Renewing our Vision: The Practicing Church

Creating Openings for God
John 15:1-17

The vine and the branches. John 15.
What a wonderful image of the full and fruitful Christian life.
We heard these words a few minutes ago.
“I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit,
because apart from me you can do nothing.”

That image is a good reminder for us,
especially those of us who sometimes get hung up
trying to earn God’s love and life,
by simply trying harder.
It’s comforting, it’s reassuring, it’s hopeful,
to think on Jesus as the Vine, as we as the branches,
and to realize that whatever fruitful life we have
it’s because of our attachment to the Vine.
Any joy and peace and love and life we are blessed with
is a gift of God’s abundant grace,
not something we need to manufacture.
That is something we can rest in.
To take a deep breath, and say “yes!”
Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of life.

But right there is also a place to trip,
a potential stumbling block.
Whenever we rest in God’s grace,
it’s tempting to become a passive recipient of it.
To just stay where we are, and wait for God’s grace to come to us,
to just sit around and expect that
through no special effort of our own,
fruit will suddenly appear on the vine.

God is, indeed, the gracious and generous giver of life.
Jesus Christ is the vine.
Without a secure attachment to that vine, we wither.
Whatever fullness of life we experience,
whatever fruit our life might bear,
is thanks alone to Jesus Christ the Vine.
But look at the rest of Jesus’ teachings,
elsewhere in John, and the other three gospels.
It’s obvious Jesus doesn’t expect us
only to bask in God’s goodness and grace,
and just enjoy the ride.
It’s not like anything we choose to do or not to do,
is covered by a gracious God
who will keep pumping that life into our branches.

Let no one think that all it takes for a fruitful life,
is to desire it,
and to ask God for it.
It’s tempting to think that. And some Christians do.

No, even within this vine image
is the expectation that we have something crucial to do,
something absolutely essential for a fruitful life.
Jesus spoke in the imperative.
He said, “Abide.”
Abide in me. Stay. Cling. Abide.
Do this, and you will live.
I am the source of your life and salvation.
Without me you will wither and die.
But you must practice life on the vine.
It’s not a given. It’s not automatic.

And that’s what we are focusing on this morning.
The practices of life on the vine.
Practices that grow out of our identity,
practices we engage in because we are attached to the vine,
and want to stay attached.

A lot has been written on the concept of practices.
Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre,
had this to say:
(using vocabulary suitable to his profession)
A practice is, “any coherent and complex form
of socially established cooperative human activity...
through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized
in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve
excellenceandhumanconceptionsoftheendsandgoodinvolved,aresystematicallyextended.”

Got that? Good, so we can go on.
No, put simply, MacIntyre says
a practice is not something I just go and do,
because I decided to do it.
A practice is “socially established.”
It is an action established by the group one is part of,
not an individual invention.
Furthermore, a practice is “coherent”—
it holds together.
It is not contradictory.
It makes sense, because the “good” it is trying to achieve,
is realized in the practice itself.
And, MacIntyre says, it is “complex.”
There are multiple layers to it.
Partly because it is a “cooperative human activity,”
it takes a group to pull it off.
And don’t we know, things get complex,
when a group tries to do something together.

Others have written about practices
from a specifically Christian point of view.
The Valparaiso Project, funded by Lilly Foundation,
identified some core Christian practices,
and provide resources for churches
to nurture those practices.
I highly recommend their website: practicingourfaith.org
Some excellent resources on it.
Craig Dykstra is part of that project.
This is what he had this to say about practices:
“Practices of the Christian faith...are not...activities we do
to make something spiritual happen in our lives.
Nor are they duties we undertake to be obedient to God.
Rather, they are patterns of communal action
that create openings in our lives where the grace, mercy,
and presence of God may be made known to us.
They are places where the power of God is experienced.
In the end, these are not ultimately our practices
but forms of participation in the practice of God.”

Let me repeat what I think is the key phrase,
“patterns of communal action that create openings in our lives
where the grace, mercy, and presence of God
may be made known to us.”
That is another way of saying “Abiding in the Vine.”
When we together engage in Christian practices,
we are “creating openings for God.”
We are opening up the valve, so to speak,
so that life source may flow freely,
from the Vine into the branch.
Our gracious Lord, Jesus the Vine,
does not force-feed us that life.
He waits for our opening.
It is our practices that create the opening.

We have spent the last two Sundays in this series talking about
identity and vision—
about who we are called to be,
as a communal church,
and as a missional church.
The communal church is one that enters deeply
into each other’s lives,
so that we are formed as individuals in community.
The missional church is one that is not primarily concerned
about itself as an institution,
but one that is sent by God,
to participate in the mission of God in this world.

And I made the point in those sermons,
that this vision of a communal and missional church,
forms the practices we engage in.
And conversely,
the missional and communal practices we engage in,
form our vision, help us see more clearly who we are.
Vision and practices shape each other.

So now, I want to get even more specific.
What does a communal and missional church look like?
What does a community of Christ do
that shapes it into a communal and missional church?

I’m going to list some specifics.
Unfortunately, I have to be very sketchy.
Each one of these deserve a whole morning to reflect on.
But for now, I’m going to give them each a few sentences.
Think of them as appetizers,
as conversation starters.
Because every one of these practices needs to be fleshed out
in a particular community in a particular context.
And the ways they get fleshed out will look different.
But the thing they all share in common,
is that they “create openings for God.”
They create a space in which God will move,
in which God’s grace, presence, and power
will flow into and through us, and form us as a people.

I’m going to make it easy to follow along,
because they’re all listed on the blue insert in your bulletin.
And we’ll work with them during Sunday School hour today.
So literally, they are conversation starters.
I hope you can participate in congregational conversation today.
I’ll say more about that later.

Now to the practices of the communal and missional church.
And let me say, this is not a comprehensive list.
These are just the ones I decided to highlight,
and would fit on one side of a piece of paper.
I’m sure you can think of others.
And secondly, they are not in order of priority,
except maybe the first one.
Actually, I consider all of them essential.

First, the practice of public worship.
And this one, I can honestly say, rises to the top
as perhaps the most essential practice
of the communal and missional church.
In fact, many of the other practices rise out of our worship,
or happen within our worship.
Worship is one opportunity we all have, and we all need,
to step into God’s great narrative that defines who we are.
It is the time to come into God’s presence as a community,
and do the very thing that we were created to do—
to honor and glorify God.
Worship reminds us of our truest identity and purpose.
It is one of precious few times during our weekly routine,
that we are brought back to reality, so to speak.
When the false narrative that our culture uses to define us,
is challenged directly by God’s narrative.
When we are reminded of who we are in Christ.
Worship is an essential life sustaining practice.
Coming to worship, dear friends, is not about
fulfilling your duty as a good Christian.
Any more than breathing,
is simply fulfilling our duty as a good human being.
If corporate worship with the people of God,
is not a regular part of our life practices,
we are depriving ourselves of the breath necessary
for fruitful life.
We are being spiritually asphyxiated.

Now, I’ll have to be quicker with the rest of these.
or I won’t get through the list.

The practice of authentic witness.
If we claim to be in Christ,
if we claim to have been gripped by the gospel of Jesus,
and transformed in our inward being,
we are witnesses.
An authentic witness is one who gives witness to Jesus,
the Source of one’s life,
and whose witness is authentic, that is, true to the original.
And that witness is, of necessity, both in word and deed.
Proclaiming the gospel is an essential practice of the church,
and all who claim to be part of the church.

The practice of hospitality.
Welcoming and being willing to be welcomed by the stranger.
That is a practice that takes practice.
Especially in a culture that values privacy so highly.
That values self-determination.
Being receptive to the “other,” being truly hospitable,
will always be an imposition on the self.
Hospitality is the only way to be free from the tyranny of the self.

The practice of identifying with Jesus,
is explicitly and intentionally choosing Jesus
as the touchstone for all of life:
naming Jesus savior, redeemer, Lord, teacher, and example.
Acknowledging that there is no realm of life,
visible or secret, that is not profoundly shaped by the fact
that we have identified ourselves with Jesus.

The practice of submitting to scripture,
is allowing scripture to “read us” and form us.
It is granting authority to, bowing to,
the Living Word revealed in scripture.
And engaging actively in the communal practice
of reading, listening, and interpreting.

The practice of prayer,
forms us as a communal and missional church,
as we intercede on behalf of God’s purposes in the world,
and God’s purposes in the lives of individuals,
practicing the prayer that Jesus taught us,
“may your kingdom come, may your will be done.”

The practice of discernment,
in a world of so many confusing options and competing voices,
that clamor for our attention and loyalty,
practicing communal discernment helps us rightly recognize
and then participate in the activity of God in concrete situations;
it empowers us to say “yes” to that which is life-giving,
and “no” to that which diminishes life.

The practice of prophetic engagement with culture.
Culture is certainly not all depraved.
And I hope no one misinterprets me to be saying that.
But the fact is, we human beings are steeped in sin.
We need a Savior.
Human culture is formed by broken and sinful human beings.
Therefore, the gospel has something important to say
not only to us individual sinners,
but to the culture we create and inhabit.
The missional and communal church practices
holding culture up to the light of the gospel of Christ,
helping us to see it clearly,
and then resist those cultural values
which deny or diminish the gospel.

The practice of keeping Sabbath,
is communally honoring the Creator,
by resting and allowing others to rest from work,
and taking time enjoy God and God’s gifts

The practice of disciplined contemplation,
regular and disciplined time of attending to God,
through prayer, reading, and thoughtful meditation.
It’s a way of replicating, on a smaller more personal level,
what happens in our gathered worship.
We listen for an alternate narrative of our lives,
God’s narrative that defines who we really are.

The practice of mutual accountability
is humble submission to Christ’s body, the church,
as it seeks to form all its members into the way of Jesus.
It’s the practice of trusting God’s Spirit to be present in the church,
to the extent we are willing to trust its discernment,
and willing to submit our own ideas, and desires, and behavior,
to the wisdom of the body of Christ.

The practice of sharing resources,
is to, with generosity and compassion,
consider our resources as not our own,
but gifts from God that we offer back to God,
as vehicles for God’s blessing on others and the world.

The practice of nurturing common life,
entering more deeply into each other’s lives.
Sounds so good, and it’s so hard to do in a culture
of over-activity, over-achievement and over-commitment.
It’s spending significant time with members of our church family,
more time than what we generally do now.
And more time than we have,
if we don’t give up something that is less important.

The practice of peacebuilding and justice-seeking
in the name of Christ,
working for the repair of human relationships,
seeking the transformation made possible
through personal and collective submission to Christ.

And closely related, the practice of healing and forgiving
in the name of Christ,
participating in the saving and reconciling activity of God
to heal all sin and brokenness of this world,
personal and systemic.
It’s the practice that grows out of our trust in God as Savior.
And the recognition that we need salvation,
of body, mind, spirit, and relationships.

The practice of being with the poor.
This is a deliberate choice to go beyond being do-gooders.
We do very well with helping the poor.
We are model helpers of the poor.
But do we know how to be with them?
Are we willing to accept them as our neighbors,
with gifts to offer us?
and be willing to know them deeply enough
to call them our brothers and sisters?

The practice of learning,
becoming a “disciple community,”
recognizing Jesus as master teacher,
and seeking deeper knowledge of life in the kingdom of God.

The practice of creation care,
recognizing that God’s love extends to all creation,
and exercising our spiritual mandate
be God’s stewards, and care for all of life.

Now you’ll notice, I suppose,
that I did not identify which of these practices are communal
and which are missional.
That’s because I can’t really separate them.
A communal Christian practice
will make us more authentically missional.
And a missional practice
will make us more authentically communal.

For example,
Hospitality builds community,
while it gives opportunity for witness.
Proclaiming the good news gives witness,
while it draws people into community.

As we engage in these practices,
we will become the church God wants us to be.

I want to end by reading some words of Gordon Cosby.
Gordon and his wife Mary
founded Church of the Savior 60 years ago, in D.C.
I mentioned the church last Sunday,
when I quoted from their membership covenant.
The church is still going. Gordon Cosby is still there.
And, believe it or not,
he is still preaching, nearly every Sunday.
He turns 90 this year.
And he still preaches like a visionary.

I just came across these words a couple days ago, and they inspired me.
They were in one of his sermons, I believe, back in November.
They capture what I deeply believe
about the communal and missional church,
and the practices that shape it.
Gordon didn’t use the words communal and missional,
but it’s precisely what he’s talking about.

I quote,

“For me, in the context of my life and era, I am finding that there are two ‘givens’ - necessary components - for a true embodiment of God’s community.

“First, I will be part of a small family group of extreme ‘opposites’ - people who represent diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, economics, education, personality and temperament, in all ways - for the express purpose of letting our inner lives be known by one another. This means I will listen to the pain of unhealed wounds, really taking it in to my own inner being and bearing it with others, not shaking it off as soon as I’m able to forget it. This small group becomes for me my primary family. We represent all whom Jesus loves and is seeking to reconcile, bringing us together in deep intimacy.

“In this small family, we not only hear each other’s pain and hurt but we also seek to lessen that pain in concrete ways. Together we lift the extreme heaviness of one another’s burdens, and in this way participate in lifting the misery of the ages. We also talk with each other about the pain brought on by the disparity of wealth and privilege and poverty among us, the wounds we’ve experienced through racial hatred and our inability to forgive and ask to be forgiven. We share our resources of money and wisdom and time to ease the pressure of carrying our burdens alone. As we face ourselves and each other in all our rawness and yet don’t run away, we move beyond the ‘principle of reconciliation’ and find a way to be family.

“Second, I will be a witness of this good news of reconciliation - telling others of Jesus, who IS the good news. I find that most of us talk more freely of justice, peace, righteousness, being enemies of Empire and lovers of the poor than we do of being lovers and followers of Jesus. We easily ask each other, “How are you doing these days?” but the more important question, “How are you and Jesus doing?” goes unsaid.

“Embodying and talking about Jesus is our primary work. If we do a number of good works but never learn to introduce someone to a genuine relationship with Jesus and ways to nurture and deepen that relationship, we have failed to witness to the Source of Life itself. Witnessing to the Source is not one of the many things we are to do while passing through life. It is the main thing.”

May it be so for us.

I invite us now into prayer, with eyes opened,
and participating in the prayer with our bodies.
Stand if you are able.
This is a prayer written by Lani Wright,
and it’s a physical prayer,
for our own bodies, and the gathered body.
Follow my gestures, if you will.
And let us pray.

God of nimble fingers,
at the flowering of creation
you took a mess of mud and shaped it
into your image:
male and female.

So take this ball of heaving, resisting clay -
this messy clay of all of us together,
and fashion of it a living table
where all may gather, be fed, and tell stories.

Craft it for long wear more than beauty.
Mold it for health more than power.

Set this table with space enough for elbow room
space for talent
space for guests.

Shape our feet of clay
into dance;
Shape our knees
into bending;
Shape our hands
into clasping;
Shape our water-logged lungs
into chorus;
Shape our chins
into upthrust resolve;
Shape our lips
into smile.

Take this ball of clay,
and fashion of it a living table
to which the dinner bell calls, we eat, and tell how things are.

Craft it for sturdiness more than smoothness.

Mold it for hosting more than for herding.

Set this table with just enough space for brushing skins
space for accepting gifts
space for Jesus the Guest.
AMEN

—Phil Kniss, February 18, 2007

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One Body, under God, Which Is Odd

Meditation for Membership Sunday
Romans 12:1-13

It’s really pretty gutsy, what Paul is telling the Roman Christians
to do, in that passage we just heard.
Pretty gutsy.

After a fairly long treatment of some important theological themes,
and after ending ch. 11 with a lofty doxology—
“For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen.”—
He launches into chapter 12 with a sort of bottom-line manifesto.
“I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters...”
In other words, “If you forget everything else I said,
I beg you, remember this...”
“Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice...”
“Do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your minds,
so that you may discern what is the will of God.”

Paul had written chapter upon chapter of theological arguments,
talking of sin and covenant,
of law and grace,
of Adam and Christ,
of Jew and Gentile,
of election and salvation and justification and resurrection.
But when we turn the page to chapter 12,
Paul moves from theology to ethics.
From what we believe about God and us,
to then, how in the world we live.
Literally, how...in the world...we live.

And the way to live, Paul concludes, is at odds with the world.
That’s why I say Paul is so gutsy, when he says this
to none other than Roman Christians.
Paul is begging the Christians in Rome—
who lived in the shadow of Caesar’s throne,
who lived in the capital of the Empire,
the center of all the wealth and power in the known world,
the city that thrives on people bowing down and saying
“Yes, sir. No, sir.”—
to lay down their bodies in sacrifice to another power.
Paul tells the Christians there to be non-conformists.
Radicals. Resisters. Dissidents.
“Do not be conformed to the world.
Do not bow down to those earthly powers.
Do not conform, but be transformed.”
That’s dangerous advice,
when you live in the very center
of the world’s power and influence.

But Paul seems rock-solid certain that this is how Christians
are to position themselves in the world.
As non-conformists.
Now someone could argue,
well, that was Rome in the first century.
They were downright evil, bloodthirsty oppressors.
Of course Paul said do not conform.
But we live in kinder, gentler, more enlightened times.
But that someone would then have to explain a lot of things
about today’s world that we notice just looking around.
That someone would have to have blinders on
to think that contemporary culture is any more supportive
of authentic Christian faith modeled after the life of Jesus.

The world and its powers—then and now—actively try to form people,
to shape them into harmless, trouble-free citizens,
that go along with whatever they’re told,
that keep all the systems humming smoothly,
these systems that keep all the powers in place.
This is true whether the powers are political,
like 1st-century Rome, or 21st-century Washington,
or whether they are the powers of the purse or of culture.
The temples of our Empire today
are not only located on Pennsylvania Avenue.
They are on Wall Street, and on Fifth Avenue,
and on Hollywood Boulevard.
And these centers of power are looking for our loyalty,
and our money, and even our bodies.

Meanwhile, Paul pleads and begs that we resist those powers,
and offer our bodies to God, as a sacrifice of worship.
Knowing, however,
how powerfully persuasive the Empire can be,
Paul does not expect them to resist it alone.
Non-conformity should never be tackled all by yourself.

The rest of Romans 12 is Paul’s advice on how to do this,
in the context of the body of Christ, the community of saints.
“For as in one body we have many members,
and not all the members have the same function,
so we, who are many, are one body in Christ,
and individually we are members one of another.”
I spoke of this a couple weeks ago
when I talked of the communal church.
Members one of another.
That is a profound reality, if we stop to think about it.
It’s not the same thing as saying
we have something in common—
we all belong to the same organization.
That kind of connection is happenstance, and indirect.
No, Paul claims that, individually—note that word in v. 5—
individually we are members one of another.
We are part of each other,
like a hand is part of wrist is part of an arm.
The same blood courses through our veins.
And it is only because of this organic, living connection
with one another,
that we can begin to think we can successfully resist the powers.
Only as a body of Christ,
will we be able to live faithfully in the center of the Empire.

־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־
This may not be exactly what these 12 persons listed in the bulletin
were thinking when they signed on to become members
of Park View Mennonite Church today.
They may not be taking this action this morning
consciously thinking,
alright, I belong to this body,
so now I can successfully resist the Empire.

And the other 400 of us who are already members,
probably don’t think in those terms, either.
But I think it’s worth thinking about.
I think we all have a tendency to think of our membership
merely as belonging to this institution commonly known as
Park View Mennonite Church.
And formally, that’s what this membership really is.
It’s a status in the organization.
It means you are counted when we send in our reports.
It means you’re eligible to serve on Church Council or Elders.
Just about anything else in this church
you can do without being a member.

But I’d really like it if we could get past that institutional piece,
and get to the heart of what it means to belong to this body.
I would rather have us think of membership more like an opportunity
to go deeper in the life of this communal and missional church.
I’d rather have us think of it as a conscious choice
to allow something other than the empire to form us,
something other than the powers of this world to shape our ethics.

Some of you have heard of Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C.
For over 50 years they have defined membership
in a way that might be too challenging for many of us.
They require all persons to take six different courses
in their School of Christian Living
before becoming a member.
Then they need to renew their membership each year.
And they need to belong to a mission group.
But one of the things I find interesting, is that from early on,
that church has seen itself explicitly as a way to deal with
our addiction to dominant culture.

Let me quote from part of their membership affirmation:
“Having been called out of the world’s systems into God’s system:
we recognize the injustice of the world’s systems;
we recognize our addiction to these systems
we recognize our helplessness to break our addiction
and to heal ourselves
we cry out for a Saviour and a community of support
we commit ourselves to becoming recovering cultural addicts.”

Again, you twelve persons, and the other 400 of us,
probably aren’t thinking of our membership as
a cultural addiction support group,
but we are in this relationship for important reasons,
not because we happen to like the music at Park View
better than the church in another part of town.
Although the music here certainly is good and nourishing.
We are in this organic relationship with each other,
in order to be better Christians in the world.

And if we look at the culture around us,
we have to admit, this makes us a little odd.
For us to be one body, under the authority of one God,
and sacrificing our individual bodies to God,
that’s rather odd in today’s cultural context.
It’s an odd of way of thinking,
that I am a member of you,
and you are a member of me.
And it’s especially odd to choose to be a member of a body
where the parts are so different from each other.
It’s certainly how the church was in Rome.
That’s why Paul had so much to say about how to live together
as Jew and Gentile,
as meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters,
as slave and free.
I challenge us members of this body—new and old—
next time we start getting annoyed
with other members of this body,
to read what Paul writes a couple chapters later, ch. 14 and 15.
All these different parts need each other. Badly.
It’s the only way I know to survive as a Christian in the world.

So I thank God for this one, odd, body.
I thank God that 12 more members are becoming part of it today.

—Phil Kniss, February 11, 2007

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Renewing our Vision: The Missional Church

On Being a Sent People
Luke 10:1-12

This is the second in a series of three sermons
that I have unrealistically high hopes for.
I heard some expert claim one time that the average shelf life
for a 20-minute sermon is about an hour.
After that, most of what was said is completely forgotten.
So, if we preachers hope to make a lasting impact,
well, we’ve probably set our hopes too high.

I do, nevertheless, have high hopes for these three sermons—
on the communal church, missional church, and practicing church.
But my hope does not rest on what happens in these twenty minutes.
My hope rests on you, the church,
and the Spirit of Jesus that gives you life.
My hope rests on the fact that you’ll talk about what you hear—
that you’ll take what I say merely as a starting point,
and will speak honestly and openly with one another,
not only about the concepts you hear,
but about what it could mean for you, for us, here and now.
I was gratified that my sermon last Sunday seemed to do that.
I laid out what I believe was a biblical vision of a communal church,
and people got to talking.
I know that, because I was in a Sunday School class
that got pretty animated talking about that vision.
I heard second-hand about some other animated discussions.
And during the week,
several folks talked to me more about it.
One even made an appointment to talk.
There’s nothing that makes this preacher happier.

Sure, I enjoy smiles and compliments at the door,
But what really thrills my soul,
is when I can get people talking together about important things.
And I can’t think of anything more important,
than getting clear about who we are as a church,
and as disciples of Jesus.
That’s what this series is about—
renewing our vision is about getting clear,
removing some fog,
relocating our focal point,
in order to live with more integrity.
We need to see rightly to live rightly,
and living rightly helps us see ourselves more clearly.
Vision shapes practices, practices shape vision.
It’s an ever-growing circle that leads to
a more full, joyful, and abundant life,
the kind of life for which God created us.

־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־־
In many ways it’s difficult to divide last Sunday from this one.
The communal and missional aspects of the church
cannot be separated.
They are one.
The church is a “mission community.”
Being communal, and being missional,
both spring from the same fountain—
our identity as citizens of the kingdom of God.
The Gospel of Jesus—that is, the proclamation of the reign of God—
naturally and spontaneously gave birth
to a missional and communal church.
In this sermon, you’ll often hear me refer to the reign of God
(or kingdom of God), same thing.
By “reign of God” I mean, wherever God’s rule is recognized
and being lived out, however imperfectly...
wherever God’s mission of the reconciliation of all creation,
is being carried out, even in a beginning, embryonic form.
There are kingdom seeds scattered everywhere,
even in the middle of Iraq and Palestine.
There are kingdom seedlings, even mature fruit-bearing plants
all over the world,
and among us here in the church.
The church is not the same thing as the reign of God
but we are agents of that reign,
and it is present among us.

But let’s talk now about mission in the context of the church.
Let’s talk about what a missional church is.
It’s been over six years that Mennonites, as a denomination,
have been actively using this jargon “missional church.”
And some of us still have a gag reflex associated with it.
And I completely understand. I’ve been there.

I first heard the phrase when the denominational merger was underway
between MC and GC Mennonites.
That was a stressful time for us Mennos.
A lot of turf battles (non-violent, of course),
concerns about finances, and structures.
Boundary questions about who’s in and who’s out.
In the middle of all this stress, Mennonite denominational execs
rolled out this new lingo, “missional church,”
and said this would be the answer for our new denomination.
It would keep us vibrant and growing,
instead of getting trapped in an institutional swamp.
I doubted it.
It sounded like a made-up word, which church leaders love to do,
turning nouns into adjectives or verbs.
And to me, it sounded just a little gimmicky.
Like if we could focus on missions for a while,
something that everyone’s in favor of, like mom and apple pie,
it would take our minds off our other troubles.
So I was skeptical. As were some of you, no doubt.

But I have completely changed my mind.
I started to already 4 or 5 years ago.
But these past couple years I’ve done a lot of reading on the topic,
I’ve gone to a missional institute out in Idaho.
I served on a missional action team for our conference.
I took a class on it in my doctoral studies.
I have a much deeper appreciation for it.

Let me dispel a few myths right off the bat.
(1.) It is in the dictionary.
The Oxford English Dictionary,
says it first appeared in English literature in 1907.
(2.) It’s not a Mennonite word.
Mennonites just joined an active conversation
that had already been going on for years,
across many denominational lines.
(3.) It’s not primarily about doing missions and evangelism.
It’s about a way of being church.
It’s about a way of seeing ourselves more clearly.

And it does have the potential to renew us, at the core.
Darrell Guder, Academic Dean at Princeton Theological Seminary,
and a major voice in missional church theology,
wrote a book on the topic called,
The Continuing Conversion of the Church.
That’s what missional church is about.
Not reformation, but conversion of the church.
It’s not that certain “forms” of church need to be re-formed.
No, the church needs to see itself in a new light, the light of God,
and in a spirit of repentance,
to change its way of thinking,
and turn, and walk in that new light.

For the last few centuries, at least in the Christianized West—
sometimes called “Christendom”—
the church has been a dominant force in culture.
It’s had a place of privilege,
functioning as sort of a chaplain to society.
It’s reinforced and blessed the values of a largely Christian culture.
It’s been part of the establishment.
In some small ways, in some places, it still is.
But that status is rapidly disappearing.
For all practical purposes, it’s gone forever.

Some people lament that.
I don’t.
It wasn’t all bad, by any means.
The church made some tremendous contributions
to the larger culture, especially in the arts and music.
Thank God for the gifts of the church throughout history.
We still benefit from them.
But all those centuries of being the chaplain for Christendom,
profoundly shaped what people expect of church.
People expect it to be a provider of goods and services—
both religious and social.
They expect it to be located in a building,
in a prominent place in town,
well-staffed by professional clergy.
They expect it to be a place for people to come to,
to get their self-defined religious needs met.
They expect it to support them in all their individual life challenges,
but support on their own terms, of course.
They expect it to be there whenever they need it to be,
in the way they need it to be.

Missional church thinking turns that on its head.
A missional church begins with a revolutionary thought—
it’s not about us.
A missional church begins with the mission of God.
It asks what God is up to around here,
and tries to find a way to get with God’s program.
Don’t be too surprised when I say this,
but God did not send Jesus into the world
to establish the church,
but rather, to announce the reign of God.
God’s mission is to establish a reign of justice, of peace,
a kingdom of salvation,
where all creation—not just the church, but all creation—
is reconciled to himself.
God’s mission is the “healing of the nations,”
to use the words found in Revelation.
The church is simply God’s agent, for God’s mission.
The church has no mission on its own.
It’s really misleading to talk about “the mission of the church.”
We need to change our language,
and talk more about the mission of God.
The church exists only to be an agent of God’s mission.
Anything less than that,
is not what Jesus had in mind for his disciples.
The great commission Jesus gave his disciples
was to make more disciples,
to raise citizens of the kingdom of God.

I love the church. I’m committed to it, all the way.
But building up the church, per se, is secondary.
The first thing is to embody the reign of God in our life together.
To become a “mission community.”
To live in such a way that God’s reign of justice, peace,
healing, and salvation is made known to the world,
in real flesh, incarnated.
I mentioned Leslie Newbigin last Sunday;
he said the church is a sign, foretaste, and instrument
of the reign of God.
It is not equal to the reign of God, but points to it.
It acts as an agent of God’s reign.

But it’s so easy for the church to become church-centered in its thinking.
And then we put all our energy and resources
on our survival and growth as an institution.
We measure success by dollars and programs and buildings
and membership rolls.
We measure success by how many missionaries we sent out,
or how much money we raised for mission programs,
or how many outreach projects we implemented.
Wrong way to measure.
You know, being generous with mission dollars and people,
doesn’t necessarily make us a missional church.
Being one of the largest supporters of our mission boards,
doesn’t make us missional.
Sending tens of thousands of dollars to disaster relief
doesn’t make us missional.
Even planting a new church may not make us missional,
if our motivation is simply to reproduce our church.

A church becomes missional,
when it stops thinking about itself primarily as an entity
that sends out people and dollars to do mission,
and starts seeing itself as a sent people, a sent community.
I’m not just playing with words here.
When you think about it, there is a profound difference,
between a church that sends,
and a sent church.

If a church only sends, it’s kind of hard to ever get beyond itself.
It still sees itself as a benevolent institution.
Sending, doing good works, but still focusing, ultimately,
on itself and its own perceived mission.
But a sent church understands clearly
that it only exists as it responds to God’s bidding.
A sent church is a humble servant of God, and of the reign of God.
God’s mission of reconciliation sets the agenda,
rather than our agenda to survive and grow as an institution.
A sent church lets go of itself.
Listens. Looks. Responds to evidence that the reign of God
is trying to be born somewhere.

Case in point. There’s a new emerging Mennonite church
in our community, called “the Table.”
They have a wonderful, missional vision.
Several families from Park View are connecting there,
trying to be supportive of that new work.
We’re having preliminary conversations about how
we might become partners in that work.
We’ll have to see what develops.
A sent church does not feel threatened
when some of our own people (as if we own people)
engage in missional work that takes them
outside our structures.
A sent church rejoices,
and asks how we can participate in what God is doing.

To be a sent church is to take risks for the reign of God.
Wherever we find ourselves.
It is to make the church vulnerable.
To be a sent church is to cease making
self-preservation a driving force.
A sent church is a missional church.
But to be perfectly honest, it’s hard—really hard—
to be a church with a building, a budget, a staff, and programs,
and be radically missional.
Because we do, in fact, have an institution that needs our support,
or it will die,
and it won’t do anyone any good.

But still, it’s a shame how many churches are driven by
an overwhelming anxiety about their own survival.
A declining membership in mainline churches in the West
has sent everyone scurrying to find a new technique,
a new program to apply like a tourniquet,
so the bleeding will stop.
Rather than asking the hard questions about core identity,
who the church is called to be, anyway,
churches are investing millions to polish up their image,
to try the latest gimmick to attract the “unchurched.”
Even that word “unchurched” makes me squirm.
As if our main mission is to “church” our neighbors
rather than introduce them to the Sovereign God,
and invite them to become, along with us,
citizens of the reign of God.
All of us, to a degree, are unchurched, or at least under-churched.
We have not lived into the fullness of what God desires
of the church of Jesus Christ.
So we “church members” are part of the mission field.
The missional church recognizes the need for
the continuing conversion of the church and its people.

My challenge for us this morning
is to imagine together what it might mean for Park View Mennonite
to be a sent people.
That’s what the word mission means, to begin with.
It’s derived from the Latin missio, from the verb mittere,
to be sent out, or dismissed.
God is telling the church, “Go on! Get out there!”
What would it mean for Park View, if we heard God saying to us,
“Go on! Get out there! I’m sending you on a mission.”

I’ll bet it would look something like what happened in Luke 10,
our strange and wonderful Gospel story this morning.

Jesus sent out—dismissed—70 of his disciples, to go out in pairs
to the places he himself was preparing to go,
and said, “Go out there and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
This story is almost shocking,
because it looks so different from the way the church has usually
done mission.
But this isn’t a story about “doing mission.”
But this is a story about missional disciples.
This is about a sent people.
A people who took profound risks for the kingdom of God.

They were sent out like lambs to the wolves.
Without so much as a purse, a bag, or a pair of sandals.
And they were told to go a house that would receive them,
and stay there, eating their food, sleeping in their beds.

When the institutional church does the sending,
it looks a little different.
We send out missionaries with everything they could possibly need.
We send them out with a prepackaged Gospel to deliver.
We send them out to convince the people how much they need
what we have to give them.
We send them out carrying blueprints for the church to be built.
How strangely opposite this story is.
In this story, the sent people are the ones
who are put in a position to receive.
It makes the sent ones completely, and utterly, dependent
on the hospitality of those they were sent to.
Amazing!
There is a kingdom of God that needs to be proclaimed (v. 9)
There are people who need to be healed.
The fields are ready for harvest.
And we have a job to do in the field.

But we don’t go into those fields with an air of superiority.
We go there as humble servants of the master who sent us.
We go there as willing to receive as to give.
And we go there, not selling an institution,
but proclaiming the good news,
“The kingdom of God is near you.”
That text is full of other gems for a missional church,
but I won’t unpack them all right now.

For now, let it suffice to say God has sent us, this church,
on a mission, has said, “Go on! Get out there!”
There is a world out there that needs to be reconciled.
It won’t be easy for us to renew our vision as a sent people.
It’s never easy taking risks for the reign of God.
But there is no other way to find abundant life as a people,
to find our deepest joy,
than to rediscover our true identity and live into it.
There is no greater joy than to live the life
for which we were created.
Why would we want to do anything less?

Let’s keep imagining what that might look like for us.
In two weeks we’ll talk together
about missional and communal practices.
We’ll imagine what a communal and missional
Park View Mennonite Church looks like.
But now, let’s rejoice in what God is up to in the world,
God’s mission, in which we have the privilege to participate.

—Phil Kniss, February 4, 2007

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