Keeping Focus

Some of the people who pray for us wrote a very kind letter recently about our interest in the “Missional church”, and the growing social/environmental awareness in our work. They lovingly counselled us to avoid the danger of making a “Social Gospel” with the power of God taken out in our desire to love without strings attached.

They are right. It would be easy to move into a wishy-washy social gospel and make a lot of friends, but very few disciples. However, I don’t think that is what “Missional Church” is about.

The Book of Acts is quoted as a classic example of how a church (especially a “Missional” Church) should operate, which also makes me think we’re looking at the same thing. From my own study though I noticed a pattern:

Peter and John heal someone, show the power of God and then preach.
Phillip meets the Eunuch, runs alongside, and asks questions. He’s invited on board, and then preaches.
Paul in Athens gets to know the people’s culture, their stories and legends, and then preaches.

The thing is, they had “permission”: a crowd gathering, an invitation into a chariot, an understanding of the local culture, before they started preaching.

I think I want to get away from the way many churches have twisted this, to making “Relationships” with people to be able to invite them to a bible study or to church. That’s what cults do, and I want no part of it. That’s relationships with strings attached. “Become like us and we will accept you” I’ve seen it, I’ve been told to do it, and never liked it, because it does not allow the Holy Spirit or the other person a part of an equal. We’re looking for “Converts” again, numbers, not people.

On the other hand it made me think. I’m building relationships with people, but am I actively fighting for them in prayer? Not enough I fear. It’s easy to forget that these people are on a road to hell. I need to refocus on that and I’m grateful to these people for pointing that out.

I realise some of what we are thinking is a reaction to the “High pressure” days we left behind a couple of years ago. We’d all be told to “Go and mingle” with people: Go and walk up to them and “Have conversations” which of course were intended to lead to evangelism. The big heroes of the team were those who came back with story after story of people getting saved. Many of us on the team felt useless because we didn’t have the “right” sort of conversations. After a while I just listened. I remember sitting in a slum in Bombay after an evangelistic event and thinking: “This is all very well, but these people need to see a difference. What are we doing to help them here and now?” The church was still run by caste, so there was a clear division between poor and rich (or at least “middle class”) believers. Yes, we needed the gospel there- mostly for the Christians.

Jesus last words as I understand them were to go and make disciples. If we preach to get converts you end up with all sorts of problems, if you aim to build disciples the social care will come out of a better understanding of the bible, and a love for other people around you.