Dear reader,
I hope you are well. I’m sure if you’re seeing this you’re wondering, “Mitchell, it’s been over 5 months since you last updated us on your mission. You’re slacking!
Yes. I definitely have been. My apologies, (I honestly forgot I had this platform…)
I wrote this letter last year to share with a bunch of my friends and older mentors to show them where my heart was at with life and how I believe God was calling me to live from here on out with those around me. It’s been edited a bit to fit into a box that you can relate with, but please, I hope you do take away the message of this discourse.
Personally, I don’t care very much for church services, youth groups, or even bible studies. I know that sounds incredibly harsh, cold-hearted even. When I think of any of these things I think of a group of people, who all love and support each other, and once a week they get together to open God’s word, pray together, and hopefully, there is a good snack to pass around if we’re lucky.
In the end, we all say our goodbyes, give some high fives and hugs depending on the age demographic and relationship levels, we all go our separate ways into the week ahead of us.
That’s not right.
This format that we American’s have cultivated is not why we were created. It’s far from it in fact. Sadly it’s what we are now used to due to the way our world changed and conformed right before our eyes as we grew up in the American Church lifestyle.
Yet, we were created for so much more than this. We have an amazing mission to live out each and every day. A great commission I guess you could say. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus states these life-altering verses.
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of The Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
We have been told by Jesus, the son of God, the person who chose to go and die on a cross for our eternal salvation, to go into the world making disciples. Funny, he didn’t say anything about bringing anyone to church. He clearly states “go to them.” Not the other way around.
This is where we get it wrong. Myself including. I was taught growing up that I needed to bring people to my church and they could get saved, we’re all the good people, then we could all be one happy family together. That’s how churches make it sound. Go out there and bring them to church, bring them to Awana, bring them to the bible study. Well, no. Jesus said, “Go.” So I think we need to seriously rethink the way we go about this.
The world is so lost, and they don’t need to come to our church or our bible study to learn how lost they are. They need The Church to be where they are showing them the truth in love. And live in such a way that our actions and words scream the Gospel in such an inviting manner that anyone who is in close proximity to us feels the overwhelming love of Jesus Christ, and cannot ignore it in any way no matter how badly they want to.
I personally think of a couple of weeks ago when I came to Open Bible Church for my first indoor young adult bible study (or The Well). Off to the left, there was a basketball court, and a couple of younger guys were shooting some hoops and having a great time laughing and joking around. One of the leaders of the bible study was getting out of her car and she asked me “Mitchell, why don’t you go and invite those guys to bible study?”
I was immediately torn right down the middle. A hot mess of mixed emotions, thoughts, and fears all swirling in my head. Looking back on it now I wish I would have put my best foot forward and convinced the group of young adults to go over and play basketball with those guys and show them that we care for them.
Would they have come to the bible study if I had asked them? I honestly don’t know. But that’s not the point. They don’t need the bible study. They need the Gospel. They need to meet Jesus. If we asked to join their game that night I highly doubt they would have turned us away. The more the merrier as far as most sports go, by the end of the night, we would have met and poured into three new people, and they would know us by how we showed them love. Just as Jesus told us to.
How we met them on their court, and their rules. Now to be completely honest I can’t play basketball to save my life. But if a night of playing a game I have no skill in has the potential to plant a seed for someone’s eternal salvation I would gladly do so. As should every man, woman, and child who professes Christ as their Lord. I would do everything in my power to play basketball every week if that meant I got to share the Gospel down the road to even just one of those guys.
But I can’t do this alone. We aren’t called to. This is where The Church comes into play. Now, I would like to direct your attention to the concept of a Missional Community.
About a year ago I read a life-changing book called Saturate: Being Disciples of Jesus in the Everyday Stuff of Life. It was written by a man named Jeff Vanderstelt, and he defined Missional Community as “A community of Christ-followers on mission with God in obedience to the Holy Spirit that demonstrates tangibly and declares creatively the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a specific pocket of people.”
Community is essential to mission work. The Enemy’s attacks work more effectively when we are all alone. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said
“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. ‘The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people.”
We need to ban together, to lean on each other, to use each other’s specific gifts to share the Gospel. We aren’t on this earth to have a good time. The idea of living your life for fun and enjoyment is sadly so empty. We all have a higher calling. We need to be making disciples. We need to be sharing the Gospel, and we need to be doing that together. This is not the job of a pastor or elder. We, The Church, need to be doing this every day.
The definition above describes making disciples as “demonstrating tangibly and declaring creatively the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a specific pocket of people.” Let’s pick this apart, shall we?
Firstly we must “Demonstrate the Gospel Tangibly”. Jesus came down to earth for many reasons. One that rings true in my heart is that He was our perfect example. The way He carried himself as He walked through His life, was perfect. He selflessly gave all He had to anyone who would ask of Him. He did not just stop at meeting people’s needs however, he also spoke the truth in love, he spoke of a great hope to any ear who was able to hear. Just stop and think of the woman at the well, He knew what she needed, He met her there, and expressed the true needs of her heart. We ought to do the same. People all around us are in need, just look to the right and left. I’m sure we all know of someone who is hurting. If we looked at this from a ‘Bible Study’ point of view we could just pray for the people in our lives who are hurting every week, or we could band together and bless these people in tangible ways on top of praying for them. Let’s overwhelm people with the love of Christ, not just pray for them.
Second, we need to “Declare the Gospel Creatively”. You and I know the Gospel, but how do we share it with everyone that God places to our left and to our right? I wouldn’t talk to a seven-year-old boy the same way I would a fifty-nine-year-old woman. We need to understand how to share the good news of Jesus’ perfect life, his sacrificial death, and his awesome resurrection to anyone we talk to. Most Christians say they don’t know how to do that. Or they’re not comfortable doing that. Well, life is too short to mope around with excuses and worldly pleasures.
God doesn’t want weenie Christians.
If people don’t know how to do what they need to obey God’s perfect word, they need to be trained by us, The Church. 1 Peter 3:15 states “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
What we as followers of Christ have to offer this broken world is so amazing! Yet we hide this gift all too often. It is our God-given calling to make them our disciples so that they, in turn, can go make disciples themselves. We aren’t promised tomorrow. So we need to be living each and every day with this mentality. Go make disciples. Pour into them. Love them. Serve them. Point them back to the Gospel with every trial and blessing that comes your way. Rinse and repeat with every day you’re blessed with.
Lastly, the definition mentions “A Pocket of People”. Right off the bat, we need to be reminded of the ultimate truth. We all need the Gospel. Now that we know that, we need to share it. Just as the Father sent the Son to a specific time, place, and people, so the Spirit does with The Church. You and I. Have you ever stopped to think about the people God has placed in your story? They are not there by accident. Our neighbors, friends, classmates, anyone you cannot avoid. Todd Engstrom puts it this way, “Your neighbor may also be someone you have little in common with but whom God has placed squarely in your path or specifically called or commanded you to care for.” A Missional Community is a group of people who all have a common ground of neighbors, and are intentionally living their lives among them for the glory of God.
A Missional Community by nature is intended to be so much more than a typical bible study or a small group. You don’t meet just once a week. You don’t just meet for some fellowship and food. You don’t just meet to open the bible together. You live every part of your life together, the good, bad, and especially the ugly to fully equip and encourage one another towards the high calling of sharing the Gospel and making disciples. MORE THAN JUST come to a bible study. A Missional Community is a group of people asking “What does loving my neighbor and my city, town, school, really look like?” and even better “how can we go and make disciples of Jesus together as The Church every day for the rest of our lives?”
Oftentimes, when people realize that Jesus will ask more of them than they ever really thought. They get scared, and normally back away from the radical lifestyle that is that of a Christ Follower, they’d rather sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else play the game while they cheer them on. Well, that’s just a fan, and I’m sure God doesn’t want any of those. A fan is just okay with going to Worship on a Sunday and calling it good. I’m sorry but that can’t be all. I refuse to live this way.
So what do we do now? I strongly believe that any bible study, small group or Church group that holds this biblical concept and takes it seriously, it could be the beginning of the first Missional Community right where God has planted you to work.
How fantastic is that? When you have a group of genuine believers gathering together in the word, in prayer, and in worship God is there. And He will bless the people. If we all were to shift our groups of Christians from a bible study into something so much more, think of the paradigm shift that would occur. Life would flip upside down, people would see Christ being lived out in the body of His Church. The least of these in your locations would feel loved and known by The God of the Universe. We would bring such joy and revival wherever we went. And maybe we grew too big to meet in someone’s house on a regular basis. Praise God. Multiply the group in two, and keep on keeping on. That doesn’t mean don’t see each other, absolutely not. But they would learn how to focus on other people that God has placed in front of them. I’m praying that this would spread like a wildfire.
But wait. How do you even start doing this? A lot of prayer, dependence on a perfect God, and a small handful of believers who have a deep desire to get to the work. Luke 10:2 makes this so clear. It reads
“And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
This won’t be easy.
Far from it in fact. People love doing what they’ve done before. They’re such creatures of habit, that when something new interferes with their normal way of life they do everything in their power to push it out of their house and slam the door behind it. Inviting people into something new is so challenging. I’ve seen people leave when the going gets tough. Close friends and family. But that doesn’t mean we stop doing what God tells us to do. We are the laborers. We need to go to work. When people live their lives in such an intentional way Satan goes to work as well. This is the most important thing we can do with our lives. Not work, school, or leisure. We need to be devoting our lives to His work. Kingdom Work if you will. And that is the most honorable way to live your life. Work hard and well until He returns, or until your last breath leaves your body, Go and make disciples. That is so much more than _____.
Peace to all of you who are in Christ.
