The call of the church to be missional

In his 2007 sociological study of Mennonite Church USA (Road Signs for the Journey, Herald Press, 2007), Conrad Kanagy points out that young adults “are less engaged in the church than are older members.” While that grim statement may characterize many, some young adults are working at renewal and mission within the congregations of MC USA. The Anabaptist Missional Project (AMP) consists of a variety of young adults from across the United States who are engaged in conversations that grow out of a love for Jesus, a deep love for church and a desire to participate in the mission of God.

Understanding the missional church

Over the last decade Mennonite Church USA has used the word “missional” to describe who we are and what we are to be about. Caring for the church is an important part of the vision and goals of AMP, and this passion is interwoven with the call to be missional.

Church as community

Missional may be an obtuse word, but the Trinity provides us with two ways of illustrating what it means to be missional. Understanding God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all as one and the same God provides an understanding of community. The church participates in communion with one another in that same relational style.

The apostle Paul used the language of the body of Christ. Just as the Trinity can be viewed as three distinct persons and the body has many different parts, the church is also made up of many different people. As a part of the body of Christ, we all bring our personal experiences and understandings of God to the community.

Since we live in a broken world, we are a broken communion. None of us sees wholly, yet we all see partially. This is why we so desperately need each other. We cannot completely understand who God is by ourselves. Part of being the body is committing to give and receive counsel, to work at displaying God’s love and reconciliation to the world. Just as the hand cannot live separated from the body, we cannot live when separated from other Christians. When we disagree with one another, living together may seem impossible, but when we disagree is precisely when we need each other the most.

Living out our commitment to this community by the grace and reconciliation available in Christ Jesus stands out from the surrounding culture. It is what makes us a city on a hill. This commitment to the community is our care for the church, but it is not limited to an insular community of believers.

Church as sent community

The broken body of believers that I love—the church—is a community sent by God into the world. In John 20, Jesus appears to the disciples following his resurrection and tells them: “ ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ ” (John 20:21-22).

As the body of Christ, the church is sent to represent God to the world in the same way Jesus dwelt on earth: We are to be the church in every aspect of our lives, representing God no matter where we are. We cannot sit back and wonder why people are not beating down the doors of our congregation. Instead we must realize that the Spirit of God is at work outside our congregations, even among people who do not proclaim Jesus as their Lord. There is not a place we can go where the Spirit is not already present and at work. The missional church embraces its mission as a sent community, joining the Spirit in its work where ever it may be.

Putting it into practice

There are many churches, pastors, leaders and believers that care for the church and are working to put this missional call into practice. One example is Kidron (Ohio) Mennonite Church, where team pastors Lydell Steiner and Thomas Dunn (both young adults) brought the congregation along in their shared vision of reaching the community in a new way.

Two and a half years ago, these young pastors received a request to assist someone with their heating bill. Rather than just agreeing to pay the bill, they wanted to see why the bill was so high in the first place. Upon arriving at the man’s home in the local trailer park, Thomas and Lydell were introduced to an unknown pocket of poverty just down the road from their congregation. As they continued to follow-up with the heating bill situation, they wondered how the church could be present in this neighborhood.

At first they took church youth to play games and throw a Frisbee with the children at the trailer park. Those relationships led to more organized programs, such as a fall fest and movie night. Soon the congregation had the idea to start a summer program in the trailer park. They hired a young adult intern for eight weeks to develop programming that involved Christian teaching and basic physical health programming.

The church has continued developing relationships with the trailer park residents. “Mentor families” have agreed to bring children to the Wednesday evening meals and to Sunday morning services and Sunday school. A couple from the congregation is preparing to move into the park as part of getting to know the local community.

This missional outreach has raised many questions in the congregation. Is the goal simply to get these people to start coming to church? How can the congregation address issues of economic development? What can the church learn from these people with different life experiences? How can mutual relationships be built and sustained?

The challenges

When the church embraces its identity as a sent community, it cannot remain unchanged. Is it possible that young adults have been listening to the denomination as it challenges us to be missional? Might embracing our missional identity shift our focus from the politics of the denomination to experimenting with engaging the poor community just around the corner? As we learn to live our entire lives as missional workers in the kingdom of God, we will no doubt experience God at work throughout the week and not just on a Sunday morning.

When we see our entire lives as participating in the kingdom, Sunday morning with fellow believers may not maintain the same priority level it once did. Even if we are not gathered on a Sunday morning, we must remember the importance of worship for the life of the church.

Worship must be a continuous part of the missional church. It may happen in a warehouse, around a dining-room table, in an office before work or in a sanctuary on a Sunday morning. No matter where it happens, when we worship the God who created the earth and everything in it, when we worship Jesus, whose life, death and resurrection model the way to live and offer us grace, we are demonstrating to the world that the story we are participating in is larger than us. We are proclaiming that God is worthy of our praise and worthy of our lives.

How do we learn to take our worship into the world as a sent community? Answering this question will no doubt change the way we think about church. Are we willing to see where the mission of God might take us?