Bradley
T. Morison (Eugene: Resource Publication,
2016) Pp.123.
One
of the key ideas in the world of the church these days is that we
need to be missional. Rather
than sit and wait for people to come and find out what wonderful
people we are we need to be out there actively engaging the community
around us, Then people will
know who we are and have an incentive to find out more about us.
Which
is great. And to be honest I am unsure when this was not the case.
Certainly my lived experience of the church has been more of sitting
and waiting and assuming that our mere presence is enough to draw
folks in. I have not noticed that this approach has been all that
effective in my life time – maybe
we were always
supposed to be missional.
There
is a question of how we engage the community. Are we talking about
being evangelists and proselytizers, knocking on doors asking folk if
they have found the meaning of life? That is certainly one way of
being missional and engaging the community. I suggest it is not a way
that fits well with most United Church folk. I would also suggest
that it is not, in the end, exceptionally effective.
There
is another way to engage. This is for the church to become active in
the community, to become an active part of trying to make the
community around it a better place. This is an approach that is much
more attuned to the ethos of the United Church as I understand it.
But it raises a whole new set of questions.
Traditionally
the missional discussion involves trying to decide what new programs
the congregation will offer to the community. Or maybe what formal
partnerships the congregation will make with existing organizations.
And those are fine ideas. But all too often this approach to being
missional leads to the congregational leadership saying to the
(already busy) members of the congregation “if we want people to
know about us we all have to commit X hours and Y dollars to making
this new project work”. And
there is the biggest hurdle. How many good ideas have fallen by the
wayside because of a lack of resources? The other common problem with
these discussions is that there is a tendency for them to involve the
repeated use of phrases like “well in
they ...” or “Years ago we used to...”. Great. Good for them.
But is that something that meets the needs of community where and
where you are now?
In
this book Brad offers a third alternative. Put simply it starts with
asking folk what they are already doing. Church folk in general and
United Church folk in particular tend to be very active in the
community already. Some of that activity is going to grow out of
their faith, to grow out of their understanding of how God would have
us live. Normally we fail to
recognize that as ministry (both as those doing it and as the
church). Having offered that understanding of what it means to be
missional, Brad asks the reader to explore a series of questions
about how we encourage people to live out the ministries in which
they already participate, how the church can recognize those
ministries as part of the larger ministry of the congregation, and
how the church can support people in their ministry.
This
is a book the cries to be read and discussed in a group setting. It
is an interesting read for an individual but its power is when a
group, say a congregational governing body (and/or the
power-brokers—who may or may not be the same people), reads it
together and talks about how that congregation might put these ideas
into practice.
I
have known many people in different places who are active
participants in the missio Dei.
Sometimes this work is through the church, often it is just because
they have a passion for it. Maybe it is time we as the church started
to embrace what is already happening rather than think ministry only
counts when we can guide and measure and contain it?
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