Given this learning, I’ve set about to find congregations who are interested in defining their life as missional and helping them live into that desire so that we can share their stories. And to do this work, I needed to find partners.

Finding partners wasn’t a piece of cake. Most people who were writing about missional church were doing it from the safety of a seminary. They’re diagnosis was compelling, but their solutions were sparse. One group, however, that was actually engaging congregations in this kind of work was Church Innovations. For over twenty years, CI has been helping congregations find their future in the mission of God. For the past seven or eight years, that has taken the form of the Partnership for Missional Church, or PMC.

My last four years at ACU, we partnered with CI to figure out whether or not this process might be a good fit for Churches of Christ. CI had done this work among a variety of denominations in South Africa, and with Presbyterians, Mennonites, Lutherans, and Episcopalians in North America, but they had never worked with Churches of Christ. During that time, we introduced PMC to a group of congregations in central Texas and a group in the Pacific Northwest. Our experiences, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, convinced me that this was a fruitful path for our congregations in Churches of Christ. This was also something Rochester College was interested in when they invited me to start the Resource Center for Missional Leadership. I am hoping that there will continue to be opportunities for me to lead Church of Christ “clusters” in PMC. This is part of my “other job” and I will be doing this work regardless of Lake Orion’s participation.

I now have stories to tell, lots of them. At the end of the PMC process in the Northwest, we did over 300 minutes of video interviews with people who participated in PMC. We have cut that down to 27 minutes so that others can get a small sense of what participants experience. You can find that video here. Just type in the word “missio” and you will be able to view it. I think you’ll find it inspiring.

But what is PMC? Great question, and I will give it a pretty detailed introduction in the next post. But for now, I want to say some things about what its not.

Its not a program. PMC is not a program you add to the programs you are already doing. In fact, PMC precedes on the premise that most congregations try to do too many things without asking what it is specifically that God has called it to. It’s less a program, and more a process of discovery. What is God’s promised and preferred future for the Lake Orion Church of Christ? PMC is interested in this question.

PMC is not interested in making you like any other congregation. Too many theories of church renewal begin with an ideal church in mind, whether that ideal church is Willow Creek or Saddleback or North Richland Hills. We think God calls each congregation to something unique and specific. You can’t find your missional calling by copying another congregation’s. PMC assumes that God has provided specific congregations everything they need to find for their future in God’s mission. Lake Orion will find different answers and directions for their future than Rochester Church, or New Market Church in Ontario, or one of the congregations in the Pacific Northwest. We are not trying to replace a congregation’s gifts with someone else’s. We are trying to innovate in congregations based precisely on the wonderful things God has already provided places like Lake Orion. In this sense, PMC is a congregation-friendly process.

PMC, therefore, is not an organization that tries to direct a group of congregations. It is true that PMC encourages congregations to work together for three years around the same sets of questions. There are several reasons for this. One reason we do this because we think congregations are most likely to learn things when they have something to which they can compare their experiences. We also find that churches are more likely to try faithful experiments when others are as well. And we also think that we see ourselves most clearly when others are helping us reflect on our experience. Everything a congregation does in PMC is related only to their own congregation. We don’t ask you to partner in projects with other congregations.There is no shared work between congregations. You share with other congregations only what you are learning and the rich fellowship of other Christians pursuing faithfulness to God’s mission. After the PMC process ends, there are no structures or offices or payments or commitments or leaders or organizations that didn’t exist before PMC started. In fact, my prediction is that Lake Orion’s sense of autonomy would be strengthened through PMC if we decide to participate.

PMC matches my own commitments to the local congregation. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be involved. Again, please post comments or questions. If you haven’t read the previous post, please do that. The more we discuss, the more likely we can exercise good judgment about these things, whether that judgment is to participate or not.

So, the most basic definition of missional church is a church that completely defines its life in relation to the mission of God. The fancy term for “mission of God,” is missio Dei, and this term has an important place in the history of theology. (When I hear “mission of God,” I’m more likely to think of John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, and dark sunglasses than I am a Latin theological phrase, so if that is more helpful feel free to go that way with me).

I know that this sounds obvious. Of course, the church’s life is defined in relation to the mission of God. But its not so obvious in other ways. The way congregations function often reveals an unspoken but very real belief that the church exists as an end in itself–that it exists for the sake of its members. And our language betrays us a little bit here. We talk about the mission of the church, not the mission of God. And this can lull us into the impression that the point of the congregation is its own life–how many attend worship, how the budget is being met, what kinds of programs we have for our children, etc. It’s not that these things are unimportant, but too often they become the primary focus of a congregation and can distract us from what God is up to in the world. I like how my Australian friends have put it: “It’s not that the church has a mission, it’s that the mission has a church.”

A second clarification worth making here is the first word in the phrase “completely defines its life in relation to the mission of God.” Congregations tend to define mission as an activity of the church performed by some and not by others. A missional church sees everything it does as mission in which everyone has a share. This would require both an expanded view of mission, and a call to every-member discipleship and ministry. What I mean by these things is significant and worth their own posts, which I might do later. But right now I’ll just point out that most congregations have a fairly narrow, and unbiblical in my estimation, understanding of mission and a way of doing church that encourages some to be doers and others spectators. I’m not slamming spectators here. With the way we’ve defined mission, its hard for them to recognize themselves as having a part. So, I’m convinced that if we expand our understanding of mission–not only as something the church does, but as a way of being–more people will find their place.

So, becoming a congregation that defines its life completely in relation to the mission of God represents fairly significant change for most churches.

One more definition of missional church. In the first paragraph, I used the phrase “new missional era.”  I don’t think it takes much explaining to convince people that our world is changing, and fairly rapidly. Missional church is a way of explaining that change. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

Here’s a common story that I encounter in congregations: they are doing everything they know to do, better than they’ve ever done it before, but with less impact. Missional church accounts for this phenomenon this way: we no longer live in the nourishing structures of Christendom. We can no longer assume that people will feel the social support or pressure to be a member of a church. We live in an increasingly pluralistic culture in which fewer and fewer people know our story, our rituals, our manner of life. To become a Christian in our new context is a cross-cultural endeavor. We can no longer assume that if we build it they will come. In this new era of mission in North America, we will increasingly need to cultivate the habits of missionary congregations.

This is a pretty big shift as well. We have understood the church for over 1600 years as a place where certain things happen. We go to church. Becoming a missional church will require us to have a more vivid notion of the church sent into the world. We are sent into the world as a church.

Ok, so I’ve taken a few 30,000 foot snapshots of missional church. If I’ve done my job, I’ve raised as many questions as I’ve answered. This is because missional church is a deep diagnosis. It’s not simplistic. It says that the church’s future cannot be guaranteed by adding a program here or tweaking one there. This isn’t about a program, it’s about the kind of transformation that can only come through reliance on the Holy Spirit. In fact, I would say that missional church is less about change and more about transformation.

Feel free to comment or ask questions. I will plan to write more about missional church in subsequent posts, and I will also write about the Partnership for Missional Church, what that involves and what it intends to do.