Cultivating Missional Living
Sermon 1 Capturing a Missionary
Vision April 6th, 2014
Isaiah 6:1-8, Isa. 61:1-2, Luke
4:18-19, John 20:21
When we hear the word missionary;
what thought comes to mind? I use to think of people going into the jungles,
Indiana Jones style and fighting lions and tigers to save people for Jesus. I
thought of the lost as people in the jungles of Africa or the Amazon basin of
South America. ...Well, in the dictionary for “missionary” it says it is a
person undertaking or sent on a mission. Well that’s not very helpful, obvious
but still not very defining. So then we look up mission and it says something
like…the act of sending or being sent.
And this I think is very helpful. It
is in fact very insightful. The idea of mission can relate to either sending or
being sent. The problem for the church with this definition is that we tend to
focus almost exclusively on the idea of sending rather than being sent. We tend
to think primarily of sending and supporting missionaries in faraway places
rather than seeing ourselves, both individually and collectively, as being
sent. This reality leads us to the first essential that must strengthen and
support all of our missional activity….the understanding that God by His very
nature is a missionary God, and we as the church, are His missionary people.
The Missionary Nature of our God
Mission is the grand narrative of
God’s Word. The entire Bible is generated by and is about God’s mission. The
word mission comes from the Latin word ‘missio” meaning sending. It is the
central Biblical theme describing God’s activity throughout history to restore
and heal the creation. And while it is often over-looked, God’s word is full of
sending language that speaks to the missionary nature of our God.
From the sending of Abram in Genesis
12 the sending of His angel in Revelation 22, there are hundreds of examples of
God as a sending God. But, perhaps the most dramatic illustration of sending in
the Old Testament is found in Isaiah 6. ….In this passage, we catch a glimpse
of God’s sending nature. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall
I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” Is 6:8.
Later in the book of Isiah there is a
passage that is fascinating. It is where the prophet recognizes that God’s
Spirit has anointed him to “proclaim good news to the poor” and “sent him to
bind up the brokenhearted” (61:1). In
the larger passage of Isaiah 61:1-3 it is interesting to note that there are no
fewer than six redemptive deeds that proceed from or are dependent on the verb
“sent” or the phrase “he has sent me.” To emphasis the centrality of the
sending theme, the passage could be rendered this way:
He has sent me, to bind up the
brokenhearted;
He has sent me, to proclaim freedom
for the captives;
He has sent me, to release from
darkness the prisoners
He has sent me, to proclaim the year
of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God;
He has sent me, to comfort all who
mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion;
He has sent me, to bestow on them a
crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and
a garment of praise instead of despair. (61:1-3)
If this passage is familiar it may be
because Jesus applies it to His own ministry in Luke 4:18-19 as He claims to be
the fleshly embodiment of Isaiah 61:1-2. It becomes, in a sense, the closest
thing to a personal mission statement for Jesus.
As we move through the New Testament,
sending language is found throughout the Gospels, the book of Acts, and each of
the Epistles. However, the most comprehensive collection of sending language is
found in the Gospel of John, where the words “send’ or “sent” are used almost
sixty times. The majority of uses refer to the title of God as “one who sends”
and of Jesus as the “one who is sent”.
In the final climatic sending passage
of John’s Gospel, Jesus makes clear that He is not only sent by His Father, but
now He is the sender, John 20:21, As the Father has sent me, I am sending you”
With this statement, Jesus is doing
much more than drawing a vague parallel between his mission and ours.
Deliberately and precisely he is making his mission the model for ours, saying
“As the father has sent me, I am sending you.” So, our understanding of the
church’s mission must flow from our understanding of Jesus’ mission.
The Missionary Nature of the Church
So, the purpose of this brief survey
of sending language is not merely to emphasize the missionary nature of our
God, but to highlight the importance of understanding the church as a sent
missionary entity. God is a missionary God who sends a missionary church.
This is why the word “missional” when properly applied is helpful. The word is simply the adjective form of
the noun “missionary.” It is used to describe the church as those who operate
as missionaries in their local context. So, at the core of the missional
conversation is the idea that a “genuine missional impulse is a sending rather
than an attraction one. ..In other words, we should be sending people of the
church out among the people of the world rather than attempting to attract
people of the world in among the people of the church. This is so helpful
because most people do not think of the church in sending, missionary terms.
Let me offer to you 3 ways is seems
people view the nature of the church in our day. First comes from our heritage in having been birthed out of the
Protestant Reformation. We have inherited a particular view of church that
emphasizes:
the proper preaching of the Word,
the proper administration of church
ordinances,
and proper church discipline.
This view tends to give us the
impression that the church is a place where things happen at. So the church is
thought of as a place a person goes to, to hear the Bible taught, to participate
in the Lords Supper and baptism, and in some cases, though rare today, to
experience church discipline.
A second view is our Contemporary
Variation on the first. While we are not far removed from this first view
as a place where certain things happen, a more accurate description of the way
people view the church today would be as a vendor of religious goods and
services. Members are viewed more as customers for whom the religious goods and
services are produced. Churchgoers expect the church to provide them with a
range of services. These might include great worship music, dynamic children’s
programs, small groups, seminars on parenting and marriage, and so on.
One of the major problems with both of the first two is that the church
is seen as an institution that exists for the benefit of its members.
A third view of the nature of church we might call the “Missionary
Vision of the Church”… a body of people sent on a mission. Central to this view
is understanding the church as a people called and sent by God, to participate
in His mission for the world. The church still gathers together, but the
difference is that we don’t gather for our own sake, but instead for the sake
of others, or…better yet, for the sake of God’s mission. We come together as a
collective body of believers to be equipped through prayer, worship, and the
preaching of and study of God’s Word in order to be sent.
So why does all this matter:
Well for one reason, consider the
concept of cultural distance. What is cultural distance; it is how far a person
in our neighborhoods and communities is from a meaningful engagement with the
Gospel of the Kingdom.
Let me explain. Our cities have
changed so much in the past few years culturally. And there are four distinct levels; we might
say barriers to engagement with our community.
Level 1- Contains those with some
concept of Christianity who also speak the same language, have similar
interests, most likely share the same nationality. And are from a similar class
grouping as us and our church. Most of our friends would probably fit into this
group.
Level 2- Contains the average
non-Christian in our context. A person who has little real awareness of, or interest
in, Christianity and is somewhat suspicious of the church. This category might
also include those previously offended by a bad experience with church or
Christians. We call them de-churched. We
encounter these people every day in our extended relationships, school, work,
the park or mall….
Level 3- contains people who have
absolutely no idea about Christianity. Or they might be part of a fringe
subculture or ethnic group with another religious impulse. We might include
those marginalized by Christianity, the gay community, drug abusers and
alcoholics, ex-inmates from prisons or even people with mental disorders. This
would also include people with an agnostic approach to Christianity. (I do not
believe personally in God, but admit He might exist.)
Level 4- contains ethnic and
religious groups with a bad history of the church. Muslims and Jews. The fact
that they are even here in the west, might help reduce the distance between us
and them and sharing the Gospel. But just about everything else gets in the way
of a meaningful conversation about Jesus.
Why this matters is that our church
has operated almost exclusively in the first level. And doing church the
attractional way where we do things to get them to come to us works pretty good
at the first level. Although churches around
are operating at this level so it becomes more about who is the most attractive
church.
But the population in Dallas Texas is
increasingly defined by descriptions of those in the level 2, 3, and 4
category. So, more and more people who call Dallas home find themselves further
and further away from the influence of our church.
This means that if we remain in our
attractional posture, those outside the church, and outside our reach, will
have to do the cross-cultural work to find Jesus. What? ….What I’m saying is
that those who are far away from God are being asked to become like
missionaries and cross over the cultural barriers to come to us. We are asking
lost and de-churched people to become missional when we are the sent ones.
It would be like Isaiah answering
back to God, don’t worry, if we wait long enough those disobedient Israelites will
see their own way back to you God.
But I believe this is a pivotal
moment Ridgecrest, a moment when we as followers of Christ will rediscover the
heart God gave us for himself, one that loves our neighbors and communities.
One that longs for the journey of Going,
as the church, instead of just coming to the church!
Complete Sermon Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDWTjOK24Es
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