Missional Living

This week was a long one. Jill & I spent from Sunday evening to Wednesday at the SBC Convention in San Antonio. It started Sunday afternoon with my getting sick, and still recovering to this day. It was long primarily because sitting through a 2 1/2 day Baptist business meeting is hard enough trying to keep focused, but when your head is pounding and you are battling a upper respiratory infection, the days really drag on. Nevertheless, we survived. I have little patience for this type of convention, and found myself remembering why it was that I left the Baptist church years ago. In spite of this, I find myself once again serving in a Baptist church.

This convention did have a couple of redeeming points. The most significant being an after hours session which included an 1 1/2 hour worship set of awesome contemporary music followed by a teaching session by a pastor I have been following in recent months by the name of Bob Roberts. It was a powerful and challenging time as he spoke on something he is on the leading edge of- "Missional Living." Missional living is essentially a postmodern alternative to the ecclesiology and missiology of Evangelical Christians. Is is a relatively new concept and has been a topic I have found myself studying recently. There is much debate on the topic, but guys like Roberts, Dan Kimball, and Ed Stetzer are leading the way on the more conservative evangelical side of things. In short, it is a mindset of outside the box thinking on missions and how to do church- a mindset I find myself embracing. Roberts defined missional living in this way, he stated that it is living your life in Christ in "total abandonment." Living here and now as if you were a missionary wherever God has you. He went on to say that to live missionally is to live not caring whether you live or die pursuing this kind of life. I kept waiting for a comic or sarcastic remark to soften the blow, but it never came. As I meditated further on this, my first response was, "wow, that is extreme!" However, the more I thought about it, the more I found myself accepting the validity of this statement, especially when the Spirit reminded me of a familiar passage where Paul says, "to live is Christ to die is gain..." When I looked up the passage in Philippians, it was even further driven home. Listen to the his words:

"I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!" -- Phil.1:20-22

It IS extreme, but true nonetheless. The conviction and shame that followed was heavier than I have experienced in a long time. I began to realize that although he was not saying that we must adopt an evangelical version of jihad, the attitude of total abandonment is a willingness to sacrifice all for the sake of Christ. It is wear the rubber meets the road. It is not the "touchy feel-ly churchianity" that I and most fo the American church has grown accustomed to. Even in the midst of my own frequent disgust with status quo religion, it was a wake up call to ask what do I really believe? I can't say that I have had this same conversation that Paul had with the Philippians, and that I have lived much of my existence trying to satisfy the desires of my flesh.

Lord, please forgive me. Your servant Jim Elliot was right, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."