Ministry in Abandoned Places: The 3Rs of Love Reaching Out

Here are the background resources in the packet given out during the UUA General Assenmbly workshop on The Welcome Table, the 3Rs of community renewal, and the missional church. This was augmented by the witness and testimony by Rev. Debra Garfinkel and Rev. Cecilia Kingman and Rev. Susan Smith. I believe you can go to www.uua.org/ga to find out how to buy the CD of the worship, including all the presentations and the questions and answers.

Ministry In Abandoned Places

The 3 Rs of Reaching Out

Church Focused on Relocation, Reconciliation, Redistribution

On Ministries in the World, not Members

Rev. Ron Robinson, The Welcome Table missional community

www.athirdplace.org www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com follow us on facebook at TheWelcomeTable Mission, and The Welcome Table GardenPark

also learn more at our www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com

1.     Video and Slideshow of Our Presence in the 74126 zipcode of Tulsa---what 3-12 people in worship accomplish by turning their church inside out and connecting first with neighbors and partners

2.     Our 3Rs Missional Transformation that is Transforming Our Community—Rev. Ron Robinson

3.     Impact on Lives, on Church, and on our Movement: Witness by Rev. Debra Garfinkel, Rev. Cecilia Kingman, Rev. Susan Smith

4.     Questions from the Gathered

How to Help: Go to www.faithify.org and donate to our ministry projects: 1. Kitchen Greenhouse Community at our GardenPark and Orchard where abandoned houses once were. $6,000

2. Missional Community Room to serve our neighbors and create hospitality for those (you) coming to stay and serve and learn with us. $7,500.

45 days to raise the funds; all or nothing campaign; you are not charged unless the full amount is raised; during the campaign your money is put in escrow and returned to your account if the full amount is not achieved.

Please Share Widely. Join the Online Facebook Event for support of both projects:

Come to Life on Fire: Missional Spirituality Retreat: Growing spiritual practice and discernment in abandoned places. A missional gathering, May 29-31, 2015, at The Welcome Table. Just $50 total fee for program, lodging, meals with us.

Come Stay and Serve and Learn in our “University of Poverty” With Us: contact revronrobinson@gmail.com 918-691-3223

If you come just for a half or full day, no overnight, a “love offering” per person recommended.

Overnight stays: Daily fee, no meals provided by us: $10 per person; one meal provided, $20 per person; two meals, $30 per person. Lodging on site or in area included. Scholarships may be available.

The Welcome Table Missional Community/A Third Place Community Foundation

Renewing The Far Northside: Volunteer Grassroots Response

History Highlights:

Epiphany Church began in Owasso in 2002-03; fast growing predominantly white suburb but didnt have the resources leadership or culture match to grow and sustain as an attractional church model. 

moved to 6305 N. Peoria Ave. Turley/McLain School area in 2004; a declining low income multi ethnic area. 

became The Living Room Church in 2005 and began partnering with Turley Community Association and Cherokee School on beautification projects

Opened A Third Place Community Center at 6416 N. Peoria Ave. and moved in it in 2007, began working with OU Graduate Social Work program on community forums;

hosted OU Health Clinic in 2008; began calling ourselves simply Church At A Third Place.

created A Third Place Community Foundation in 2009, began demonstration gardening with Turley United Methodist Church and providing school gardens and landscaping for Cherokee Elementary School and helped form McLain School Foundation;

bought a block of abandoned houses and trashed property at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. in 2010 to begin transforming into a community gardenpark;

bought an abandoned church building at 5920 N. Owasso Ave. and moved the community center into it in 2011, and planted the community orchard;

created The Welcome Table Free Corner Store Food Pantry in 2012. Became using the name The Welcome Table Church. 

5-7 people transformed the small church into a missional community that serves more than 1000 people a month; our worship service is still 3-12 people usually when we worship as our own group; we also worship with other churches each month as well. Grow smaller to do bigger things.

Area We Serve:

Primarily from 46^th St. N. to 76^th St. N. and from Highway 75 to Osage County Line; all within the McLain School boundary; far north Tulsa and Turley community area but our food store also serves the Sperry area. We are located in 74126, one of the lowest income zipcodes in the Tulsa area with a life expectancy 14 years lower than midtown Tulsa. 12,500 people.

Current Offerings:

Twice a Week Free Food Store; 4-5 times a year Mobile Pantry giving out 5 tons of food in one hour; occasional Mobile Eatery from Food Bank

Computer Center/Free Wifi….Free Books….Clothes and More (take what you need; leave what you can)….Community Art Studio and Art Events…Washer/Dryer…Community Recycling Bin…Weekly 12-Step Recovery

Community Holiday Events and Festivals…Monthly Community Planning…Monthly Turley Area Seniors

Community GardenPark and Orchard and Free weekly meals at the Park

Current Community Projects

Abandoned Properties: Demolition or Upkeep….66^th and N. Lewis Intersection Transformation…Welcome to Turley Sign Project…Roadside Wildflowers/Trash Pickup….Prairie Trails Wildflower Preservation Rest Area

Planting Project Seeds: In Conversation or In Vision

Cherokee School Repurposing…Scattered Site Low Rent Housing Program, plus “Relocation Homes” transforming abandoned homes….Osage Prairie Trail Awareness and Appreciation Event(s) and Community Info Kiosks…Far North Main Street from 46^th to 66^th St. on N. Peoria Ave….Community Lay Health Advocate Program (turning health clinics inside out)

Current Partners

University of Oklahoma-Tulsa…Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma…Tulsa Health Department North Regional Wellness Center…Tulsa Food Security Council…Tulsa Community Gardening Association…McLain School Foundation…Turley Community Association…Turley United Methodist Church…Turley Fire and Rescue Dept…Tulsa County O’Brien Park and Recreation…Sarah’s Residential Living Center…Newsome Community Farms…Oklahoma State University Extension Dept…The LightHouse/Gilcrease Elementary Schools..Tulsa Sponsoring Committee, Industrial Areas Foundation.  

www.turleyok.blogspot.com www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com Follow us on Facebook 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9dyXSnEGlg&feature=youtu.be

Background on the 3Rs

Relocation, Reconciliation, Redistribution

Comes from the life and work of the civil rights leader and community development activist and African American pastor and author John Perkins of Mississippi who moved back to the south in the heart of the civil rights struggle, was jailed and beaten, and grew ministries that greatly impacted his community, launching a national organization and 3Rs movement. www.ccda.org. He has also been an influence on the new monastic movement and the new friars movement. See the books by Shane Claiborne and Scott Bessenecker. It is a “holistic church” approach, as he often says, that truly balances worship, learning, living in community, and service instead of churches that spend so much time and energy and resources on “proclaiming a message” that they don’t make practicing and embodying their faith, making it real in the world, equally as or more important. 

Form missional teams in an abandoned place with Remainers, Returners, Relocators for they each have their particular experiences and gifts.

Relocation:

Go where the need is, not where the numbers are.

A spectrum of ways to relocate: from moving in to poverty areas to spending time, money, resources in them and forming relationships there on a regular basis even if you live elsewhere at the moment.

Relocating helps you to truly understand the “felt needs” of those in need and therefore is critical to understanding your mission. Spend time learning from those in the area before you relocate there.

To every fear expressed about relocating, Perkins would respond: “That’s why you need to go.”

The Relocation Strategy:

 A. get to know the area by working with others in it or working with a group that works with the poor in another area.

 B. Share your vision with the church.

C. Form a ministry team.

 D. Become a community with your team for over a year or two.

 E. Get special training for your team or a big part of it.

 F. Choose the community of most needs.

 G. Outline a target area: this is important as we have a tendency to take on too much and dilute our relationship power; he says if the community has a lot of subdivisions then your target area might be simply six blocks; if it is an area of apartments your area might be one single apartment complex.

 H. Build relationships and allow even the friends you have made first to help you choose where to live and to point you to it.

 I. Listen to the people, visit them, invite them. Plan to stay. (He encourages people to commit to 15 years).

J. Once you begin to act, begin with bible study or prayer group.

 K. Work with children.

 L. Raise up indigenous leaders to take over what you start.

 M. Join or establish a church in the area; join is the first and best option, but if can’t find healthy one, start one.

 N. Respond to the needs, begin the redistribution.

O. In developing leaders to help you in the work of the 3Rs, I like to use and adapt his three ways of recognizing gifted people to work with: those who evidence

1. “people of peace” (Luke 10); non-anxious presences, people of inner abundance even amid much external scarcity;

2. Servanthood, are they willing to be led, see where their growing edges are?

3. Fellowship,  are they comfortable participating in all aspects of community?

Reconciliation:

For Perkins, and for us, Reconciliation is most directly focused on racial and ethnic reconciliation, giving the history of our service area and its current demographics. But reconciliation is a broader mission that includes all kinds of ways the culture tends to disrupt and divide and oppress peoples.

Reconciliation is the ongoing spiritual work of vulnerability, trust, forgiveness, letting others from a less privileged position take leads and be teachers; it means working on reconciliation with those within the ministry team as well, and with our closest neighbors, all of which can be tougher than a vague commitment to meeting with and working with people across ethnic, etc lines.

It means not being too illusioned at the onset of relationships and relocation that it turns into deep disillusionment and causes us to leave.

Don’t rush into the third R of redistribution without not only working on relocation but seeking reconciliation; this is what will help shape and inform the redistribution work.

Perkins points out that a church working on reconciliation won’t be a consumer church because it is not what people are seeking to engage with; it goes against the grain of church adopting the homogenous unit principle of people seeking and staying with those like themselves.

Reconciliation begins with the person and the church reconciling, or keeping in balance or right relationships, their polarities of Doing (action) and Being (reflection and nurture). The challenges of relocation (returning, remaining) and the hard work of redistribution can only be met with the centerpiece of reconciliation focus.

Redistribution:

This is scary to many because it focuses on shared common goods as well as sharing the Common Good. We tend to think of people who do this as “saints” but that is a way to distance ourselves from the calling of engaging in redistribution.

There is not just one model. Not only the person and family and church commit to sharing goods, but also working to see that government does its job of caring for the vulnerable with resources, and calling on businesses to invest in abandoned places and projects and partners, and for a variety of non profits to be created or nurtured in the areas.

Commitment to a “God’s Dream” Economy vs. the “American Dream” economy.

Also not just focusing on people as receivers of goods, but helping to create them as producers, owners of businesses; that way they grow community health by already living in the area and not like business people who use the area but live elsewhere.

Church as an economic institution for the impoverished area, employing neighbors and helping to start and spin off businesses.

The Missional Church Background

Revronrobinson@aol.com

1.     We have entered an era where we need a “bigger bandwidth” of church manifestations because we are not in a one-size fits all world any longer. People increasingly are finding spiritual community and relationships outside of congregations. Barna’s projection: 70 percent in 2000 connected in congregations; down to 35 percent in 2025; will be co-equal with alternative faith communities, and close behind will be communities based on popular culture media and arts. 

2.     Terms. Missional: Being Sent, to Serve. Not necessarily the same as a Church Mission, or Mission Statement; The opposite of old style “Missionary” church which went to others to convert them to become the church; the mission-al church goes to be with others and to be converted (especially in focus and in forms) by them, and their needs, in order to better serve. “Mission Field” is the place where church becomes itself missionally, where it is sent, and lives out its covenant with the world beyond it; it is the answer to the question who does the church exist for, why does it exist, and in particular for whom does one’s heart (or God’s heart) break for? Can be very narrow and specific, such as one apartment complex or school or zipcode or group of people struggling with a specific situation. “Missional Community” can be on its own, or connected with others and with a church or group of churches; can be various sizes though usually core groups no more than 12 to 20. Can be Two or More. Other names often associated are Incarnational Church, Externally-Focused Church, New Monastic. It is sometimes seen as a category of the “Emergent or Emerging Church” but Emergent is most often seen as a postmodern worship reformation movement, with missional overtones and connections; Missional in focus usually includes worship, but doesn’t have to, and worship may be with various churches as well as or in place of its own worshipping group.

3.     The Shift from The Churched Culture where Church was Primary and Mission Field was secondary and was a resource for the church, to Unchurched/DeChurched Culture where church has been marginalized and Mission Field has become Primary, so church now must flow toward the mission field rather than expecting the mission field to flow toward it. In the old culture, Church found its mission in how it differentiated itself from other churches, which put the focus on the church institutionally and making more members was its mission, especially if it was a church where most of its members came from other churches; this put added stress on institutional membership; in the emerging culture, where mission field is primary, as the external community put less focus on churches, the churches increased their focus on themselves. “The mission” used to be to perpetuate churches in a world where the “missional field” flowed toward the church; but in a world where the church as institution has been marginalized, and the missional field has  become primary, so too the church should shift from focusing on building itself up to engagement with and building up the world around it, its missional field.  The movement resulted in movement from focus on membership to ministries in the world with or without people who identify as members or even as adherents to a particular church or faith.

4.     Church Doesn’t Have or Create A Mission; The Mission Creates and Has The Church.  Theologically speaking, the mission of the church, or ecclesiology, is a salvific, healing response, soteriology, to the suffering and the ways that we have been separated, hamartiology, from the image of God and from the aims of that Imago Dei being manifest in beloved community. So we are to be oriented toward those who are suffering; suffering comes in many forms. Discover the suffering you are called to address and create church to respond to it.

Church is not to be content to be a safe home until all homes are safe. Church is not to be content to be growing and thriving in a community that is suffering and declining. Don’t be the best church IN your community, but be the best church FOR your community. Start making shifts in focus From internal to external ministries, from program development to people development, from church-based to world-based leadership.

5.     Four Paths, or The Loop, of Church-ing: 1. Missional Service; 2. Community Life in order to better serve; 3. Discipleship/Leadership in order to have healthier communities in order to better serve; 4. Worship that refreshes the soul and deepens the community and sparks the desire for discipleship/leadership for the missional service.

6.     Focus not on “a church” but on “the church” which can have many manifestations. Church not a what, but a who; Church anywhere, anytime, by anyone. Grow smaller to do bigger things.

12 Marks of New Monasticism (many of these can be easily adopted by theologically diverse groups in case of #6, and in the case of #8 can be expanded)

1.     "Relocation to Abandoned Places of Empire."

2.     "Sharing Economic Resources with Fellow Community Members."

3.     "Hospitality to the Stranger."

4.     "Lament for Racial Divisions Within the Church and Our Communities Combined with the Active Pursuit of a Just Reconciliation."

5.     "Humble Submission to Christ's Body, the Church."

6.     “Intentional Formation in the Way of Christ and the Rule of the Community Along the Lines of the Old Novitiate."

7.     "Nurturing Common Life Among Members of Intentional Community."

8.     "Support for Celibate Singles Alongside Monogamous Married Couples and Their Children."

9.     "Geographical Proximity to Community Members Who Share a Common Rule of Life."

10.                        "Care for the Plot of God's Earth Given to Us Along with Support of Our Local Economies."

11.                        "Peacemaking in the Midst of Violence and Conflict Resolution."

12.                        "Commitment to a Disciplined Contemplative Life."

Books For Learning More About Missional Church:

*The Almost Church Revitalized, and Church Do’s and Don’ts and The Church We Yearn For, by Michael Durall;

*Missional Renaissance and also Missional Communities by Reggie McNeal;

*The Shaping of Things To Come, and The Faith of Leap, by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch;

*Exiles by Frost, and The Forgotten Ways by Hirsch; and On The Verge by Hirsch and David Ferguson;

The Road to Missional by Michael Frost; The Permanent Revolution by Hirsch and Tim Crimmin; Right Here, Right Now by Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford

Introducing the Missional Church, and also Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, by Alan Roxburgh

Launching Missional Communities by Mike Breen

The Abundant Community by John McNight and Peter Block, see also McKnight's Turning Communities Inside Out

Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent Donovan;

*Welcoming Justice, and Let Justice Roll Down, and With Justice For All, and Restoring At-Risk Communities, by John Perkins, and Follow Me To Freedom by Perkins and Shane Claiborne

*The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne,

Houses That Change The World, Wolfgang Simson,

*Change The World by Michael Slaughter

Emerging Church by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs,

The Organic Church, and Search and Rescue, and Church 3.0 by Neil Cole,

Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen,

*The New Conspirators by Tom Sine,

*The New Friars, and also Living Mission by Scott Bessenecker,

*The Tangible Kingdom, and The Gathered AND Sent Church, and Bivo, by Hugh Halter and/or Matt Smay;

The New Monasticism and School(s) for Conversion, and The Awakening of Hope, by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove,

Economy of Love, by Claiborne and others

 The Church is Flat, by Tony Jones

Revolution, by George Barna, Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, UnChristian by David Kinnamon;

The Secret Message of Jesus, by Brian McLaren

American Religion: Contemporary Trends, by Mark Chavez

Church Morph by Eddie Gibbs,

Reimagine The World by Bernard Brandon Scott,

Under The Radar by Bill Easum,

An Altar in the World and Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor,

Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer,

Inside The Organic Church by Bob Whitesel.

Lyle Schaller’s books especially Discontinuity and Hope, and The New Contexts For Ministry, and What We Have Learned, and Small Congregation, Big Potential, and From Geography to Affinity;

Postmodern Pilgrims by Leonard Sweet

The House Church Manual by William Tenny-Brittain

Small Church At Large, Robin Trebilcock. 

  

Does Making More Church Members Make The World A Better Place?

I.             Does making more Unitarian Universalists make the world a better place?

Update Intro: Should have added that for the church the question is also WHO are you making the world a better place for; making the world a better place for some means making it worse for others. So just making it a better place still demands discernment and a preferential option for the poor...

When talking about the what and why of our missional ministry, I say that our goal is not to create more Unitarian Universalists, or for me as a Christian it is not to create more Christians. I get the feeling that is somewhat of a radical sentiment and statement. I don’t think it should be the goal of other UUs or Christians, et al either. I came across a post in a facebook group the other day that seemed to crystallize for me why this is the case. The post was passing on the statement that we needed to grow our churches because, to paraphrase, “the world would be a better place if we had more Unitarian Universalists in it.” I flinched a little when I read that and had to figure out why, beyond just the sectarian impulse behind it. It would have been the same if it would have said the world would be a better place if we had more x or y or z faith communities and traditions.

Colleagues Tom Schade and Teresa Cooley remind us lately, and I think I have mentioned it in a sermon or too :) that becoming Unitarian Universalist (or others for others) is not the end in itself, but is a means to a greater end. It is those greater ends we need to keep our eyes on, and our resources pointed toward, creating neighborhoods and communities that themselves help create lives of abundance and commitment to the most vulnerable and endangered in our society. Creating religious institutions is certainly one way toward that end, but only if they do not see themselves (and their beliefs) as the end in themselves; in fact, they may, in various ways through what they do and not do and keep people from doing, work against making the world a better place, especially for those beyond them (and maybe within them too) who are suffering the most. This is what happens when a church focuses on becoming the “best” church in a community instead of the best church for the community. It is what happens when a church thrives while a community around it declines.  

It is what I mean when I say that creating more Unitarian Universalists does not make the world a better place. In fact I can see ways that making more Methodists, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, etc might in fact make the world a better place to even a greater degree than making more Unitarian Universalists even though I resonate a little more closely, or a lot more in some cases, with the theological tradition of our faith community than others. Since there are more of them to begin with, and there is much good being done by people of these other faith communities and traditions, perhaps making more of them would make an even bigger difference in making the world a better place. But if I were in one of these other faith communities I think I would be saying the same thing, that making more people into Methodists, Muslims, etc. is not the end of our mission in trying to make the world a better place.

Is it then “by their fruits you will know them”? Are the best fruits those of “right ideas” about the Ultimate, or “right relationships” with the most vulnerable, shamed, and outcast? Which fruit is deemed the “most religious”? This is especially true in areas where there is a lack of any groups living in and with and for the poor and marginalized and it is not a case of “other groups” doing this mission. In our area, for example, the landscape is dotted with churches only opened on Sundays while buildings continue to be abandoned around them, or buses that come in from the big churches in other area who pick people up and bring them back and ignore the neighborhoods they live in, all to focus on creating a pseudo-community feel-good experience weekly; like a spiritual hit. These kind of areas seem to be growing in number throughout the US. It is an ages-old situation and question, and one the Hebrew prophets particularly, and the Christian early monks who moved away from Empire’s influence kept alive in their times.

II.           Why The Shift in Focus: Flipping Church in the Unchurched Culture… 

It is important to put this all in a wider context. If nothing else it should help alleviate anxiety, blame, shame, and conspiracy theories. This shift in ultimate focus is an aspect of living in the wake of the cultural move in the West from the churched to dechurched/unchurched culture. In the churched culture (that began to really lose its privileged place throughout the USA by 1963) the point of church life was, mistakenly of course but still the dominant perception, to continue the existence and power of the institution of the church in a world populated by the institutions of other churches, faiths. The church was primary, the center, and the mission field was secondary, was a resource for the church. People tended to become or return to becoming the church-goers of their families and neighborhoods; brand loyalty was high and clearly defined culturally and there was little competitiveness between the churches, and littler still between the churches and the culture and its various opportunities outside the church. In this world making more Unitarian Universalists, for example, was the way the church realized its beingness in the churched-focused world. 

Especially if you were in a church that also grew more and more percentage of its own coming in from other churches, then making more UUs became increasingly important, it would be seen, for its survival. In the dialectic of the age, the more the community became less focused on the institutional church, the more the churches became focused on themselves as institutional beings. “The mission” used to be to perpetuate themselves in a world where the “missional field” flowed toward the church; in a world where the church as institution has been marginalized, the missional field has shifted and become primary, and so too then should “the mission.” In response the church today either flows toward the missional field, or it dies, gradually or quickly depending on circumstances. (There are admittedly many ways the church can flow, can empty itself, toward the missional field).

Is making more Unitarian Universalists (Christian, etc.) a bad thing then, or an unnecessary thing? Only I think if we make more Unitarian Universalists who think that the purpose of their faith is themselves and what they believe, and that it is more important to have and promote the right religious beliefs instead of the right religious relationships. But aren’t ideas, beliefs, important and have   consequences? Yes. For example, I say that what I try to do as a leader of a missional community among the vulnerable has all to do with how I understand and experience following Jesus, and comes from a theological commitment to a God of liberation and radical solidarity. But in reality what has been manifested here has been enriched and deepened not so much by thinking about missional life and holding the right ideas about it but from living in it. It has come more from failing at visions and endeavors and being able to respond to the openings and relationships that happen as a result.

In the postmodern culture, the primary path of the religious way has shifted from understanding to experience, as from knowing to mystery, or as the ecologist have an extreme way of saying (Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry) moving from knowledge-based to “ignorance”-based systems. Still, isn’t there an ideological battle on between liberal and fundamentalist or conservative views of reality and “God”? One that requires us to promote our tradition’s ideas (encapsulated as “getting our message” right and easy to communicate and doing so as widely as possible) as the primary purpose of our being, and all the rest, so to speak, is commentary; so that spiritual practice, faith formation, and service to and with others are byproducts that round out in a holistic way our core purpose of waging a struggle over truth? I wonder at times if our “theist-humanist” conflict didn’t leave us and our systems in a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder where we are frequently triggered to still be looking to solve our identity, and promote “our side.” There is a sense in this approach, this underlying metaphor, that worship then becomes our side on a battlefield and the sermon the bullet fired toward others who have been firing at us or what we stand for; is it then another legacy of our hyper-protestantism, that continuing Reformation struggle, or even ghosts of Puritanism past?

Still another way of framing it might be: Was Servetus burned at the stake and David imprisoned so today we can say their ideas, or some semblance of them having been morphed into the current spirit of Unitarian Universalism, both theistically and otherwise, are not what we are primarily committed to keeping alive in the world? Yes. I am more concerned with and am more urgent about keeping alive those in my zipcode where there is a 14 year life expectancy gap with the zipcode just six miles away in a wealthier area (and by extension all those imperiled by even greater inequality and injustice today regardless where they are). That missional focus, that our reason for being is in being sent (hence missio) into the places and peoples around us who have been left out and left behind, and in doing so we come into our own more fully and grow in imitation of the beloved community the more we attempt to initiate it in the world, is something too that’s even greater than preserving and promoting the “how” we do church, our polity, what we used to say was our ultimate commonality no matter the liturgical form or covenantal language a church takes as its own. We don’t want to grow the numbers of Unitarian Universalists so that the democratic process in religious will flourish. Nor, for that matter, so any of the Seven Principles either will be adopted by more people. They can be and are being championed by any number of faith communities and more secular groups. Our calling is still higher than these, and the seven principles are also means themselves to put to use toward the ends of missional transformations in the world.

Again, I believe we are experiencing a shift from those who are seeking and coming into, or staying in, a church because of what they have come to believe and think already (the mark of the churched culture) to a condition where people are seeking and coming into or staying in a church because it is open and nurturing to what their beliefs might become as they grow and deepen as persons through the primary religious act of healing engagement in the world beyond themselves (the mark of the unchurched culture).

III.          The New Transient (Secondary) and The Permanent (Primary)

Seeing this shift in what is primary (mission field) and what is secondary (sectarian institutionalism) will, ironically, help us to survive and thrive in the new landscape of culture. Both are needed in the holistic system. But one is the end and the other the means, and it is flipped from what it used to be, and that makes a world of difference in how to impact the world now. Unitarian Universalism (Christianity, Buddhism, et al too) matters. Not because there is a difference and uniqueness it must preserve in order to be itself. Not so people of like minds have a place to call home and celebrate their like minds (or like values). No, it matters because it offers, or can offer, a way--an inspiration now, even a history of serving a God of lovingfreedomandjustice to point the way--for people to connect and grow with others into a more abundant people creating more abundant communities in the world.

UUism, and others, offer particular ways to do this. They are more particular in nature perhaps than peculiar in nature. Some people like to contrast or pit UUism, for example, up against “liberal Christianity” for example and bemoan its attraction or similar markers to liberal Christian ways and warn against “losing ourselves” in being like them, in being like what we, in large measure, came from and in some places still are woven into. But “liberal Christianity” has within it many particular strands, and is being overlaid these days with new strands like emergent and missional and others that are putting the old dichotomies like liberal and evangelical into dustbins. This openness to the Spirit wherever it might lead is not a cause for concern; in these times of “generous orthodoxy” the many tribal differences can be celebrated and be seen as portals for connecting with one another. UUism, in all its many tribes, can adopt the same generous approach, and apply it to those communities within UUism that may draw closer to liberal Christianity just as some in those spheres may be drawing closer to us; the same for some realms of Buddhist or other spiritual paths. Some people find us of particular interest (in our varied forms of “us-ness” and at rare times too even when we go to them instead of expecting them to come find us) and we are appealing to them in ways that they might not so readily find with other communities. We can share with other communities the purpose of helping people “to set their lives on fire loving the hell out of this world” in this new spiritual climate change without being anxious about either existing identity or future existence.

 That is why One of the particular promising ways that Unitarian Universalism at its best offers this kind of connection for people; in other words, why it matters—how it can connect people with others in order to make the world a better place. This is in our historic and current manifestation as a radically free church. We have such radical congregationalism, in the best interconnected sense (one that is in tune with the manifestations of an open-sourced world), that we can be a seedbed for experimentation for faith in the post-congregational world in ways that other religious bodies might not; which, of course makes it all the more painful why we have not launched, as another has, the vision of a thousand new churches in a thousand different ways by 2020. (By the way, this emphasis for the church of freedom as our marker supercedes the church of diversity; I say that it is not our existing diversity—theologically of course, since we seem to have little of the various other kinds of diversities in communities--that makes us valuable in this world; it is our radical ability to form free non-creedal communities and relationships of covenant, even if those communities use specific theological language and liturgies, that allows for the diversity we have to grow and flourish).  

Of course the fact that it is hard for us to live into and out of this promise and this potential for new communities causes us pause; our very success at bearing fruit of theological diversity out of our foundation of freedom means that we have elevated the presence of belief and the juggling of its diversity to the forefront, especially within specific faith communities, at the very time when much of our world is moving itself “beyond mere belief” and toward missional transformation and a desire for communitas, that form of group that pivots itself toward beloved community beyond itself. This is an issue not just for Unitarian Universalism, of course, but is particularly fraught for all those inheritors of Schleirmacher and the “third way” of religion where the meaning comes from how the faith is messaged to the world. We can become captive to our message, and our need for one.

Finally, the question to ask of course, and that underlies all this speculation, becomes eventually: What difference would it make to the “least, the last, the lost”, to the variously “disconnected” if our/your community/denomination ceased to exist? How many beyond yourself would notice? Not that it is a real concern for the forseeable future, and I suspect the bigger congregations would be “islands of strength” carrying on without the national institutions. But in pondering it, we move beyond the issue of whether growing more Unitarian Universalists (or others remember) itself makes the world a better place…we now face the question of the abyss, of mortality, of what if the world creates Odd Fellows of us, (I.O.O.F. lodge) where we have historical architecture, and here and there small groups, continuing to decline in proportion to the population growth around them, enacting old rituals, taking care of their own when it comes time to be buried? Well, here, the Odd Fellows are one of our partners and while all that is true of them, they are one of the few presences remaining in an abandoned place of Empire, and like the monks of old they are bearing witness and making the world around them a little better than it would be otherwise. 

We have to be willing to die; only then is resurrection possible. We mustn’t go gently into that good night either, trying to find ways to keep what we have had, making a fist to hold onto it tightly, and the tighter our fist the more slips through our fingers. The lesson from today’s missional planters, and the organic church movement, is that there is liberation in being able to “grow smaller to do bigger things” and being freed from maintenance to focus on mission impact, even the ability to move on. It grows a kind of radical trust, as Jesus’ parable framed it, in both the seeds planted and in the Sower. The goal is not to have a building and programs with your name on it 100 years from now and people still doing pretty much what you have done; that is not immortality but narcissism.

I remember words by the Rev. Carl Scovel entitled “Ghosts, Shadows, Witnesses” about the relationship of Christianity and Christians within Unitarian Universalism; in a broader sense now it seems an apt metaphor and message for the relationship of Unitarian Universalism (again, or other faith communities) within the broader culture. He said something to the extent that Christians remaining in the UUA could be viewed, by themselves and by others, as ghosts from the past that haunt, and scare, others they come into contact with, and that perhaps need to be met with ghostbusters?; or they can be viewed as shadows, reminders of what they carry with them even if they don’t see them all the time, something not them but illuminates what they are, good to have around in an antithetical way, a reminder of what not to become or lapse back into; or they can be viewed as witnesses, witnesses to a good news, to another way and world possible, a witness not just spoken but one lived out in response to one’s faithfulness to one’s God and that God’s mission in the world instead of from a sense of anxious scarcity and identity crisis. Witnesses measure success in different ways. Witnesses thrive on boldness. Witnesses live in but not for today. Witnesses make the world a better place now and tomorrow.  

Updated MIssional Church Nuggets

The Missional Church Conversation

Rev. Ron Robinson

We have entered an era where we need a “bigger bandwidth” of church manifestations because we are not in a one-size or kind fits all world any longer.

The Church Doesn’t Have or Create A Mission; The Mission Creates and Has The Church. Go to others; not expect others to Come to us (recognize shift from churched to unchurched culture); Be Incarnational more than Attractional.

Church is not to be content to be a safe home until all homes are safe. Church is not to be content to be growing and thriving in a community that is suffering and declining. Don’t be the best church IN your community, but be the best church FOR your community. From internal to external ministries, from programs to people, from church-based to world-based leadership development.

Church of the 3Rs: Relocation. Reconciliation. Redistribution. Growing teams of “remainers, returners, relocaters” for renewal in “Abandoned Places of the Empire”. Connect The Disconnected. Grow Faith Where Life Happens

A Mission Statement doesn’t equal Mission. Focusing on mission as purpose is not the same as missional which, from the Greek word missio, to be sent.

Missional has turned upside down the old connotation of the missionary; now being missional is not about the church going to convert the world, but going into the world to be converted by it, to discover how best to serve it and transform it and ourselves, by “meeting God already present and active in the neighborhood.”

The Post-Modern Culture: We no longer compartmentalize; we live in a blurry yet holistic world; boundaries of sacred and secular overlap; spiritual and material, personal and political or social are not kept separate; no one can go it alone in such a world; the church and non faith based nonprofits and business and government and philanthropic groups all need to play a part in the Mission, but they won’t inhabit completely separate realms but will be partnering. Can’t say this problem is only for government or this role is only for the church. Post Modern EPIC Characteristics: Experiential, Participative, Image-Driven, Communal. Emerging Church Characteristics: Focus on life of Jesus, blurring secular/sacred spaces, and community.

Four Paths, or The Loop, of Church-ing: 1. Missional Service; 2. Community Life; 3. Discipleship/Leadership; 4. Worship that refreshes the soul for service.

Focus not on “a church” but on “the church” which can have many manifestations. Church not a what, but a who; Church anywhere, anytime, by anyone. Postcongregational. Grow smaller to do bigger things.

Ask the questions: if your church ceased to exist, who would notice and who would be affected? Who does your heart break for? (along with, from Engaging with Sacred Texts, who does God’s heart break for?)

12 Marks of New Monasticism:

1.     "Relocation to Abandoned Places of Empire."

2.     "Sharing Economic Resources with Fellow Community Members."

3.     "Hospitality to the Stranger."

4.     "Lament for Racial Divisions Within the Church and Our Communities Combined with the Active Pursuit of a Just Reconciliation."

5.     "Humble Submission to Christ's Body, the Church."

6.     “Intentional Formation in the Way of Christ and the Rule of the Community Along the Lines of the Old Novitiate."

7.     "Nurturing Common Life Among Members of Intentional Community."

8.     "Support for Celibate Singles Alongside Monogamous Married Couples and Their Children."

9.     "Geographical Proximity to Community Members Who Share a Common Rule of Life."

10.                        "Care for the Plot of God's Earth Given to Us Along with Support of Our Local Economies."

11.                        "Peacemaking in the Midst of Violence and Conflict Resolution."

12.                        "Commitment to a Disciplined Contemplative Life."

Broken Church, Broken World, Broken Missio Dei: Taking first steps in and toward wholeness

http://missionalchurchnetwork.com/church-revitalization-missio-dei/ This is a good missional church site. This short recent post there points to the truth that all church revitalization needs to be grounded in, and directed to, the Missio Dei (use the language that fits for you but captures some sense of the Transcendent). If you don't, you spin your wheels, you burn out, you end up in deeper internal conflict because you haven't been aimed externally.

However, for many existing church communities where there has not been a healthy practice of leadership, of spiritual vulnerable and trust; churches where all of that has been broken and diminished; how do you take the necessary risks beyond your self, your community, your identity, that are first steps that need to be taken to live more missionally? To some extent, do you have to get yourself together first before you can live outside yourself?

Yes and no.

I think the worst thing an internally conflicted and spiritually unhealthy group can do is to focus on itself solely; it is why we say focus on the needs of the world and let that shape the needs of the church to be able to respond to the needs of the world. And often such a church is unhealthy because in large part it is focused on itself and doing things all together and doing things perfectly, afraid to fail, living in unnamed shame and guilt and fear. And so turning outside, knowing you do so as a broken internal community, is a way to become unstuck in that particular emotional field.

Still, it is vital in the permission-giving culture--which is a basis for missional movement--that practices of healthy leadership, accountability, transparency, "two or more" partnership teams and collaborations, good self-differentiated boundaries all be evidenced to be able to support the life of the church beyond its narrow self; otherwise you not only just move the arena for harm and likely harm others.

The vision, I think, is to teach and cast the practices of healthy leadership as the means to the end, and evaluate how it is being practiced or not, and acknowledging that it will be a growing reality not an already realized one, that mistakes will be made and feelings will be hurt and that grace will be present as well, even while working toward the missional ends.

The missio dei is then to be discovered and walked with both in the workings of the broken church, and in the workings of broken leaders too (but as a means to move the church beyond the church), and  in the workings of that spirit already at large in the broken world calling the church to come join it. And I would say, in a more radical theological move, this is all possible because the Missio Dei itself is broken, and/or incomplete, as well, needing the church and the world's creative healing participation to help it become more fully Itself to lift us up into our own fuller self.

Question on Missional Church, and Notes on its Characteristics

Ministry in Abandoned Places: Love Reaching Out with Three Rs

Relocation. Reconciliation. Redistribution.

Based on life and work and writing of John Perkins, civil rights leader and community renewal author.

Growing teams of “remainers, returners, relocaters” for renewal

Characteristics of Missional Church:

Go to others; not expect others to Come to us (recognize shift from churched to unchurched culture); Incarnational more than Attractional.

Church is not ultimately about attracting those who are of like minds to form a spiritual community to celebrate their values, but church is ultimately about the healing of the community beyond itself (though it takes a wounded healer vulnerable church of caring souls to do that}. Church is not to be content to be a safe home until all homes are safe. Church is not to be growing and thriving in a community that is suffering and declining. Don’t be the best church in your community, but be the best church for your community. 

Historical Grounding for This External Focus Move: The free church tradition of our congregationalism that traces back to the Cambridge Platform of 1648, establishing the covenantal foundation of our polity: Conrad Wright (Walking Together: Polity and Participation in UUism) highlights these covenants in his lecture “The Doctrine of the Church For Liberals”: external covenants: church and parish/world; church and God. Internal covenants respond to the external covenants, giving the church its shape to be able to respond to the external covenants: Person and Church; Church and Minister/Elected Leaders; Church and Church; Minister and Minister. We too often focus on the four internal covenants, the “how” covenants forgetting the two “why we exist” covenants.

The Church Doesn’t Have or Create A Mission; The Mission Creates and Has The Church

Mission Statement doesn’t equal Mission. And focusing on mission as purpose is not the same as missional/being sent. A group’s mission might be seen as completely inward focused, for example, so just being clear on a mission isn’t the same as being missional.

Missional has turned upside down the old connotation of the missionary; now being missional is not about the church going to convert the world, but going into the world to be converted by it, to discover how best to serve it and transform it.

You don’t vote on missional essence; not something you create and can decide to change; you uncover it, reveal it, spread it. For example, our mission at The Welcome Table is given to us through our commitment to “making the spirit of Jesus visible in the world” and so the essence of that spirit is in Jesus’ mission statement in Luke 4 and Matthew 25 to free the oppressed, bring good news to the poor, heal the sick, feed the hungry, etc., serve the least of these. Non-Christian UU or other churches might frame being missional in other terms and use other sources: “make Love and Justice visible in the world” for example. The key piece in missional form of church is making it visible in the world, not just to ourselves.

The Post-Modern Culture: We no longer compartmentalize; we live in a blurry yet holistic world; boundaries of sacred and secular overlap; spiritual and material, personal and political or social are not kept separate; no one can go it alone in such a world; the church and non faith based nonprofits and business and government and philanthropic groups all need to play a part in the Mission, but they won’t inhabit different realms but will be partnering. Can’t say this problem is only for government or this role is only for the church.

Church is not ultimately about meeting personal needs, but about helping people get over ourselves, beyond ourselves (again while in the process of growing in health ourselves from the mutuality of care; but don't wait for perfect fully fuctioning people to be formed before engaging in the healing work with others for others, especially with the most struggling places and people in a community); not with the aim of creating lives of comfort and convenience and community, but of conscience and commitment for others. Church is about cultivating lives and communities that grow and go inward and outward.

Church heals the world not by saving individuals, not by focusing ultimately on individuals and their personal beliefs and attitudes, by privileging “the mind” but by connecting and growing and setting loose in the world persons as communities of missional disciples, persons who have increased their own capacity for generosity and service, especially serving those most vulnerable. We grow through 1. service, through 2. Community, through 3. discipleship/study/faith formation, and through 4. worship.

Focus not on “a church” but on “the church” which can have many manifestations. Church not a what, but a who; makes all the difference.

Don’t focus first or primarily on changing the church; focus on changing the world and the church will change.

Don’t expect mission to flow out of worship, but worship will be a response to mission.

Grow smaller to do bigger things

Ask the question: if your church ceased to exist, who would notice and who would be affected?

Programs and events don’t transform lives as much as relationships do.

Church not about showing up at a specific time and a specific place in order to get a message; especially the younger someone is the more the content has to go to them when they want it and can receive it.

The church does not go out to convert the world, but to be converted by the world as God is already there ahead of the church transforming the world. Wake up each morning and ask: where can I go meet God in the neighborhood today?

Shift from church of Three A’s---Affluence, Appearance, Achievement, all inward and identity focused; to church of Three R’s---Relocation, Redistribution, Reconciliation, which are focused on Others.

Going Missional or External: 1. Partner with other churches, and with groups outside yourself; 2. Eat together more often with other groups and in the spaces of others and the public spaces; hold potlucks in parks and places where the hungry go; 3. Look for ways to relocate worship or start a new worship in a new location, especially in a poor neighborhood; 4. Turn your space over to others; likewise hold your board and other meetings often in the spaces of others. 5. Send teams of 5-7 people away from your routine gatherings to go be the church in designated relocated spaces around you, such as apartment complex, etc., reporting back to you, being your partners your scouts; 6. see smallness with a big vision and sense of abundance, take the opportunity to move from being vulnerable under old paradigm to being vanguard of new paradigm; 7. divide up your church and do a re-start as networked geographical mission communities. Instead of small groups meeting monthly, meet weekly and then save monthly for the come together time of partying, worship, sharing, learning. The curriculum of the weekly, or more, church as small group: social, study, service, celebration. 8. Keep imagining ways to have "bigger bandwidth" of a church and the church.

Postmodern led to PostChristian led to Postdenominational led to PostCongregational culture emerging: post means simply a loss of privilege or dominance or centrality.

www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com

The Missional Church F.A.Qs.

1.     what do you mean missional?

Missional comes from the Greek word missio (to be sent). it is about being Sent, being called, to be with and for others, especially those hurting for whom my heart breaks. It is not about having a spiffy mission statement, especially one that is all about one's own faith community; and it is ultimately to me not also the same thing as Purpose. One can be purpose-driven, so to speak, and yet that purpose be self-oriented and self-serving. It is why missional church folks will say that the ultimate missional purpose is not about growing an organization, adding members, making more of "us" in the world, nor is it ultimately about changing the church; it is ultimately about the healing of the world beyond any notions or perpetuation of 'us" and ultimately about changing the world. In fact, when we put our initial and immediate focus and anxiety on changing the church we perpetuate this problem by keeping our focus on us; when we focus on the world, the neighborhood, we allow the church to form in response to that focus; that is missional.

2. Doesn't it smack of being a missionary, trying to convert others, evocative of coercion and cultural imperialism?

to me, though those concerns should always be with us, it is about the very opposite, the very undoing of that kind of mission-oriented past; living in Indian Nation, having been raised in large measure by full blood Osage aunts, I am cognizant of this response; but the new sense of missional is about at heart letting the church be converted by the world; i think those who see it as another means of evangelism, of outreach, of growth, are not being true to the missional soul; this might be one of the things that we progressives can bring to the overall missional table, and are, just as we get so much from the more theologically conservative who have helped shape the overall missional church movement. it is about listening learning being an ally living with others.

3. What is "church" about it?

We say the church doesn't have a mission; the mission has a church. the church is not pre-existent in being as an organization that then tries to set out to find its mission, its why, and which then often changes as people within the organization change. Instead, the church is not a What, not by essence a 501c3 organization with a bylaws, board, budget, building; it is essentially a Who which may take that organizational form to best live missionally but it doesn't have to; it is, in one way of phrasing it, a people making the Sacred visible in the world. As such it can be two or two thousand; it can happen anywhere at anytime by anyone. One of the other lens for this is to say missional can be more about "the church" than about "a church," that is a sense of being a part of a movement, perhaps even a particular history and tradition, more so or in addition to being a part of a particular group/institution.

4. Sounds like it can just as easily be the work of a secular nonprofit, or even a socially conscious for profit business? Why think of it as church at all?

 In some ways I believe the work of the church can be done, and might be done best in some circumstances, outside of the boundaries of what is called organized church, or even what is called organic or missional or incarnational church; it is okay by me when people are fulfilling their connection to the Sacred and serving others without calling what they are doing as church; i have witnessed some churches focused so much on themselves that i personally find the Sacred more in something like the proverbial Rotary Club, or in what a group of family and friends might do. But I see it as part of the history of the church, part of the renewal and reformation of the church, and in fact part of a major hinge in history reformation as we have had happen every 500 years or so; the major threads of the missional church in its recent manifestation ove the past 30 years have been located in church communities, or by people who profess a faithfulness even though not necessarily, but often, to particular faith communities. I guess finally for me it is a personal thing; I am connected to the church and so see it as part of the church, but I have no qualms with others who aren't and don't; again for me it is the mission that connects us.

5. Sounds pretty Christian. Do you have to be Christian to be at home in the missional church?

I am a Christian so I might not be the best one to address this; I am biased I know. But I think you don't have to be. In fact many many many Christians are anything but missional, which is why the missional church movement in many ways got its start and major push there. For me it fits into a theological framework, but I don't see it as having a prerequisite of believing in, for example, the Triune God to be missional, though not all Christians believe in that of course, and though many missional church advocates would say you need to be grounded in the Triune God to be truly missional (since they/we see the Triune God as inherently missio-minded, even libertion-minded): maybe I am an outlier both ways. You will definitely need to be conversant I think with contemporary Christian theology and terms and ability to translate and to see the depths beyond the particular language in order to really, at least at this point in missional church movement history, get the most from great companions in it who cross faith community lines, but it seems inherently unmissional to create such an insider group think and membership in order to be missional. We need all we can get in the mission. There are traditions of outwardly-focused, missional living, servants in many faith traditions. I and many others get our particular way of being and immersing in mission from the inspiration and story and way of Jesus, as well as from Christian theological perspective and history, and I think we who do need to be able to use it, but we shouldn't privilege it...I do think it is hard theologically to ground and sustain a sense of Mission without a sense of the Transcendent, call it Human Spirit, or other understandings, something that orients us away from ourselves, our own, and to others (even as we recognize our interdependence and that we have our own growth always at hand).

6. So what mission are we oriented to? Is it the same for all?

 I come from a liberation theological frame of mind, so I talk about Mission being given to us, to be with "the least of these"; it has shaped the particular ministry I am involved in; but when we say the Mission creates the church, that Mission can have many particulars; one broad way to look at it is "to connect the disconnected" and that disconnection comes in many ways and in many peoples and many places; while I think there should always be an ultimate orientation of looking at how the most vulnerable, with the least resources, are being neglected and left out and should be at the table of all Mission, still there is much to be done with and for others in all neighborhoods (even if in some it might be to finally find ways to turn the resources of those neighborhoods and families toward others). There is so much suffering in all communities, all families, so we shouldn't, again, try to limit the outward turn.

7. All this talk of serving others and external focus, doesn't it tend to lead to burnout and unsustainability? What about the primacy and the need for worship?

Yes, this is why Spiritual Direction and Mission have become intertwined and of an essence to many; just as so many churches have trended toward the internal pole and paralysis and irrelevancy and disconnection with the wider community and the folks in their own neighborhoods, so a too unbalanced fixation on others, without self-care and the refreshment of the spirit that comes from spriitual disciplines including worship, will undercut the missional service and ability to be with others in a healthy way. Regarding worship: there has been a mainstream tendency to see worship as reinforcing an inward turn, a group identity, but it doesn't have to be; not only can the message of missional living be crafted and called out in worship, but worship can be seen in some ways as another method for missional communities, especially if located outside of normal venues, or involving external communities, or done in such a way that the liturgy is serving the Mission and the lives of those who may never become a part of a particular organization as members. Some missional church leaders talk about a four part path of "becoming church": begin with service to and with others, especially those most in need; next do it as a community and grow in community relationships with one another in order to do the service the best it can be done; next grow in personal growth or discipleship and leadership formation so the community can be the best it can be so that the missional service can be the best it can be; finally refresh both the personal and communal spirit and growth through worship so that the other pulses or paths of church-ing can be best realized. But not all missional communities or relationships will even have a focus on all four of these; some of the communities that may be more organic and small may dedicate themselves and their spiritual mission on just one of these paths as its focus (while for example, worshipping with other groups, or going to other churches or groups for personal growth or education and leadership development); it is part of what missional leaders call being a part of "a bigger bandwidth" of what church can be.

8. Is there a way for an established institutional very organizationally focused church to be missional? Or must we "become smaller, decentralized, in order to do bigger things."? Can a church be "attractional" and "incarnational/missional" at the same time?

Yes, I believe it can, though it might be tougher; but then again it might have more resources to be able to do so, too, if it has the will. When we say "a bigger bandwidth" we mean there will be missional manifestations or frequencies all along the spectrum or bandwidth; some churches are large and form missional communities out of what were once small group ministries; others see those small groups not as secondary but as the primary reason for church itself; some churches see the outward focus as the exhaling, and the group identity and faith formation of individuals as the inhaling, both necessary to living. At its heart missional church is more about "going to be with them" than it is the former dominant mode of "getting others to come to us to be like us." That should guide us. But it doesn't mean that you have to give up being attractional in order to be incarnational; just remember which is primary, and which ultimately is oriented most to Mission. At this point in church history, it is important not to fall too quickly into our default modes of what constitutes church; so we should question, I think, all things attractional, but ultimately make the Missional the guide. Keep thinking imagining outside the box of that default mode; for churches in a strong attractional or organizational mindset, consider all the ways, small and large, that you can begin to make the shift toward more external being, even if it is holding more events and meetings off campus, with others, for others; as well as bringing others in and sharing one's space, or giving it away, to others.

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