Eternal Perspectives

One of my best friends - I’ll call him Butch - sent me an email that included a document intended for introducing potential elders and leaders to the purpose of his church. My friend is trying to get his church to intentionally do better what it’s already doing very well.

After a couple of back and forths and 60+ comments and emendations from me, I finally decided to re-write the whole thing. I couldn’t bring myself to use the term “missional”: it’s just too trite and trendy.

I’d appreciate any feedback or thoughts you might have on what I’ve written: it may make the paper even better or it may be ignored completely.

Here’s the first of three installments of the proposed paper:

The Mission Statement of Hole-in-the-Wall Church is to build a loving community that follows Christ in order to reach a community that is lost without Him. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on and further delineate how our mission is to be accomplished.

Introduction

The description of Hole-in-the-Wall Church as a “mission church” has been chosen for a variety of reason. First, it harkens back to the story of God’s work in history and places Hole-in-the-Wall within that story. Mission churches have been a vital means by which God has accomplished and is accomplishing His purposes in the past, present and future. Thus, to denote Hole-in-the-Wall Church as a mission church is to place it in a long tradition within a God-driven enterprise that has continued for thousands of years and is continuing even now in thousands of places.

Second, mission churches historically have been established to be shelters for all peoples during the daily struggle to live a meaningful existence as well as stormy times of social upheavals and change. For Christians, the mission church consists of a people called out by God and exists to provide a place for the edification, healing, and preparation of the people of God; for non-Christians, the mission church is to be a safe place in times of doubt, distress, or danger. The mission church has been and must continue to be a safe haven for all peoples, not just those who are identified as members of the church and/or true believers. All people are welcome in a mission church; all are to be granted equal respect and honor as people who bear the image of God.

Third, the mission church exists to send people forth into the surrounding culture and community for the purpose of affecting it for and infecting it with the kingdom of God. Irrespective of the role or occupation one might perform, believers understand that their purpose is to establish and demonstrate the nature and reality of the kingdom of God in the community at large. The mission of the church is to present and incarnate the gospel of the kingdom in the broadest sense of the word.

The mission church thus has two primary distinctions:

1. The mission church is a gathering of “called out” believers in Jesus Christ who gather to build up one another and to prepare the for the second distinction;

2. The mission church has the mission of “being sent” to reach and participate in the transformation of the unbelieving culture in which it finds itself.

Since most Christians a very familiar with the first duty of the mission church – edification – the remainder of this paper will focus on the second and equally vital responsibility of the church: “being sent.”

1. The Culture In Which We Find Ourselves

Regardless of what might be true in other communities in the world, the City of East Cupcake, Wyoming, does not share the cultural values or epistemology of Hole-in-the-Wall Church. Our community is deeply immersed in the philosophy of postmodernism; thus, to them the approach of Christianity appears to be anachronistic: not merely an entrenchment in the philosophy of modernism (which the community believes to have failed), but a further retreat into premodern suppositions that were abandoned and rejected by modernism. Thus, we are quite literally in the position of our father Abraham, whom the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews describes:

“By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.”
– Heb 11.9-10 (NIV)

The cultural divide between Christ-followers and the culture in which we live is great, at least as great as that in which Abraham lived as a stranger in the land. Evangelical Christians today are deeply divided over how to relate to this postmodern culture which - in both its popular and elite forms - is growing increasingly post-Christian. The reactions and responses are varied:

• Some Christians are fearful and counsel cultural withdrawal with a re-emphasis upon tradition.

• Some are angry and communicate in ungracious ways through aggressive action.

• Some are attracted to the new culture and want to re-engineer the church in accordance with it.

• Some of those in the last group are abandoning essential truths of evangelical doctrine in the name of cultural engagement.

As a result of all of the above it is important that the elders at Hole-in-the-Wall Church all be on the same page as we try to accomplish our mission by the power of the Holy Spirit.

2. Some Background on How the Church Relates to Culture

In 1997, Jimmy Long of InterVarsity published part of his doctoral thesis from Gordon-Conwell Seminary entitled, Generating Hope.¹ Much of that book subsequently was updated to reflect the changing times and republished as Emerging Hope by InterVarsity Press in 2004. Long describes six models that he believes depicts how the church is responding to the changing culture in America today. He groups these responses under two categories called The Modern Cultural Response and The Emerging Culture Response.

Modern Culture Responses

Unchanging Tradition
Developmental Phase
Generational Transition

Emerging Culture Responses

Fortress Mentality
Prophetic Voice
Community Opportunity

According to Long, the three responses from the modern perspective actually ignore or dismiss the fact that any major cultural change is taking place. The three emerging culture responses acknowledge that there is major cultural change taking place but differ radically about how the church should respond to that change.

1. The Unchanging Tradition: This church ignores culture. It views the church as having nothing to do with present culture: the church is above and beyond culture. Tradition is most important and there is never a need to change. This kind of church can primarily, but not exclusively, be found in independent, rural, fundamentalist churches. They use the King James Bible and are very moralistic (if not legalistic) in their approach to church.

2. Developmental Phase: These churches will have ministries that reach the current culture of the day but, when these newly-reached people develop, they will be absorbed and assimilated into the main part of the church. These churches have alternative ministries that reach the community but these ministries are intended to graduate people into the main part of the church.

3. Generational Transition: These churches focus on the generational differences and segment people by generations. They have a Gen X church and a Gen Y church. Age diversity is rare or minimal in these churches.

4. Fortress Mentality: Many sincere Christ-followers are sensitive to the breakdowns that are evident in our society: for many years they have observed the rise of the dysfunctional family, the breakdown of the educational system, and the disintegration of (previously) common moral values. They react to the degradation of society by withdrawing to the Christian fortress, i.e., church. This worldview represents a dualistic and isolationist approach to the world, seeing the church as good and the culture as bad. They believe that Christians should have their own schools, colleges, bookstores, recreational areas, health clubs, nationwide media, and yellow pages.

5. Prophetic Voice: The prophetic church is fighting the dominant culture of our day with the whatever weapons they can find. They believe that God has commissioned them to fight the long, temporal battle so that the culture (and the church along with the culture) does not disintegrate. Their prophetic voice is primarily pointed not to the church but to the unbelieving culture. They will fight hard over displaying the Ten Commandments in certain government buildings or the display of Nativity Scenes on public property. The battle lines are clearly drawn between the soldiers of light and the soldiers of darkness. For them, not fighting this battle would be disobeying God.

6. Community Opportunity: Instead of seeing the culture as a battlefield and Christians as warriors, those in this segment of the church see the world as a mission field and Christians as missionaries. They see the neighborhood and the local school as places in need of redemption, not destruction. People in these mission churches perceive the fortress mentality and prophetic mentality of other churches as persecuting an enslaved population instead of loving them. This persecution is polarizing the culture between those who are Christians and those who are not; such polarization leaves little or no room for genuine conversation resulting in positive, redemptive influence. These churches are asking whether lasting cultural change comes through battling society or through influencing it. Instead of drawing battle lines, the mission church seeks to work with non-Christian organizations to open up lines of communication. To people of the prophetic voice or fortress voice, the mission church would be accused of “watering down” the gospel.

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¹ I have modified the original comments to suit my own purposes; the seminal ideas, however, remain Long’s.

Next: The Gospel and Identity of a Mission Church