comfort in the fact that, as Halter + Smay state, there are different degrees of missionality.

The one tip I would add to Brent’s list of things to think about when transitioning to missional is related to established churches. As Halter and Smay said, established “shepherds” can be an important part of this missional movement. They have “resources, people, and facilities” that can be used to support those on the front lines. My additional tip would be:

Depending on your degree of missionality, use your resources to support missional pioneers prayerfully, financially, and practically and also, by planting churches out of our church community.

Re: planting churches, sometimes the best missional step for an established church is to plant a church out its fellowship. Church planting has been described as the most effective form of evangelism. Why?

Drew Goodmanson talks about it this way:

New churches have greater freedom to be flexible, change on the dime and try new things. This means they can experiment with new methods, sounds, styles and often this can reach untapped people groups. The same principles are seen when start-up companies are more innovative and surpass the larger bureaucracy-laden companies in tapping new markets.

My mentor calls himself a “hospice chaplain” for his church. In his best estimation, the church he pastors is dying but he has been called there to help them die well. Part of his passion is to mobilize his congregation missionally. I respect his call and bravery. It would be foolish to diminish his place in the Kingdom. We all have a ordained place in the King’s work – may we be faithful to discern and quick to obey Him where He leads…