imagining how the church can reorient around mission

By Nathan

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    By Trevor                    A lot of what we have read about and talked about in class is how a church sends out its members to do incarnational ministry, but what about the church doing incarnational ministry as the church in a local community? How does a local church live missionally in the local community it is in. When I think of this idea, the best example that I can think of is what Millwood Presbyterian Church is doing in the Millwood community.             I am a member of Millwood Presbyterian and have interned for the Senior Pastor and I continue to marvel as to how this church in a dying denomination is impacting the surrounding community and being one of the few Presbyterian churches to grow. And what I think is the result of this uniquely growing church is its ability to live missionally within the community. Both the pastor and the youth pastor sit on many school boards within the district as well as spearheaded after school programs when the local elementary school didn’t have the funds. But the church itself is also rooted into this community. the church is the location of the local farmers market, a key contributor to the local 5k run, and holds a community food drive as pictured. The list is endless in its continual impact exemplifying the roots the church has in this community. And because of this, the membership of this church continues to rise while the neighboring Presbyterian churches are fading. This church and others doing a similar ministry show that there is another way for the church to be the church to a community. The Missional lifestyle can be applied to the church as a whole just as the individual members can. But the way the church does it is in a much different approach.

By Jeff Two weeks ago I returned from SE Asia with a truly broken heart. Throughout my four months in the region I was shouldered with more intimate knowledge of atrocities, befriended more refugees, and felt more helpless than I could have ever thought possible. At moments I felt as if I was completely unable to address the crises that my close friends were experiencing. Two Pakistani Christians whom I am very close were on the verge of being sent back into certain persecution in their home country. Concurrently, the Burmese Army was on an aggressive offensive against Kachin state. Several of my close friends had just left Kachin state months prior to this offensive. Both of these crises found their roots in the Western world. The conflict in Burma is the result of prior colonization by a Western power. Likewise, the fear instilled in the two Pakistani Christians was a direct result of selfish decisions made by their Western sponsor. Fortunately the Church has tremendous ability to help the oppressed and the poor, especially the resource abundant American Church. It sickened me to experience the pain in SE Asia that the Western world is largely responsible for. Now, more than ever we need to unwaveringly embrace the American Church and inspire it to aggressively labor towards bringing about the Kingdom of God. We need to embrace being a Church that embodies that concept of being a Church created entirely for the purpose of God’s Kingdom. We need to embrace those on the fringes of our society and bring about Christ’s universal love for all. Every day that we do not instill Kingdom values in each other, we remain neutral in mitigating the atrocities elsewhere in the world. I believe that every American who embraces the values of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom advances one step closer in America and all countries affected by the actions of American individuals.  JP

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By Laura When I enter into conversation about the Church, I often get responses like, “I’m a Christian, but why go to church? Tons of people are living out their faith more than those in the church,” or “The church is full of hypocrites; I’d rather just do the faith thing on my own.” While these are discouraging comments, I have to admit that I have felt them myself at times. Why do the person of Jesus and the body of Christ, the Church, often seem so contradictory?
We see throughout the Bible that God chooses to use the Church to partner with Him in his great missional and redemptive work. The Church is made up of fallen humans so we cannot expect it to be perfect, but it is also included in the holistic restorative work of God and can continue to become more Christ-like. While the Church around the world continues to grow at a fast pace, I believe the Church in North America needs to wake up to the importance of its calling and ultimately of its identity. Mission is what the Church is called to do, in following Jesus’ example of teaching, preaching and healing. 
As I am learning more about the ways in which the Church has been impacted by Christendom, I am reminded even more of the necessity of the Church’s self-evaluation and openness to change. I believe the Church needs to take the time to re-evaluate the ways in which it aims to live out its mission and identity in a changing world that calls for true faith in action, proclaiming the Kingdom of God that was and is and is to come. In the words of Alan Hirsch, we need to be like the first apostles, “…holy rebels who constantly attempted to throw off encumbering ideologies, structures, codes, and traditions that limited the freedom of God’s people and restricted the gospel message that they are mandated to pass on.”

      By Kayla     A few years ago, I had a close friend of mine question my faith in Christ. She was not raised in a Christian home and to her, Christianity was too much of a question mark to give it a chance. She posed the question to me, “How can you have so much faith in something you don’t know for sure is true?” It got me thinking about why things couldn’t’ just be more concrete. It seemed to me that unanswered questions that commonly arise from biblical analysis are nothing but a barrier to those who may otherwise have believed. In our society, we are so centered on answers. We want to know something is for sure before we invest our time, brainpower, or faith in it.             Some may see this as being a potential problem for the church. I think that many people have the same dilemma as my friend, there are just too many unanswered questions. So many of us wrestle with things like why did my loved one have to die? Why would an all-loving God subject innocent people to pain and suffering? What is Gods will for me? Does everyone go to heaven? These hard to answer questions are ones that pastors are commonly asked. This issue could easily be problematic for the church and has potential to interfere with ministry. However, I think that it can also be a blessing in disguise. Recently, I read a book called Jesus Mean and Wild by Mark Galli.  The author posed the idea that unanswered questions are a crucial piece in our pursuit of God. They bring us into conversation with our brothers and sisters in Christ and the search for answers keeps us actively invested in the gospel. If the church can embrace these hard to answer questions and treat them as starting points for education and discussion, I have hope that it may make a difference for those who are on the cusp of accepting Jesus.

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By Josh Imagine a machine that is designed to carry large chunks of marble up out of mine shaft where it can be packaged and shipped off. Now imagine what people would say if the miners suddenly struck oil and the man in charge decided that they would use the exact same machine to elevate the oil to the surface. People would declare that the man is insane! They would say that his system was built for a different purpose and for a different environment. They would say that the oil they are dealing with is uniquely different than the marble that they have dealt with in the past. Therefore it is only logical that a new machine must be built; one that can conform to and handle this new material. In the same way, western missionaries are moving into countries and establishing church organizational structures that were built for an entirely different “substance”. It is ludicrous to expect a church system designed for a mega church in Seattle, filled with wealthy middle class Americans, to work for a nomadic tribe in Central Africa. The very “substance” that we are dealing with is different. All cultures are not the same, and the church or machine must therefore be modified or changed in order to handle different types of cultures. The machine is still doing the same thing, but simply by a different process and means. When you look at foreign missions from this perspective it seems obvious that the organization and way that the church functions must be very different from what is common in America; however, sadly, it is still very common for western missionaries to go into a country and try to conform that countries culture to his system of church organization. We might as well try to put a square peg in a round hole. With enough pressure the square will fit into the hole, but it will no longer be the square that God uniquely created to be a square. Westerners have fallen into the trap of thinking that God only makes round pegs and round holes. We think that God has made everyone like us, and that those that are not like us need to change. -JS