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Missional Preaching Western Christianity is recovering from 17 centuries of empire. Christendom — a concept not unlike a physical empire —began in 313 AD, when Constantine paved the way for Christianity to be the official religion of Rome. Thus began a long season of protection and privilege for western Christianity that has largely lasted until recent years. Today in the postmodern world, western culture is distinctly post-Christian. The Christian empire has ended. Once-privileged churches are struggling to survive. This vast change is forcing western Christians to re-think how to do church. The Missional Church Generally speaking, churches have five purposes: worship, evangelism, making disciples, serving and fellowship. Before Constantine, the western Church fulfilled these five functions well. Although Christians tended to be poor and politically powerless, they had a heightened sense of the sovereign power of God. The Church lived for God. After Constantine, the western Church no longer depended on the sovereign power of God as it once did. Now, it had the power. But this, in turn, changed the Church. It weakened how it functioned. The Church began to live for itself. It is a subtle difference — whether a church lives for itself or for God. Yet the difference is at the heart of what it means to be missional. Can you think of a church that seems to live for itself? Perhaps it still exhibits the five purposes of a church, but how might have those purposes become mutated? In the church in my mind, its worship has turned into a music concert with paid performers, often applauded. The people think of evangelism as attracting new people so the church can survive, but the newcomers have to “fit”. Discipleship is learning to be good citizens, but not building God’s kingdom; service is fulfilling the role of a good citizen. In their fellowship, no one ever prays together or mentions God in a personal way. A few decades ago, this church did fine. But in our postmodern world it is now drying up fast. Western culture no longer supports "churchianity." Churches must now become missional or else they will die. But here’s the important point: Missional does not mean that a church does more mission work. It means it has come to live under a renewed sense of the missio dei, the mission of God. Just as the Church before Constantine lived under a heightened sense of the sovereign power of God, so now, the Church in every postmodern situation needs to find a renewed vision of God’s reign. When this happens, everything in a church — all its functions and activities — become defined by this overarching vision. Together, the people of God begin living out the reign of God. The Gospel is not about getting to heaven. It is about bringing God to earth. It is the kingdom of God overthrowing the kingdom of Satan. Read the Gospels, how Jesus begins his ministry. "The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news" (Mark 1:15). There's an in-breaking. An invasion. God's presence and reign are at hand. When the people of God experience the reign of God, they become broken-hearted and humble. They listen to one another and to God. They quietly trust in God to act. They are prayerful. They desire to do God's will. They love by serving others and by caring for the unimportant. Above all, they forgive and pray for the redemption of those who have hurt them. When God reigns in a church, its members confess the ownership of God over that church. They shape their church around the question, "What does God wish for this church?" and not "What do we want for our church?" They allow nothing in their church to become a substitute, an idol, in place of the living God. Their continued state of repentance helps keep their church from becoming calcified. Stated another way, here is how one Mennonite writer describes a missional church: A missional church focuses all of its activities around its participation in God’s mission in the world. That means, it trains people for discipleship and witness; it worships and practices mutual support before the watching world. ... A missional church understands that the congregation itself is sent by God to proclaim and to be a sign of the reign of God. http://www.mennonitemission.net/AboutUs/FAQs/MissionalChurch.asp And here is how Tim Keller, who pastors the Church of the Redeemer in secular Manhattan, describes the effects of the reign of God on that church: Characteristics of the Missional Church http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFFlSb-Zsc8
Missional Preaching Missional preaching is preaching under a vigorous sense of the power and reign of God. Missional preaching is: 1) Utterly prayer-dependent When Jesus began his ministry, he announced, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). The kingdom of God is the dynamic reign of God over people. The heart of Jesus' preaching is to announce the Good News of the reality of God's reign. Missional preaching is an invasion. It’s an attack on the kingdom of Satan. It announces the breaking-in of the reign of God. It is not a mere rhetorical exercise. You are confronting Satan. Never do that unless you believe in prayer. Jesus' message was accompanied by the powerful in-breaking of the kingdom of God, as he drove out demonic powers and healed the sick. Fast. Pray. Ask people to pray while you preach. Seek God’s face in earnest. Spiritual warfare is part of living under a heightened sense of the reign of God. 2) God-centered When Jesus announced, ‘the kingdom of God is near,' it is clear that his preaching had a goal in mind. He was calling people to live under the reign of God. Missional preaching shares the same goal. Today, many sermons sound like a self-help article in a magazine. The tone is always the same — "here's how God can help you." Missional preaching is not like that. Missional preaching is relevant and practical and speaks to the depths of human need, but it is not anthropocentric. In being distinctly God-centered, or theocentric, missional preaching challenges people to shape their lives around the reign of God. Such preaching relates individual scriptures to the over-arching mission of God in the Bible, so that we can begin to understand the purposes of God through time. We begin to see our place in the whole Story. Theologian Robert Jensen observes: Scripture’s story is not part of some larger narrative; it is itself the larger narrative of which all other true narratives are parts. ... Do not when reading Scripture try to figure out how what you are reading fits into some larger story; for there is no larger story. The question is not “how does the Bible fit into my life?” Rather, it is “how does my life fit into what God is doing?” Answer the second question and we find the answer to the first. Our deepest hunger is satisfied in the living God. 3) Transformative Missional preaching is also transformative. It can completely change a church, like the yeast which permeates the bread dough in Jesus' parable. The transformation has three aspects. First, people come to live under the reign of God. Secondly, they become a people for God. Thirdly, they respond to God's call to bring the reign of God into the world. It takes time for all of this to develop within a church. It is usually best to start with the natural leaders of the church, both by deepening their spirituality and helping them to catch a new vision. At the same time, small groups can help individuals from the congregation to learn personal discipleship and to become a people of God. As the transformation deepens within a church, conversations could be started about what it means to be missional. Lastly, structural changes can be made to the church, but only after the church is ready. One common mistake is to assume that missional preaching alone can change a church. In reality, it should be part of a wider effort which involves many people and means. 4) Engaged with the Community In non-missional churches, pastors are regarded as the professionals who run an ecclesiastical institution. They manage the church and fulfill the expectations of the people. When a church exists for itself, a pastor will exist for the church. "After all, that's what we pay a pastor for — to serve us!" In missional churches, things are different. Pastors will still be involved in their churches in an important way, but they will also feel a greater freedom to be engaged with their communities. Missional churches allow their pastors to be missional leaders. I remember how one day a person in my church, a school principal, invited me to have lunch with a city councilor. That hour lunch gave me a whole new perspective on my community. I also came away from that meeting with a sense of gratitude of how a member of my church cared that I be connected with the community. Pastors need to be connected everywhere in a community. It makes us aware of what’s happening. It makes us respect what people do. It helps us network people with opportunities. And it causes us to more invitational in how we sound. 5) Compassionate Jesus preached to sinners and against moralists. We tend to preach to moralists and against sinners. The scholar Joachim Jeremias (1900-1979), explains the difference in Jesus’ missional preaching: (With the Pharisees) ... even the sinner could be saved, but only when he had proved the earnestness of his repentance by making good and altering his way of life. Then, and only then, did the Pharisee see him as the object of the love of God.
For Jesus, the love of the Father was directed even towards the despised and lost children. That he called them, and not the righteous (Mark 2:17), was apparently the dissolution of all ethics; it seemed as if moral conduct meant nothing in God’s eyes. The world around Jesus based man’s relationship with God on his moral conduct. Because the gospel did not do that, it shook religion to its foundations.
In Jesus’ view, nothing separates people so completely from God as a self-assured religiosity. ... God wants to have dealings with sinners and only with sinners. New Testament Theology, pp. 118-121 The heart of faith is a broken-hearted dependence on God. It is a realization of our own spiritual bankruptcy. Once this mercy has been grasped, it turns the judgmental preacher into the compassionate. Or, as one blogger put it: It takes a person with the heart of Jesus to reach out to the neighborhood around us. It takes a heart that is in alignment with Jesus Christ to go to the poor of our communities, to go have mercy on those that don’t deserve it, to get to know the good, the bad and the ugly of our neighbors and friends lives. That is what Jesus did. He learned that his disciples were not perfect, he learned all the bad traits… but he loved them anyway. http://completinggodsmission.com/?cat=10
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