God Call

Missional Living seems to be the new buzz word for publishers and authors. Our staff is currently reading a book together called Everyday Church by Chester & Timmis where this idea of missional living has been fleshed out in their church in the UK. My pastor, Brad Lewter, and I are about to teach a class out of a study called Missional Essentials by Ford & Brisco. The basic idea of missional living is that we live our everyday lives together in community with other believers and unbelievers, and the gospel is spread through organic relationships.

The reason that I am excited about the possibility of this idea making its way into the life of our church and churches in America is because it is a Biblical approach to reaching people with the gospel. It also acknowledges the fact that our society and culture are successfully pushing the church to the margins, and that in this post-Christian era, we must change tactics to reach people. Usually our churches host big events at their church and ask their congregation to invite their friends. When someone actually brings an unbeliever to church, we call that evangelism or missions. We have even gone as far as letting people think that they are doing evangelism if they paint faces at a church-sponsored community event. In the Bible Belt, where our church is located, these events can still be somewhat successful where the church has not been completely pushed to the fringes. Although, our experience is that the fruit from these events continues to decrease each year. We just cannot afford to assume that when we host a large evangelistic event people are going to show up, so every year we spend more and more money on advertising.

Back in November, our church hosted a huge event where we gave out 1,000 turkey dinners and shared the gospel with around 2,000 people. It cost us about $30,000 to do this event, and we utilized more than 200 volunteers. Our pastor shared the gospel very clearly, and many people responded. We even baptized – that day – over 40 people. Every person that responded was invited to come back to church that next Sunday through an invite card and a phone call on the Saturday before in order to receive a free Bible, eat a great breakfast, and attend a new believer’s Bible study. We had three people show up on Sunday and one of those has stuck it out the last couple of months. The bottom line is that we spent $30,000 and countless man hours to reach one person and see them become a disciple (remember our mandate is to “make disciples,” not converts). Is that one person worth it? Of course, but could we be better stewards and reach more people with less time and money? I think, yes. Some would argue that we need to do events like this to simply be a light in our community. If that is all that we are doing, then we would be no different than any charitable organization – Christian or not (we have about the same results). And, yes, of course, Jesus fed the poor. If we were effectively reaching people with the gospel and making disciples throughout our church, then an occasional event to give back to the community would be appropriate. But when we rely upon these events to do our evangelism for us, we are going to continue to lose ground.

Missional Living invites every person to live intentionally to reach their friends, neighbors, and family for Christ with the help of a close-knit community of believers. The gospel does not move from big event to big event, but from house to house. When someone accepts Christ through a personal relationship, they are much more likely to become a disciple, church-attender, worshipper, giver, etc. My resolution for 2014 is to begin living this way with my family, and to begin to mobilize as many in our church to live intentionally through education and example. It is funny when I think about it… this is the way that we lived in Tanzania to reach the Pare Tribe.