Breaking the Missional Code
Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community
Ed Stetzer & David Putman
Broadman & Homan Publishers Nashville, Tennessee 2006
>>>Note: Several quotes from the book are posted below. ===>Click headline to purchase book . . .
Across North America, pastors and churches are excited. Dynamic pastors are pioneering new methods and models to effectively reach their communities. Many churches are experiencing explosive growth because they are learning to connect with their communities. Pastors and churches are breaking the cultural codes of their communities. People are responding to biblically faithful and culturally relevant outreach.
At the same time, many other pastors are frustrated. They have attended the conferences, bought the tapes, and applied the strategies. However, they have not experienced the "promised" results. People in their communities are just not responding in the same way; they are not responding as the high-energy conference leader promised.
Why are some churches and pastors so effective and others are not? Often, both faithfully preach, teach, and reach out. Even pastors of similar ability and conviction sometimes find that their strategies work for one pastor but not for the other (or maybe they do connect for both of them, but surprisingly, they do not work for many others).
We are convinced that you can be equally called, gifted, and passionate and yet experience different levels of success due to the model of ministry being used. In other words, the way you do things does impact your ability to reach your community effectively. This book will assist you in being able to think through your context, apply universal principles in your mission setting, and then identify and apply strategies that will make you more effective in your context.
Breaking the code does not mean just finding the best model (or models) for your community. Instead, it means discovering the principles that work in every context, selecting the tools most relevant for your context (which may come from methods and models), and then learning to apply them in a missionally effective manner. It means thinking missiologically, and "if we are not focusing on missiology then we are being disobedient to the Great Commission." According to Mittelberg, "For those of us who have our sight set on reaching secular people in our increasingly post-Christian society, we must step back and figure out what our mission field's cultural landscape looks like."
Churches that are breaking the code are paying a high price for reaching the unchurched / unreached. They are discovering that churches that focus on the unchurched/unreached often create a degree of discomfort among some churched/reached. In other words, you cannot have it both ways~either the lost like your or the satisfied religious crowd likes you.
We have pastored and been around many churches that have made a commitment to focus on the unchurched/unreached. In churches that move to Christian maturity, satisfied churched people often miss the point. Instead, they want to go "deeper" with "meat." Ironically that "deep meat" is often a focus on the obscure or unclear in Scripture rather than on the life-changing nature of what is clear.
The irony is that most people crying for "meat" are really crying for minutia. They want to learn the deeper truths about the times of the rapture rather than how to live the Christian life. True meat teaches people how to be transformed by the renewing of their minds so that they will live like Christ, love like Christ, and leave what Jesus left behind. But believers in church-focused ministries often think that it is more important to teach about controversial subjects rather than transformational truths.
Reggie McNeal, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 11
In North America the invitation to become a Christian has become largely an invitation to convert to the church. The assumption is that anyone serious about being a Christian will order their lives around the church, shift their life and work rhythms around the church schedule, channel their charitable giving through the church, and serve in some church ministry; in other words, serve the church and become a fervent marketer to bring others into the church to do the same. In my denominational tradition, I grew up with a euphemism used to describe when people become Christians: They "joined the church." The reduction of Christianity to club membership can't be said better than that.
The missional church is expressing itself in new ways. Pastors and church leaders are recognizing they are each on a unique mission field~right in their own neighborhoods. They are beginning to see themselves as catalysts for the advance of the kingdom~taking the unchanging message to their "changing context." This has led to several positive shifts in thinking:
- from programs to processes,
- from demographics to discernment,
- from models to missions,
- from attractional to incarnational,
- from uniformity to diversity,
- from professional to passionate,
- from seating to sending,
- from decisions to disciples
- from additional to exponential, and
- from monuments to movements.
Later in this book, we will discuss the discipleship process and give a model that includes: searching, believing, belonging, becoming, and serving as part of the discipleship process. However, it is important to understand the following principles as they relate to discipleship:
- Discipleship begins prior to conversion. It is important to note that more and more in today's context conversion will be part of the journey and will often require years of participation in a local congregation before a person goes public with his or her faith. Churches that break the code will be required to figure out how to do church in such a way that facilitates this journey.
- Discipleship involves participation in community prior to conversion. Churches that facilitate this journey will recognize the importance of relationships, the currency that moves the unreached/unchurched forward. As believers recognize that they are missionaries, they will find more and more ways of engaging those outside the church in authentic relationships. Small group ministries will more and more reflect the culture of worship gatherings that are inviting to large numbers of unreached/unchurched people. Churches that recognize this will need to spend more time figuring out how to connect the unreached/unchurched with their small group ministry.
- Discipleship often involves participation and experience prior to conversion. Churches that understand the discipleship process are also proactive about creating strategic and specific experiences for those who are on the journey. Each step toward the cross is celebrated as a victory. Worship gatherings are designed to create space where people can experience God and progress at their own pace. Unreached/unchurched people are invited to participate and experience God on a variety of levels, first as observers, then as participants in worship.
- Discipleship often involves participation in service prior to conversion. Churches that break the code recognize that God uses people to accomplish his purposes. Sometimes these people are mature disciples; other times they are in the early part of the journey. When one outside of faith is used in a simple way, they are affirmed and most often move forward in the journey. These code-breaking churches recognize this and create all kinds of opportunities for the unreached/unchurched to participate in service.
- Discipleship often involves participation in missions prior to conversion. In a recent mission meeting, a lady stood up and said: "I know God is working in my life. He has answered my prayers and healed my husband of cancer. I don't understand him and haven't made up my mind entirely about him, but I'm on a journey. So I'm going. My next step is to go to South Africa and provide humanitarian help with my church." It is these kinds of experiences that become most meaningful to many people who are on the journey.
"Truth is not a set of rules to be obeyed, mysteries to be known or evidences to be mastered, but Christ, by whom we know and are known. Truth is not discovered, it is revealed in relationship to both the head and the heart. Therefore, Truth is not something merely known or proclaimed but Someone experienced, tasted, and seen as the Psalmist says, by grace, faith, and presence that not merely knows the Truth but loves Him."
Pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church
Prayer is an essential part of the conversion process for those outside the church. With this awakening of spirituality has come a tremendous openness to prayer. Like many missional strategies, churches that are impacting lost culture are teaching people the eternal importance of prayer. As individuals connect relationally with those outside the church, they are discovering over time that they become open to prayer. When this happens and followers of Christ intentionally begin to pray for very specific needs like jobs losses, illnesses, and other critical issues, those being prayed for are encountering the God who answers prayers.
Reggie McNeal begins his book, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church, with these shocking and sobering words:
The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to congregations comes form people aged fifty-five and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.
[NAMB Editor's Note: What a mission field is in multihousing across North America. Bob gives us some specific ways to pray for people in multihousing settings to be reached.]
