A Portland blogger whose blog is called The Blind Beggar has proposed to those of us in the blog world (I hate the term blog-o-sphere…it’s just lame) to on this day write about the topic of ‘What is Missional?’ You can read his article on this here.
So here’s my take…(I just ran my hand over my balding head in an effort to warm up my brain on this chilly Oregon summer evening)
Whether or not someone or something is missional, is not an exterior performance issue. Being missional is a core heart issue. It will affect everything and anything that a person sees or does. At the core of being missional is deep desire/calling/burden to know the heart of God. When we really take in the meaning of Jesus’ life on earth we can’t help but have our view of God be changed and formed by His decision to come to where we are/were. The true miracle of Christmas is not that God came as a baby, but that God came at all…the baby thing is God’s way of making a point to show the extent to which He would become like us! We must come to grips with the reality that in Jesus we see that God chooses to come to us. He chose skin and bones to show us the extent to which He could have communion with us, even in our broken form. He knew in advance that He was ultimately going to be betrayed, abandon, dismissed, and killed…yet He still chose to come. Not only did His life have meaning in the present, but it also gives meaning to all of eternity.
Our chief aim as Christians is to model Jesus…to be learners of His ways…to become “mini-Jesus” in our worlds, as one author puts it. And if we are bold enough, just crazy enough, to make a true effort at being like Jesus then we are going to have to at some point realize that being like Him is choosing ‘to go’ as He did. I say ‘as He did’ on purpose because the way in which Jesus came should be most disturbing to us! Jesus intentionally went to the irreligious, but honest. To sinners, who were seeking…to the people that should never have been a part of the Kingdom according to the rules. Jesus intentionally chose the hurting over the religious. At the cost of His own reputation he ate with, partied with, drank with, talked with, the people that a prophet/rabbi/teacher/Messiah should not be doing these things with…or should he?
Becoming missional is beyond a simple filter change…it’s not just looking at the world with new glasses. Becoming missional is a re-identification process/event that will forever change the very eyes we see with. With these new eyes we see the world the way that Jesus saw it…We see people’s lives as life in process of redemption and we join them there because that’s where Jesus is at work. When our eyes are changed we can no longer sit back and wait for life to come to us…we become addicted to the discovery of redemption at work. We long for it…we go to it like it’s a magnet. We sacrifice comfort, popularity, convenience, and our former priorities…just like our Lord Jesus did when He came to earth and lived as He did…because we’ve come to see how when we pursue the agenda of blessing others we are what God calls us to be.
There is no way to program ‘being missional’…it is not a piece of the puzzle, it is the picture of our lives on the puzzle. Becoming a mission oriented person is not about the external practices only, it is about our hearts getting in tune with the heart of our God expressed in Jesus Christ. This will radically alter our desires, the questions we ask, the way we view the world, and ultimately, the way we love the world that we are here to steward. It is this transformation that Jesus has called and lead us to…to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, to freely give, to think outside of our individualistic concerns, and to join Jesus in the process of transformation. I guarantee that once we taste and see this goodness, we’ll settle for nothing less.
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