A Critique of the Missional Mindset

A Critique of the Missional Mindset:

                Sometimes in life we don’t easily recognize that we are the source of our own problems.  Oftentimes, we don’t readily recognize that if we would simply learn what it means to “be,” much of our issues would quickly dissolve.  For example, I once had a mean spirited friend who was baffled over the fact that he couldn’t easily make friends and was heart-broken whenever the people who once were close to him began to distance themselves.  His friends no longer invited him to parties.  They stopped asking his input on things.  They grew tired of his judgmental attitude.  He decided to come and talk with me one day about it as he wanted to get my perspective on things.  However, after only a few seconds into the conversation, it was evident enough that his thought process was majorly preoccupied with notions of what was wrong with everyone else.  He seemed to be clueless to the fact that he was the source of the problem.  It wasn’t as though all of his friends all of the sudden decided to betray him, even though he wanted to see it that way.  The fact of the matter was that he was a judgmental and bitter jerk around people, and I don’t know of too many people out there who make it their ambition to hang out with people who hold such a disposition.  If he would’ve just learned how to “be” a friend, to be a person for other people, a person who wasn’t preoccupied with his own self, his issues would have gone away immediately. 

                I think that the Church today in our culture suffers from the very same delusion.  We treat people like crap and we get mad at people whenever they don’t respond to our fabricated notions of love in positive ways.  We are the source of our own problem.  I think the issue even goes deeper than just this.  We refuse to deal with the fact that we are the very source of our own problems and, instead, we try to cover it up through various other means.  What I mean by this is this: Jesus said that we are to be the light of the world.  Instead of living according to this calling, instead of learning to “be” light, we decide to cling to our own bitterness and judgmental-ism and we fabricate light.  What Christ is saying is that it is our very personhood that is to be the image bearing reflection of God’s wonderful grace.  Yet, working upon our own selves is much too painful and invasive.  So, we attempt to “reach” people by other means.  We build programs and these programs take the primary ministry roles while the people involved are subservient to it.  We amp up our worship services so that they would be more “attractional.”  Dear Christians, you and I are supposed to be the main attractions to our faith.  Actually, to word it better, it is Christ in us that is to be the main attraction. 

                Over my years as a minister, I have seen a horrible tendency in God’s people, including myself, to forego dealing with our own selves and put all of our effort into building programs and worship environments that will “work” whenever it comes to reaching our communities.  This attitude is atrocious for many reasons, but two stick out to me as particularly tragic. 

                First, this notion dehumanizes people.  We first dehumanize ourselves by not understanding what our calling truly is.  Our calling, according to our Lord, is to be a light unto the nations.  Our calling is to be light, not pointers to something else.  Communion is an end unto itself not a stepping stone to something else.  Whenever we fail to see this, not only do we dehumanize ourselves but we also dehumanize those that we are trying to “reach.”  We begin treating them as objects to suit our own selfish desires.  We begin seeing them as spiritual projects and not as human beings who are also made in God’s image.  They become a means to an end for us.  If the aim of our church is to be “missional,” the people we reach become a means to this end.  Love can never be the end result where people are being used and we are certainly guilty of using people more times than not. 

                The other reason why all of this is tragic is this: such a “missional” mindset actually negates the Scriptures.  Why are we so bent on getting people in whenever the ancient Church held no such preoccupation?  While we focus on the reports in the book of Acts where droves of people joined the Church, as in this passage in Acts 5:14, “Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number,”…we read this and salivate.  However, we are very quick to neglect the preceding verse, “And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade.  No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.”  This alone should cause us to take a step back and  reexamine what motivates the things that we do.  It almost seems absurd for us to think about Church in this way today; that people would revere our lifestyles and our practices of worship to such a degree that, although they hold us in high regard, they dare not join us during our times of worship and gathering.  That little line actually says quite a lot to us.  It tells us that the early Church was not particularly bent on constructing their worship in such way where the barriers in outsiders’ minds were done away with.  Furthermore, even though it was a time of persecution, the Christians were held in high regard by the people outside of the Church.  This happened to such a degree that, if we read what Luke is saying in Acts, people converted to the faith without ever coming to worship.  People came to faith as they interacted with the saints.  In other words, unlike us today, the ancient Church didn’t use worship as means to draw outsiders.  No, they let worship be about God and His people. 

                Like my delusional friend, the problem lies with us.  If we were to actually live according to our calling, building ourselves up in our most holy faith, we might be surprised by how many people outside of the stained glass walls want to become what we are.