Becoming a Mission-Focused Church

Becoming a Mission-Focused Church

What does it take to become a mission-focused church—a church that “shares
God’s self-sacrificial love for the lost, lonely, and broken, and cultivates a commitment
toward outreach as an expression of worship”?

Despite an outreach activity here and there, many churches are not really
outreach-focused churches. They might give out holiday gift baskets to needy families, or sponsor an annual Bring-a-Friend-to-Church day, or raise money to support the local
homeless shelter. But their ministries flow more from skin-deep compassion (“Those poor homeless people”) or superficial obligation (“There, that takes care of that!”) than a genuine longing to see God’s will be done in their community as it is in heaven. The dominant understanding is that the church exists to serve the needs—spiritual, social, and relational—of the membership.

From observing where many churches spend their energy, money, and time, said
Christian activist Harold Frey, one would think that John 3:16 read: “God so loved the
church that He gave His only Son.” What does the text really say? “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son”! Church leaders do have a significant responsibility toward the members of the church, but one key dimension of this responsibility “is to lead them into their vocation (mission) in the world, which God loves, and for which Christ died.” Rev. Tom Theriault is Mission Pastor at a wonderful holistic congregation, Solana Beach Presbyterian Church. He writes about the tension between “in-reach” and
“outreach”:

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from my M & M soap box . . . the “More and More for Me
and Mine Syndrome,” the “What-can-you-do-for-me-today,-God gospel.” As in the
time of Jesus, many are looking for an M & M Messiah, a savior who will deliver us
from all manner of oppressions (and depressions and repressions and dysfunctions). As with Jesus’ contemporaries, we are frustrated, if not infuriated (Luke 4:30f), by a savior who is for the world. When He turns the “M & M’s” right-side-up and into “W-W’s” . . . a “We are for the World,” gospel, we have trouble.

To be sure, ours is a delivering God. But He delivers for a purpose. He delivers us
out of our dead-end obsession with self and into the mainstream of His life-giving
water that is destined for the nations (Rev 22:2). We want a “sit-and-soak Savior,”
One who fills our little hot tubs up with all kinds of soothing blessings. What we really
have is a “Get up and GO God,” One who soothes and saves so that He can launch
us out (the root of the word for “mission” is the same as for “missile”) into His Kingdom purposes to sooth and save the world. Hot tubs are great, but if you spend too much time in one you shrivel up and get sick. Same is true for the bath of blessings that our wonderful Savior provides for us. The blessings are meant to be fuel in our little rockets, rockets that have a trajectory set by the Word of God (Luke 4). If we stop with merely basking in the blessings of salvation, we, our families, our churches, will shrivel up and get sick. A body needs exercise, and so does the Body of Christ. The mission of Christ is the exercise regimen prescribed by the Ultimate Personal Trainer.

Continuing Tom’s metaphor, to prescribe the proper exercise for a human body,
trainers have to know what the body is designed to do. Internally focused churches are
busily doing an incomplete set of exercises, because they have a flawed understanding of what the church body is designed to do. An inward-focused congregation must be led to examine the question: What is the church designed to do? What is the church’s mission? Say “mission,” and many think of what some Christians do “over there.” The word has come to be identified with special projects and trips. But mission has more to do with the church’s purpose than its programs. As theologian David Bosch explains, “Mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. .. . There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.” Holistic ministry is part of the answer to the question, “How are God’s character and saving actions expressed through our church in the world?”

Overcoming an inward focus means changing the paradigm from “going to church”
to “being the church” in mission. “Going to church” is only part of the purpose for the
church’s existence. A church cannot be a witness, agent, and sign of the gospel only by
filling its pews for worship services. A lay leader at Cookman United Methodist Church puts it this way:

Being a place where people can just come and worship on Sunday does not make
you a church. You have to be in service to one another to be a servant to our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. So that means church doors need to be open during the
week, not just Sunday. . . . You need to just be there for the people. . . . A lighthouse
isn’t just out there sometimes. It’s always out there. The light is always on. And
that’s what we need to do as a church.

Cookman United Methodist Church struggles to keep their lights literally on, the staff
paid, and the building standing in one piece. The group that gathers for worship on Sunday morning is small, and the tithes from members’ modest incomes are meager. But every day, Cookman is a lighthouse reaching people in the neighborhood with the Good News in word and deed. Women and men in the church’s welfare-to-work ministry learn work and computer skills, pursue their GED, study the Bible, and participate in a weekly worship service. Overcomers, a Christ-centered twelve-step support group for recovering addicts, leads a worship service for people who feel uncomfortable in a traditional church service.

The “Kids Café” offers youth a nutritious meal, Bible study, and fun activities. Women
rebuilding their lives in a transitional housing program in the parsonage meet in the pastor’s study for Bible study and Christian counseling. People in crisis drop by the church for groceries, clothes, a prayer, and a hug. A group of members occasionally takes prayer walks through the neighborhood, interceding for their neighbors and the urban evils that hold them in bondage. Churches like Cookman are beacons of hope and healing, attracting people to God’s kingdom. The harvest is slow, but steady.

Rev. William Moore of Tenth Memorial Baptist Church reflects on the nature of the
church: “The Jordan River feeds into the Dead Sea, and there’s no outlet. Nothing lives.
They call it the Dead Sea because it takes in but it does not give out. The church is the
same way. If you take in and don’t give out, you die.” Sometimes churches literally die for lack of mission, as people and resources drain away. Other churches are like the Dead Sea: full of water, but unable to support life. Throughout the history of the church, writes theologian John Driver, Christians have wrestled with “a perception of the church as a self-concerned community of salvation—an end in itself. This has led to a clear separation between its own church life and its calling to mission. . . . The church has existed without mission, and mission has been carried on outside the church, resulting in the impoverishment of the church and the deformation of mission.”

Adapted from Ronald J. Sider, Philip N. Olson and Heidi Rolland Unruh, Churches That Make a Difference: Reaching
Your Community with Good News and Good Works, chapter 7. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker
Book House Company, copyright (c) 2002.