"So, what do you actually do?"
"Well, we meet at the pub and enjoy a meal together."
"Great! And how do you celebrate your faith, do you gather to worship or pray??
"Ah no, we don't really do that."
"Are there any routines or spiritual practices you do?"
"Not really, no."
"What's distinctive about your corporate life of faith?"
"Um, well we're not like those religious types who just 'do' church."
In being open to God’s leading, it doesn’t help to just become anti-everything! There’s been expressions of ‘we’re-not-like-trad-church’, who know amazingly well what they don’t believe or do, but don’t evolve particularly sustainable, life-giving, distinctive models of kingdom community. It's not enough to simply be anti-building, anti-clergy, anti-denomination, anti-megachurch, anti-tradition, or anti-structure.
On the other hand, it doesn't help to hold to over-ambitious utopian and precise images of what the ideal missional congregation should look like. For example, it's risky to try to return to the purity of New Testament patterns of seemingly non-institutional organic church. All gatherings of people eventually organise and even institutionalise at some level (and that’s not all bad). Even the new testament churches had levels of structure to undergird their life together.
Also, while it is understandable for people to want a model of a church that has everything totes sorted about what it means to be perfectly missional - it’s not going to happen! Don’t try to set in stone what you belief has been vouchsaved to you as the ultimate model!
The great renewal moments of history discovered they were on a never-ending learning journey! The breathe of the Spirit continues to blow life-giving transformation into people and churches in their ever-changing environment. Practices and patterns that worked so well a while back, may not be helpful for the current time. Nostalgically hanging on to these old wine-skins will mean we lose the newest wine. (See Luke 5:37-39 for the wine metaphor).
“The missional way of life…calls us away from answers with formulas and blueprints. It is an invitation to move out of our comfort zones.” (Roxburgh & Boren 23)*
In the early chapters of Acts, for example, the believers met in the temple and local homes, assuming this to be the definitive model, but then came the persecution mentioned in Acts 8 and the old model came to an end, as they were scattered and left Jerusalem.
So, it’s good to remember:
“The missional way of life…calls us away from answers with formulas and blueprints. It is an invitation to move out of our comfort zones.” (Roxburgh & Boren 23)*
In the early chapters of Acts, for example, the believers met in the temple and local homes, assuming this to be the definitive model, but then came the persecution mentioned in Acts 8 and the old model came to an end, as they were scattered and left Jerusalem.
So, it’s good to remember:
- There is no one perfect model of how to do church – not cell-church, mega church, seeker-sensitive church, purpose-driven church, house church, multi site church, online church, or even simple church. Each has value, for a particular time or context, but none is the universal model for all time.
- The scriptures do not reveal a secret missional plan or formula that provides us twenty-first century Christians a dead-cert set of instructions for conjuring missional life.
- There is no point in the history of the church that provides uswith just the right pattern and formula for creating missional churches – not the reformation, nor the great awakenings, nor the underground house-churches, nor barista-approved cafe churches. Each of these were (and are) really important and effective for their time and place, and we can learn important principles from them, but they are not the absolute template. (Roxburgh & Boren 24)
* “Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One.” Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren, Baker Books, 2009.
