Missional churches exist not just for themselves but for the sake of their community. They seek grassroots engagement with other communities in their region outside the normal social experience of members. Imagined and practiced in this way, a fairly homogeneous congregation can become a fellowship connecting us across diverse ethnic, cultural, socio-economic, and religious boundaries.
While the promise of such ecclesiological stretching is great, it also presents challenges.
- Moving beyond paternalism. The church I serve is situated in an affluent community with an overwhelmingly Caucasian population in southwestern Connecticut. It maintains a number of longstanding, fruitful mission partnerships that enable members' involvement with ministry in nearby urban centers. Only regular personal relationships with these partners over time makes it possible for members to become aware that:
- These ministries with perceived "down-and-outers" serve many individuals with roots in communities like ours. The gap between "them" and "us" narrows;
- those who come to Christ in these settings often enjoy a more vital faith than most of us;
- the personal problems that beset those served by such ministries are not foreign but hit close to home for most of us;
- when we worship together with mission partners we are blessed by the mutuality of ministry.
- Over time we (and our partners) find that they minister to us as we minister with them.
- Matching financial support with personal involvement. A previous generationequated the church's "mission" with the mission budget. We give money to enable others to serve where we ourselves cannot go. Today the tendency is the opposite -- to disparage financial support as impersonal and to define "mission" as what we ourselves do by rolling up our sleeves in service projects. For example:
- People would rather collect food and hygiene items for shipment to far-away places than send cash that supplies ten or twenty times more of the same items through a partner agency.
- Churches raise more money to support youth and adults on week-long "mission trips" than they would send to support missionaries with language skills and expertise working year-in-year-out in the same areas.
A missional congregation enables individuals both to become personally involved and to match that commitment with dollars supporting mission partners for the long haul. Regional mission partnerships help nourish this two-pronged growth in commitment.
- Rising above divisive issues. The historic "mainline" congregation I serve leans to the
"evangelical" side of the spectrum but includes members aligned with the "progressive" stance of our denomination. I celebrate this as a strength because it counters today's trend for people to segregate by ideological affinity. But it can be tricky.
Problems arise, ironically, from the desire for fellowship with Christians of other racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds -- something white evangelicals and progressives both value. In the city nearest our town, churches with Southeast Asian, Hispanic, Brazilian, and other recent immigrant memberships are flourishing. These, along with predominantly African American churches, are generally "evangelical" in theology, whether they use this term for themselves or not. Friendship with these churches is exciting.
We're getting involved with a consortium of grassroots Christian social ministries connected with these ethnic congregations and some white evangelical churches in the area. The mission partners in the consortium include tutoring and mentor programs, homeless shelters, residential rehab and job training programs, a charter school, and the city's only free pediatric clinic. Our church has supported one of these ministries for many years, prior to the consortium.
A "pro-life" pregnancy counseling center is in the consortium. Would the fact that our church includes members involved in Planned Parenthood deter support of the consortium as a whole? Might the volatility of the abortion issue make it unfeasible for a church like ours to encourage "hands on" mission through the consortium -- despite the fact that that it's our best chance for fellowship with more diverse ethnic Christian neighbors?
Leaders are convinced that the way forward is through participation and partnership. Do we have what it takes, over the long haul, to gain broad congregational assent to a Christ-centered missional theology that rises above divisive social issues?
Charles Hambrick-Stowe is pastor of the First Congregational Church, Ridgefield, Conn. He was formerly an academic dean at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.
