Say what?

A lot has been written lately about missional living. We hear about it at church and in the Christian media. We are currently reading and discussing Radical by David Platt with our Freebirds class at church. We read Francis Chan's Crazy Love last year. Before we started Radical, our Global Outreach Pastor spent three weeks with our class challenging our contemporary American thinking about reaching others with the gospel of Christ and what that might look like to empty nesters like us. Not at all coincidentally, Mr. brown and I had been discussing quite a bit where we were in our church, our lives and our community and what God might be asking us to change or adjust so as to be more "missional." It's funny, I have lived through several different decades in the American church and each one had some sort of watchword or catchphrase. I am not immediately enamored with what people call a particular movement or even with the movement itself. I endured the 80s which touted Destiny as the in thing, the 90s which I think was all about Passion...I guess this decade has been mostly about relevance and being seeker friendly and now we are at the Missional stage. I can do this. People need handles and marketing has really made inroads in the church. I'm old enough to know that if I just sit here for a bit, something new and improved or at least different will come along. None of this has really changed how God speaks to us or how he brings people to Himself. In our marriage, we usually come to points of action pretty much together and rarely are we at odds about what God has for us next. I mentioned to Bill a few weeks ago that we were approaching our one year mark at this big, wonderful church, but that we had not realized some of the goals we had in mind when we arrived last fall. I suggested the idea that we might want to consider that we have enjoyed a good year of R&R and that now it might be time to pursue a little harder what our place is in God's church, to dig in and get busy. We really don't see retirement as part of the Christian's life anyway. At least not as it relates to functioning in the body of Christ. He had been very sensitive when we first arrived that for all of our marriage I had dutifully followed him around in his church leadership roles and made the best of whatever we had been given. It had not always been a pleasant and fulfilling experience. Now, it seemed, I got the chance to make some relationships, find my place, etc. without having to be so conscious of that. We did not have to give consideration to our children's needs either. Nursery, children's ministry or youth group never entered the discussion. After a year, we were settled into a nice, comfortable Sunday morning class for people in our stage of life...Freebirds, early empty nesters. We loved the preaching and the worship. Everything done at this enormous church is marked by excellence, a trait we appreciate...there are about 5000 members, 100 staff, and 173 unique ministries...probably about that many small groups. In spite of that and our fervent determination to faithfully pursue service and relationship opportunities, we have made few real friends, have not found a small group that meets anywhere near where we live, with people remotely our age or on a night we can attend. We have tried to serve in several different ministries and just never got a response. Bummer, huh? Bill smiled and revealed that he had been praying about a change for several months but just did not want to rush me. Sweet man! Well, we considered maybe we needed to find a smaller, possibly younger, church plant closer to home. We knew what that would require. Temporary rental facility, hard, uncomfortable chairs, setting up and tearing down, largely a young congregation and a young pastor and staff...been there, done that, a LOT! We were and are willing to undertake all that again, dig in and be the "older" couple in the church, if that is what God is saying. We also want to serve and worship in our own neck of the woods, if possible. When we share the gospel with neighbors we want to be able to encourage them to visit our church, nearby, rather than driving a half hour or more to the Mothership. Just makes sense. So that's how we found ourselves sitting in the conference room of another young gun pastor, trying to determine if we could be of service to him and his growing congregation. Imagine my shock when...

He made it clear that "churched" people (that would be us, I guess) were not really what he was looking for. They tend to be judgemental and rigid. Not "with it" enough for his Keep Austin Weird kind of church. Hmm?

That in response to what he would see as the most valuable quality an older couple could bring to his new church he said money. No lie! Money? If they are older and mature in their faith, doesn't that go without saying? He did admit that comment was his flesh talking...Buddy, you need to make your flesh be quiet!

We were welcome to come and attend a small group with the other 25 or so old folks like us...this out of a congregation of 400. We didn't really expect there to be many older folks and we fully expected a young pastor. And who wouldn't prefer the theater seating we enjoy now to folding chairs? But he did not honestly expect we would like his church. He suggested we might like another one that was more, well, churchy. Otherwise, we got the idea we would probably just need to sit down and be quiet.

Discipleship really wasn't the main thing at his church. Oh, they did some, through small groups. Small groups are like a marriage relationship, he explained. The first eight weeks are like dating. Once you feel like you are a good fit (whatever the heck that means!) you sign a covenant (like marriage?) But after twelve to eighteen months you disband and form a new group because by then you have "heard all the stories" and it gets stale. So is that like divorce or are we just swapping partners? I am so NOT making this up!

His mantra was "leniency, liberty and grace." Grace I get, but I had to ask if that really meant license. Was he saying holiness was not a quality they were seeking? He pulled out the "churched people are judgemental" thing again. He pretty much justified people in leadership who were in known sin by saying that in a church growing as fast as his, filled with so many unchurched people, they could not afford to be too choosy. Another hmmmm?

His "business model" was derived from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Covey and a bunch of corporate leadership gurus' books whose titles escape me now. His whiteboard was full of pithy sayings, not all really terrible, but he just seemed to be looking everywhere for the secret to building his "business" except the instruction manual. He had lots of nifty flow charts and acronyms. He could make a really compelling sales pitch but we just could not figure out what he was actually peddling or why.

His mission, he said, is to "reduce lostness" in his "circle of accountability," designated by a section of geography marked on a big map on the wall. Nothing wrong with that, in theory. We need to be able to identify who we are trying to reach and what we are trying to accomplish. He explained that their services are a ton of fun, Minute-to-Win-It games, videos, music rather than worship (cuz that's churchy!) short sermons, more fun! No communion because the whole blood thing kinda weirds people out. So Bill asked if he ever spelled out to all these many converts he's making the concept that when we decide to follow Jesus there is a cost involved. That while salvation is free, discipleship is costly, requiring the surrender of our lives which means our hopes, our dreams, our stuff, our agendas to Christ, you know, that whole "take up your cross" thing. This is not just a "get out of hell free" card. Bill reminded him of all the Christians in the world who find their faith may indeed cost them everything. His response was that "In this culture and context we just don't find that relevant." Again with the "judgemental churched people" (that would be us!) who are just not "self-aware" or was it too much so, I forget.

We made our polite good-byes, walked in silence to the car, rode in silence to our home...and finally one of us asked "So, do you feel about 90 and in need of a walker and a hearing aid!?" I was truly crushed. Bill, being  more reasonable and less emotionally impacted by such events, reminded me that God had actually answered our prayer. We had asked before we went into this meeting, that God would make His will very clear to us. We were humbly asking Him how we could best serve Him and His church. The answer was unmistakably "NOT HERE!"

We are back to the drawing board, after praying off the slime from that encounter, praying blessing on that poor, misguided man and his unfortunate congregation, determined to continue seeking God. It is a fair question to ask how we can be missional. How we can be most effective in our community and in the Kingdom. We do want to "reduce lostness" right here in our neighborhood and our circle of influence, but in a truthful way that speaks to the ongoing needs of a disciple. We were not commanded to "go into the world and make converts" but to make disciples. Maybe that's churchy, but it seems to be the way God wanted it to happen. I just needed to be reminded that a long period of discipleship and faithful service does not make me obsolete, unusable to God and ready to be put out to pasture. We just need to keep seeking. Stay tuned!