About 10 1/2 years ago I found myself on a continuing education trip in Orlando, Florida. Yes, Florida in the winter-- a welcome relief (weatherwise, at least) from the snow and ice storms of central Indiana.
But I wasn't there for the weather. I was there for Stephen Leader Training so I could learn how to train others to be Stephen Ministers in the congregation where I was appointed.
Now I'd been attending the Stephen Ministry meetings at the congregation for a while. I'd read the basic books. I'd heard the Stephen mantra (if one can say there is one) again and again. "We care. God provides the cure."
But if I had heard it before, Stephen Leader Training really seared that into us. It wasn't going to be enough for us to tell OTHERS "We care. God provides the cure." We, the leaders, had to live that way, too.
Within Stephen Ministry that meant, at the very least, that those of getting "leader training" couldn't go back and simply tell those we were training that the "curing" was entirely up to God, while sort of secretly (or not so secretly!) continuing to act on the premise that "if you really want to get through whatever you're going through more quickly or better, you'll come to a Stephen leader or a clergy person."
No. "We care. God provides the cure."
Seems to me this principle might apply not only to the ways we approach "pastoral care" (whether offered by laity or clergy), but indeed Christian discipleship, missiology and ecclesiology.
Are we, in whatever we're doing in the name of Jesus, really actually doing it, or are we trying to get someone else to do it. Is the heart of our commitment to Jesus about following him ourselves with whoever around us will do that with us, or is it about getting others to follow Jesus in a particular way with us?
Do we do what we do because we care?
Or do we do what we do because we think we can and should cure others, rather that trusting God to provide whatever that "cure" might look like?
Maybe these are core questions for discerning whether our motives are "missional" or "attractional." If we act because we care-- we've been given gifts and passion by God's grace to act-- maybe that's a sign we're being missional. But if we act because we think we can or should fix somebody else, maybe that's a sign our motives are more attractional.
Confession... I with perhaps many of you really want to fix the United Methodist Church. And part of me thinks that folks like us-- folks who think and try to act missionally and encourage others to do likewise-- share that same driving desire. I think we can do that. Or at least we may have one of the better shots at trying at the present time.
But maybe that's not our calling. Maybe our calling isn't to convince others to do what we think they ought to do, even when it's about restoring missional Methodism. No. Maybe our calling is to care-- simply to care. And to act on what we've been given to care about ourselves, whether others agree with it, like it, despise it, whatever. We have things we do care about-- gifts and passions God has given us to act on, individually and with others, including sometimes with each other. If we care, and trust God for the cure... maybe that's enough.
What if we simply ReBe Church... starting with ourselves?
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
6 comments:
whew...great food for thought! Not as revolutionary as some of us might like, but faithful to the One who calls us and sends us...
thank you for giving me something to chew on...
sorry for the elementary question, but can you flesh out for me the problem with "attractional?"
Wesley didn't want to "fix" anything? Or didn't expect a real and transforming change in those to whom he preached conversion?
I think the church has something to offer that people need. But that seems to fit closer to "attractional" by your definition than "missional." So am I off target?
AEL:
"Attractional" means focusing on getting people to attend worship, primarily. The focus here is institutionally inward. It's an approach that tends to play on and ultimately support a consumerist model of connection to Christian community-- "I'm here because there's something I like. If it changes or I can't keep getting what I like, I'll go somewhere else." The whole "seeker church" phenomenon was to some degree an exercise in "attractionalism"-- and its failure to develop disciples of Jesus who are ready and able to engage God's mission in the world is well-documented, even by some of its leading advocates, such as Willow Creek.
In the missional church conversations over the past 45 years, the emphasis has instead been on activities and actions that are missional-- that is, sending people out into God's mission in the world in the name of Jesus and the power of the Spirit. The mission is God's-- and we get to participate, bear witness, and sometimes function as agents of transformation in it. A form of Christian community whose ethos is primarily missional isn't trying to attract people-- but that DOES happen, not because we've checked out the demographics, found our target audience, and design/massag/spin our message to be attractive to that niche, but more because lives lived missionally in a missional community are pretty compelling.
The Wesleys gave up trying to fix the church of England internally, that is by trying to change congregations directly through their preaching or other means. Instead, they created a set of structures outside the current ecclesial structures that could (and did) nourish the growth and sending of disciples into mission. They were very clear, always, that sanctification was the work of the Holy Spirit in which we were invited to participate through watching over one another in love-- not something WE did to fix ourselves or others. We care-- God brings the cure.
We as church DO, when we function as church, have much to offer. If we focus on offering it more than on seeing, after we've offered it, if "more people show up in worship" or whatever, we will indeed be missional.
Hope that helps...
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
That does help. Thanks. I understand wanting to move away from the "consumer" mentality and eschewing our love with "marketing" that has overtaken so much of our church talk. But its hard for me to agree that all of what might be labeled "attractional" is on the wrong track. But that's an old and long conversation isn't it?
AEL:
Perhaps its not that "all things attractional" are entirely on the wrong track.
But perhaps it is that the "attractional" track is just about the only track much of the church has been traveling on for quite some time.
Results? Not so good-- yet we keep thinking, it seems, that if we keep trying harder on this path, surely we'll get better results.
Jesus called disciples to train them in his way and send them out to live it and train others, and so on. The "default" of the current ecclesial scene in North America is set on "attract," and so strongly in many cases that "send" (as in send people who are really well-equipped) gets limited to clergy and a few other "specialist" laypeople. But what we "send" our clergy to do is to try to lead congregations whose default is still set on "attract"-- and sort of has been for perhaps 1400 years or so in the West.
Attract isn't necessarily entirely bad. It's just that it's not a very effective way to get done what Jesus was trying to do-- get folk sent into the harvest.
Restoring Missional Methodism... the theme of our upcoming gathering in Indianpolis (November 12-14) is about doing what we can where we are to be part of the movement that is the sending (and so the training for those to be sent-- more of them on a much larger scale) rather than staying stuck solely "inside" the gravitational pull of "attractional" (or, just as often, "apathetic") congregational life.
Or, in other words-- doing again now the kinds of things the Wesleys and their Methodists were doing in the 18th century in England.
Peace in Christ,
Taylor Burton-Edwards
So how'd this work...if we have been set on "attract" for 1400 years (an interesting and probable idea to me) yet Wesley and co were doing something else, namely "missional" how did we revert to "attractional"? And when did that start to happen in American methodism?
And can you give me an example of a community that is living out "missional" in the way you understand it to be connecting with Jesus' directives?
The Indy gathering looks interesting, I have already chosen to take some young 'un's to Explo 09 later that week.
Thanks for the conversation.
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