Exiled Community

I finished Michael Frost’s book, Exiles, somewhere between Dallas and Chicago last week and want to make one final (I think) post about what I read. Overall, I thought Exiles is a thought-provoking look at how Christians and the Church can live missionally in our society. Onto the final post.

When I think about my faith journey, the places where transformation occurred in my life where not in Sunday worship or Sunday School. I did not experience transformation from a Bible Study (although I learned more about my faith). Most often, I have experienced spiritual transformation outside of our Sunday morning. For me, it was Seneca Hills Camp when I was a pre-teen. That’s when God used a missionary named Hudson Hess to help me hear my call to ministry. It was Jumonville and Wesley Woods where I experienced God’s presence and community in amazing ways. It was trips to Brazil and Paraguay where I learned (and saw) God’s heart for the poor. My spiritual journey has been shaped by the space outside of Sunday worship.

Frost talks about creating a “liminal” state where community and faith development can occur. For instance, one can go on a mission trip to Guatemala. Because I am not at my home, nor am I really living in Guatemala, I am in a liminal space. It’s a place of transition. It is in this space of transition where community and change occur as people work towards a common goal. Liminal spaces are most effective when experienced within community. We cannot go it alone (first, we are not designed to be lone rangers) as we are products of a Triune God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) and are image bearers of the divine.

Michael Frost writes this,

“Have you ever noticed how many men attend worship only occasionally and begrudgingly, but when there’s a church cleanup day, they’ll turn up joyfully and work hard all day? Such workdays creat a mini-communitas. So do short-term mission trips and youth mission trips. So does church planting. But weekly church services do not. It’s like sitting at the apostles’ feet and drinking in their teaching in Jersualem in the first century. It serves a useful purpose, but the ultimate purpose of the Jerusalem church was to go and make disciples of all nations.”

Being part of a faith community (church) is essential to our faith, but it is certainly not the only thing we are about. We are to go out from our churches and into a world of transition, into the liminal spaces to experience community, hope, grace, mercy, compassion, and love. It is imperative for the church of the 21st centuy to create liminal space, and encourage the body to go into this space in order to experience transformation and community.

Where have you experienced spiritual transformation? Through a Sunday morning worship gathering? A mission trip? Bible Study? Service project? I’d love to hear your story!

Ministry “happens” in many places. I’ve found that they happen outside of the church most frequently- which makes sense because most people don’t spend a ton of time in the “Church” building. In Michael Frost’s book, Exiles, he talks about the importance of doing ministry in the “Third Places.” (He actually cites some other people like sociologist Ray Oldenburg who coined the phrase). The idea of a “Third Place” presupposes a First and Second Place. 1st places are our homes. 2nd places are our workplaces- where we spend the majority of our time. 3rd places are environments like coffee shops, cafes, bars, pubs, the gym, etc. They are the places where people meet to develop friendships, discuss issues/politics, and to interact with one another.

Starbucks is, perhaps, the most well-known 3rd place in our culture today…or at least one that is universally known as a 3rd place. Starbucks has gone to great lengths to create a space where conversation can happen. A place where people can connect with each other. Starbucks and other places have become places where real intimacy can occur.

For mission-minded Christians, it is important to build relationships in 3rd places. First, not everyone goes to church to explore their faith, but they’re willing to talk about it in a 3rd place. Second, we are to take to gospel to all the world. We cannot subscribe to a bunker mentality that keeps us entrenched in the church and separate from the world. Dan Kimball, in his book “The Like Jesus But Not The Church” really stresses the importance for Pastors and Christians to get outside of the church or the Christian bubble to meet those who are not Christians in order to build relationships that ultimately point to Christ. Unfortunately, many I know many Christian leaders who struggle to get out of the church (out of the bubble) to begin to minister in these 3rd places. We’ve become so caught up doing the work of the church that we’ve failed to do the Work God’s called us to.

There is a great 3rd place here in Milford called Dolce. It’s a small coffeshop that makes the best pastries and has a wonderful atmosphere. This year, I’ve been intentional about consistently being present in this 3rd place to build relationships with those who work there and the patrons. It’s been awesome how conversation opens up to faith and how it can be discussed in a non-threatening way. Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me, but it encourages me and my efforts to get out of the office and into places to build relationships that point to Christ. For the Church to truly live up to it’s calling, It must see itself less as a building or a schedule of ministries and see itself as an living organism that grows, responds, reacts, and interacts with others around it.

Do I always make it out of the office? Sadly no. But each opportunity is a way to reach out to the community around me.

I in the middle of reading a book called “Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture.” The book is by Michael Frost. Much of the content of the book centers around how the Western church has become a noun rather than a verb. The western church is about the institution, practices/ritual, and titles where as the missional church seeks to be the church in the world. Rather than building great edifices, the missional church focuses on building disciples. Somewhat of a simplistic summary.

Frost goes on to talk about a “neo-apostolic” movement that David Barrett and Todd Johnson identified. They point out four characteristics of the movement.

1. They reject denominationalism and restrictive, overbearing central authority.
2. They seek a life focused on Jesus.
3. They seek amore effective missionary lifestyle
4. They are one of the fastest growing movements in the world.

Barrett and Johnson are predicting that by 2025 that there will be nearly 581 million Christians associated with this movement- 120 million more than all Protestant movements put together. Frost tells of how this church movement is exploding throughout the world (except in the West). “When the evangelist has led a handful of people to put their trust in Christ, he or she (usually he in the South) gathers them, equips them, and then leaves them to their own devices, relying on the evangelist’s occasional return visits. As fragile as it sounds, God is blessing this new movement in astonishing ways.”

As I have read about the missional church on many sites (http://www.friendofmissional.org/ being the main one), there are many that believe that a traditional church cannot be/become ‘missional.’ You’ll have to check them out for their definition of missional. As I read these sites, I agree that it would be a struggle for an established, especially mainline church to truly be missional. I do think that an established church can become missional.

This leads me to think about my current denomination. I am a part of the United Methodist Church. I have been a part of the UMC since I was about 10…and am now in the ordination process in the church (for better/for worse). As I’ve learned about the Methodist Church, I believe that in our early days, we were a missional church. We were also “neo-apostolic” before clever scholars/professors/emergent-type people were using the term “neo-apostolic.”

Any study of early Methodism will go to show how John and Charles Wesley began a renewal movement within the Anglican Church and how that movement spread throughout Britain and in America. It was not a formal church structure, but an organic and fluid organization of people who were compelled to share their faith and care for God’s people. In America, Methodism exploded up until the mid-1800’s when we began formalizing a strong central government for the church.

Since then, in America, our numbers have been in general decline. This year at Annual Conference- delegates will vote on constitutional ammendments that will create more beauracracy. The UMC just launch a $20 million dollar ad campaign where that money could have gone to feed the hungry, help fight AIDS, malaria, or provide clean drinking water. We have lost our missional heart.

The good news is that there are young Christians, like myself and others, who are tired of doing church the way we are currently doing it. Church needs to move from being a noun to a verb. The people of God should be less concerned with the way in which we gather for an hour on Sunday morning, and more concerned about how we are living testimonies to the transformational love of God through Jesus Christ. We should be more concerned about discipling our people than building new edifices. We should be more concerned about feeding the poor and opposing unjust structures than whether we should do traditional/contemporary/modern worship. As we build up and live as the church, we need to teach people to dream about what God desires us to do…and who God desires us to be.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs and organize the work; teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery