The church and its mission
I am reading a book in preparation for the Vision 500 meeting next month called "Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the church in North America". I just finished the first chapter which spoke clearly to the model of Western European Mission spread throughout the world. The Church is steeped in a racist structure, an empire like structure that promotes and condones the oppression of people unable to participate in that structure. It is interesting to read it after this last Anti Racism training we experienced.
But what I really want to focus on here is the sense of mission and its changing nature over the years. It is clear to most that mission is no longer something that is done outside of the context of our own regions and areas of life. Mission is no longer just something done in Africa or South America or Asia. Mission has revealed itself mightily in our back yard as this post Christian world has grown up and claimed the Church as irrelevant. It is interesting the battles to maintain that structural idea of mission; here at Gethsemane we have an opportunity to do so some really amazing stuff, new mission stuff, we could even become a center for people all over the diocese to experiment with different types of mission, in worship, in ministry, in all sorts of different areas. But there is huge resistance, because of the notion that working at Gethsemane will not help MY Church grow.
We will be entering a conversation on the 20th of May about Mission in the metro area and I have yet to hear much conversation about action, about where we will be going as we do mission in this vast mission field, and I am NOT talking about Minneapolis. We truly live in a mission field, on average 1 in 5 people attend Church on a Sunday, that is a sign that what we are doing as the Church has become ineffective, impotent and dare I say useless!? Being as much as I love pain, this stuff gets me super excited, because I don't want to participate in a Church that does mission in this old fashion, western way. I want to participate in church, or community that is transformational, that lives boldly into the Gospel of Christ without watering it down and can be an authentic and real model for being in relationship.
None of that will happen for the Diocese of MN until, as Peggy Tuttle so aptly pointed out at Clergy Conference, we recognize that we as a people of the Diocese, particularly clergy, must change our own behavior before we expect the bishop or the episcopate to change its ways first. We are the diocese, not the bishop, we are the ones who hold the power that is oppressive, not the bishop. Therefore we are the ones that must seek to change our oppressive and abusive behaviors, not just about race, but about homosexuality, about mission, about western structures that we embrace as perfectly fine.
There's a sermon in there somewhere.
Be well,
A+
But what I really want to focus on here is the sense of mission and its changing nature over the years. It is clear to most that mission is no longer something that is done outside of the context of our own regions and areas of life. Mission is no longer just something done in Africa or South America or Asia. Mission has revealed itself mightily in our back yard as this post Christian world has grown up and claimed the Church as irrelevant. It is interesting the battles to maintain that structural idea of mission; here at Gethsemane we have an opportunity to do so some really amazing stuff, new mission stuff, we could even become a center for people all over the diocese to experiment with different types of mission, in worship, in ministry, in all sorts of different areas. But there is huge resistance, because of the notion that working at Gethsemane will not help MY Church grow.
We will be entering a conversation on the 20th of May about Mission in the metro area and I have yet to hear much conversation about action, about where we will be going as we do mission in this vast mission field, and I am NOT talking about Minneapolis. We truly live in a mission field, on average 1 in 5 people attend Church on a Sunday, that is a sign that what we are doing as the Church has become ineffective, impotent and dare I say useless!? Being as much as I love pain, this stuff gets me super excited, because I don't want to participate in a Church that does mission in this old fashion, western way. I want to participate in church, or community that is transformational, that lives boldly into the Gospel of Christ without watering it down and can be an authentic and real model for being in relationship.
None of that will happen for the Diocese of MN until, as Peggy Tuttle so aptly pointed out at Clergy Conference, we recognize that we as a people of the Diocese, particularly clergy, must change our own behavior before we expect the bishop or the episcopate to change its ways first. We are the diocese, not the bishop, we are the ones who hold the power that is oppressive, not the bishop. Therefore we are the ones that must seek to change our oppressive and abusive behaviors, not just about race, but about homosexuality, about mission, about western structures that we embrace as perfectly fine.
There's a sermon in there somewhere.
Be well,
A+
Comments
i am the church, you are the church, we are the church together... the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people
*mentally adding "the church is not a bishop*