I recently discussed the mission of the church with a group of Reformed pastors-- I will leave the location and the group out of the post, but it was not here in Brazil. The room was divided on the mission issue and a few were suspicious of my position. Those pastors who were suspicious had been influenced by the recent declarations on what the mission of the church is NOT--restricting the church's mission to proclamation and disciple making. Those who voiced the restrictive view on the mission of the church were suspicious of anyone who says the mission includes serving the hurting.

Based on our conversations, at least some of the restrictivists assumed those who have a more expansive view of the church's mission are either naïve or compromisers-- they don't read the Bible well, and they are not orthodox enough. They have divided over the issue-- leading to division over the mission.

I get that Reformed folks (like Baptists) tend to easily divide over things. Yet, in this case, I believe this is what happens when we don't clearly articulate what all sides are saying on an issue. We draw artificial doctrinal lines, and we don't pay careful attention to what people affirm and deny.

When a group of us put out a Missional Manifesto, we were pleased to see it start an important discussion and help clarify what we meant by certain terms. We know that Lutheran Seminarians are now using the document, one Pentecostal Denomination is now using it as their missional definition as they frame their future plans, and many churches and pastors have said, "this is what we mean when we are talking about being missional." That's what we wanted when we were working on it.

We also wanted people to think how they would apply the term to their own contexts. In other words, you may not mean exactly what we mean, but you should clearly articulate what you mean when you talk about being "missional."

Yesterday, I began an interview with Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim about their new book The Permanent Revolution. You can read part 1 here.

Most of your who read my blog probably know who Alan is, but here is quick refresher:

Hirsch is co-founder and adjunct faculty for the M.A. in Missional Church Movements at Wheaton College (Illinois). He is also adjunct professor at Fuller Seminary, George Fox Seminary, among others, and he lectures frequently throughout Australia, Europe, and the United States. For more about Alan, visit his website here.

You may now know Tim as well, but here is a short bio:

Tim is the founder and director of Generate, a coaching and consultant agency for apostolic ventures. He specializes in bringing strategic vision and clarity to entrepreneurial ventures and the process of innovation. For more about Tim, visit his website here.

As they did yesterday, Alan and Tim will be interacting on the blog and answering questions below.

The conversation continues... 

Alan Hirsch has been a friend for many years (we worked together on the Missional Manifesto, among other things). His work is always provocative and passionate, and The Permanent Revolution is no exception. You can download a sample here.

Alan is writing on the "apostolic" focus and function. I've written on apostles before, here and here, but Alan's take is different. Over the next two days, I will share an interview with Alan and Tim Catchim, his coauthor of the book. They will be by to interact in the comments, so if you have any questions or comments, please share them below.

1. You say in your book that you wrote The Permanent Revolution to highlight the apostolic assignments named in Ephesians 4 (APEST). Describe your growing conviction about this specific section of Scripture.

One of the challenges in writing this text was finding substantial materials on the Ephesians 4 text. In large part, there simply isn't any out there. This alone was a key indicator that something significant is missing from our ecclesiology. If we were to ask Paul to lay down his most thorough understanding of the church, he would undoubtedly slap the book of Ephesians down in front of us.

The letter is described by Barth as the constitution of the church. It contains our richest formulations of ecclesiology in the New Testament. Our convictions about the significance of Ephesians is also weighted by its historical setting in the Jesus movement. It was written to a burgeoning church planting movement that swept across the Asia Minor province. This letter is not only most substantial treatise on ecclesiology, it is also his most movemental letter we have record of.

Regardless of where you locate the date of Ephesians within the corpus of Paul's letters, the fact that Paul mentions the apostolic vocation as an essential component to the churches maturity and capacity to grow into the fullness of Christ should alert us to it's axiomatic function in the ongoing life of the church. The progression of unity in the one God (4:1-6) provides the platform for APEST (4:7-11) which in turn provides the basis for the church to be what Jesus actually intended us to be--mature and functioning as the extension of his ministry on the earth (4:12-16).

We can no longer afford to rip Ephesians 4:7-11 out if its context and relegate its relevance to a bygone epoch of church history. It's just plain dishonest exegesis, manipulative politicizing of the text, and dangerous undermining of our capacity to mature fully as God's people.

One of the great joys I have in my position is the opportunity to speak and interact with a number of denominations. One denomination I've had the chance to converse with recently is the Church of Lutheran Brethren of America (CLBA).

Some of you in the Midwest might be familiar with the CLBA, but for the rest, here is a bit more about them. From Wikipedia:

The CLBA emphasizes the foundational place of the Bible. In addition to the denominational statement of faith, the church adheres to the following historic confessions: the Apostles' Creed, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, the Augsburg Confession, and Luther's Small Catechism. Its strong emphasis on missions and evangelism, its stand for non-liturgical worship and a church composed only of confessing Christians differentiates it from most Lutherans in America. The CLBA considers itself to be "Lutheran in theological tradition and evangelical in practice."

We recently hosted another meeting of the Church Planting Leadership Fellowship here in Nashville.

One of the speakers for the event was Neil Cole. I've written about Neil on the blog in the past as well as in the book 11 Innovations in the Local Church (with Elmer Towns and Warren Bird).

Neil's strategy for church planting is one that runs countercultural to the typical American model-- large start, rented facilities, band, etc. Instead of duplicating Sunday morning worship experiences, Neil advocates the creation of simple, organic house churches that can multiply rapidly. His focus is not on the weekly worship experience as much as it is on daily disciple development.

For Neil, that simplicity boils down to having the right DNA in a "church":

D--Divine Truth
N--Nurturing Relationships
A--Apostolic Mission

This method of church multiplication and church planting has been very successful overseas, but it not as well known (or impactful, I think) here.  I think one of the more likely places that organic churches might take root is in the urban centers of the U.S.

So, I thought it interesting to find former megachurch pastor Francis Chan now engaged in planting such churches.

Many of you know of Francis through his books Crazy Love, Forgotten God, and Erasing Hell or through his BASIC DVD series.

He served as pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, Calif., until just last year. After taking some time off in 2010 and 2011, Francis has landed in San Francisco and is working to start a church planting movement in the inner city through organic communities.

Chan may use different terminology than Neil Cole, but the premise is the same - to bring life-change through small, organic communities that live out the gospel daily with a focus on discipleship rather than large worship gatherings.

You might find interesting a panel I moderated with Chan, Cole, and Dave Gibbons that touches on these issues:

In his book Organic Churches, Cole writes:

Instead of bringing people to church so that we can bring them to Christ, let's bring Christ to people where they live. We may find that a new church will grow out of such an enterprise, a church that is more centered in the life and the workplace, where the gospel is supposed to make a difference...What would it be like if churches emerged organically, like small spiritual families born out of the soil of lostness, because the seed of God's kingdom was planted there? These churches could reproduce just as all living and organic things do...We must take Christ into people's lives, and it must be in the context of relationships.

Relationships matter to God. They matter to people as well. And in a multihousing context where relationships can be easily formed and quickly grown, organic churches sown with gospel seeds and watered through gospel-centered discipleship can produce gospel fruit even in the hardened soil of urban population centers.

Since we've been talking a great deal about mission over the past week, I thought it would be helpful to get some different views -- I plan to present several over the next few weeks. Let me say that differing on the mission must not become a point of division between gospel-preaching pastors and other leaders. We can, and must, recognize that good and godly people can hold different views of what the mission is -- particularly how it relates to deeds.

Yes, there are some who depart orthodoxy and lose the disciple-making component and the gospel is not preached. But believers who love the Lord and his word can and do have differences about whether the mission includes deeds of mercy, societal engagement, etc. This is a conversation about and with fellow believers, but one we believe is helpful so that we do not end up believing there is only one "received" view. Good friends can, and do, differ and go on as friends.

In the Missional Manifesto (more details here), we tackled this issue with the following statement (a bit of a consensus statement Tim Keller, Alan Hirsch, Dan Kimball, Eric Mason, J.D. Greear, Craig Ott, Linda Bergquist, Philip Nation, and Brad Andrews):

We believe the mission and responsibility of the church includes both the proclamation of the Gospel and its demonstration. From Jesus, we learn the truth is to be proclaimed with authority and lived with grace. The church must constantly evangelize, respond lovingly to human needs, as well as "seek the welfare of the city" (Jeremiah 29:7). By living out the implications of the gospel, the missional church offers a verbal defense and a living example of its power.

Some have said that we do this by joining Jesus in his mission. Russell Moore, the Dean at Southern Seminary, explains:

Some evangelicals talk as though personal evangelism and public justice are contradictory concerns, or, at least, that one is part of the mission of the church and the other isn't. I think otherwise, and I think the issue is one of the most important facing the church these days.

First of all, the mission of the church is the mission of Jesus...

The content of this mission is not just personal regeneration but disciple-making (Matt. 28:19). It is not just teaching, but teaching "them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matt. 28:20)...

This mission is summed up in the gospel as a message of reconciliation that is both vertical and horizontal, establishing peace with both God and neighbor. The Scripture tells us to love neighbor "as yourself" (Lk. 10:27-28).

This is not simply a "spiritual" ministry, as the example Jesus gives us is of a holistic caring for physical and economic needs of a wounded person, not to mention the transcending of steep ethnic hostilities. As theologian Carl F.H. Henry reminded evangelicals a generation ago, one does not love oneself simply in "spiritual ways" but holistically...

[W]e do not react to the persistent "social gospels" (of both Left and Right) by pretending that Jesus does not call his churches to act on behalf of the poor, the sojourner, the fatherless, the vulnerable, the hungry, the sex-trafficked, the unborn.

To be clear, there are things that only Jesus Christ has done and can do in His mission. Only He can serve as the Mediator between God and humanity(1 Tim. 2:5). Only He can make atonement for our sins through His death on the cross (Heb. 9:24-25). Only He can give life to all who come to him (Jn. 10:28). Jesus Christ alone will bring into existence a Kingdom without end in which all are redeemed from their sin, reconciled to their God, and restored in their humanity (1 Cor. 15:20-28).

And while the Scripture is clear that there is only one Reconciler, it is also clear that we are given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18). The Father sent the Son to seek and save and serve (Lk. 19:10; Mt. 20:28), and yet Jesus sends us just as He was sent (Jn. 20:21). 

We need to understand the differences between the work of Jesus and the work of the church.  They are not the same thing, but they are connected by a divine command with the latter pointing to the former. The lesser shining light on the greater.

Here are more thoughts from Darrell Guder from our recent conversation. In this case, it deals with the missional vocation of the church:

In terms of missional ecclesiology, I continue to find it very important to stress that the gathering of the church is not the ultimate purpose of mission, but rather it is the primary means by which God is carrying out his healing mission in the world. The gathered life of the Christian community is, then, not an end in itself but the way in which God's people are equipped for their vocation as witnesses in the world. I would insist that we consider every action and activity of the gathered church in terms of its missional vocation: how does what we are doing together "equip the saints for the work of ministry, the building up of the body of Christ," which happens as the church is scattered in the world like salt, leaven, and light? I am especially concerned that the gathered, public, worship of the community be both practiced and experienced as missional formation for apostolic living in the world. I think that our classic emphasis upon "Word and sacrament" must be re-thought in terms of missional formation.

Closely linked to that would be the concern for the interpretation of Scripture as missional formation. It is not enough to define Scripture as the norm which guides our understanding and practice of our Christian vocation. We need to understand that it is the particular work of God's Spirit to use the Biblical witness as the primary agent for the ongoing missional formation of the gathered church. This necessitates reading, studying, and interpreting Scripture on the basis of that missional center. That in turn means that we must develop a missional hermeneutic that will equip us to be confronted by Scripture as God's missional formation for our witness. This seems to me to be a much higher view of the authority of Scripture: It is the Spirit-given authority to form us for missional living. Scripture's authority is not an abstract proposition but the actual power God's Spirit gives this Word to effect our missional obedience.

What do you think?

BTW, I planned to link to Guder's Wikipedia page but he does not have one-- seems like one of you Wiki angels could help him out.

Missional. Depending on your perspective, it brings warmth to your soul or a shiver down your spine.  Yet, just about everyone is using the term now-- often without awareness of the historical debate around the terms and focus.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series.

This is my final post from the M in Central Asia. We've already seen the uniqueness of ministering in the secularized, nominally Muslim country where he is located. He also told us about how M's are required to minister across Central Asia: through business. Today, we'll look about how churches can be involved in partnerships across the area in general and his country in particular.

Tell me more, particularly how churches can be involved.