12 Witnesses

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The job of Missional Pastors is to facilitate the function of the church.  If a high ratio of the mobile individual is the chief structural difference between the Institutional and Missional Church, then the it is the job of the church’s Pastor(s) to exemplify, encourage, direct, instruct and get out of the way of the people so that they can do just that.

One of our church’s homegrown Pastors, Michael Harrison, who is now in Virginia was in town recently and spoke to us of the church plant he now pastors.  In that talk, he mentioned that many churches do so many things that they don’t do any of them well.  At his church, they focus on just a few group projects and try to do them with excellence.

This illustrates the problem we have with over programmed churches, typical of the Institutional model.  There are so many things that require workers and then they require participants, you lock up the people within the Institution and they have no time nor energy to mobilize themselves in the world.  They are too obligated to the overgrown structure.

Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger hit on this in their book, Simple Church.

Simplification of our programming, reducing it, is a great example of us getting out of the way of the individual, which helps us to become a more Missional congregation.

In the front window of our church’s library, are these books:  The Missional Leader, A Man’s Guide to the Spiritual Disciplines, Glocalization, UnChristian, The Divine Conspiracy, Simple Church, To The Ends of the Earth and Journeys.  Most of these I have referenced from the pulpit.  This is just one attempt to facilitate the growth and mobilization of our individuals.

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Concluding the major layout of the differences between the Institutional Church and the Missional Church is the discussion of the inherent natural paths of the individual structures.  That is to say, let’s look at the way each church structure goes about its business, which is dictated by its structure.

As a primarily centralized structure and primarily attractional in nature, the Institutional Church is forced to operate in a centrifugal fashion.  In other words, the church gathered in the facility is the way the church thinks of itself as the church.  Therefore, when it disperses, its chief goal is always to come back to the center.  This is also why the Institutional church seeks to have as many opportunities to gather as it possibly can.  When it is not succeeding in gathering and the numbers of those gathered decline, it feels that it is failing and attempts to be more attractive to increase the number of those gathered.

Institutional Church

As the Institutional Church disperses, the individuals frequently take the church’s barriers with them and stay separated from the world around them until they can get back to the gathering.  When they do engage those who are outside of the church structure, the typical engagement is to simply invite the person to come to the centralized gathering - which I have noted is not that attractive to those already outside the structure, so it often fails.

I never will forget the time in Kentucky when some of the county’s smaller churches decided that what our community needed was an association wide tent revival.  They loved it.  All the local gatherings joining for one big central gathering.  The fact that it brought back memories of their heyday, complete with numerous joint choir specials, old time Gospel hymns and a screaming preacher didn’t hurt their enthusiasm, either.

But that’s not the story.  The real story was when the Director of Missions (the head of our local Baptist association of churches, for those non-Baptists out there), a local Minister of Music and I were playing golf on Thursday (my day out of the office at the time).  We ran across a young man who was playing alone and picked him up as part of our group.  Turned out that he was a newly imported Assistant Manager at our local Wal-Mart.  He was from Ohio.  After a couple of holes, I asked him where he worked and he told me and then reciprocated by asking us where we worked.  When he found out that we were ministers, he kind of raised an eyebrow and started watching us a little differently.  As we drew close to the parting of the ways, just a couple of holes later, our DOM decided that he didn’t want to let the opportunity pass, so he told our new friend about the big tent revival we were having and invited him to come out the next week, if he could make it at all.  “You’ll hear some good sangin’ and some good preechin’.  Y’ought to come on out.”

At this, my heart sank, and the look on this young man’s face told the whole story.  Not only would he be avoiding that tent like the plague, he’d be avoiding us on the golf course as well.  I looked him up in the store and had a couple of golf conversations with him, trying to reestablish that connection on a more common ground.  I even played with him again during the next year, but I just couldn’t get past the damage done on the 8th green (we were playing the front nine last, for you golfers out there).

In contrast to this, the Missional Church considers itself the church even when it is reduced in number to the individual.  This is the primary concept behind trying to mobilize every individual and the great barrier to transitioning from Institutional to Missional.  As the Institutional Church thinks of itself as the church when it is gathered it thinks of itself as tied to its location and the times that it gathers.  The individuals of the Missional Church would think of themselves as the church (incarnational) at all times and therefore, at all places.

Missional Church

This brings the church to thinking of itself as existing primarily among society which facilitates engagements with what Bob Roberts calls the “domains” of society.  Examples of domains are:  Medical, the Arts, Politics, Education, Infrastructure, Social Work, etc.  Within all of these domains are infinite numbers of sub-domains that are more specific, such as Pediatrics and Geriatrics being part of the Medical domain.  They also cross over to the Social Work domain to some degree (more so in Vietnam where indigent elderly are housed in the same facility as orphans).

The upshot of this is that the Gospel is spread among relationships that exist as natural consequences when the Missional individual perceives himself/herself as the church wherever and whenever they are.  The nurse is a missionary to her patients, patient’s families, fellow nurses, doctors and even the odd Hospital Administrator.  In this way, the church exists in society and can become a change agent, much more easily than the church that seeks to woo uninterested and disconnected people from afar.

The gathering of the Missional church, then, is seen by its members as a centripetal force.  As they exist primarily across the infrastructure of society, they are periodically drawn together for corporate worship, fellowship, larger service projects, discipleship to some degree and even evangelism.

Because the Missional Church is not driven to build the centralized gathering, it is comfortable gathering in various places and times as well as in gathering in a variety of sizes:  two or three for accountability, 6-12 for a home group Bible Study, several home groups for a larger project, etc.

At every level, the barriers to the unchurched are smaller than at the next largest level simply because of size.  Therefore, as people come in contact with the individual and have multiple conversations that are bent toward the Gospel, the Missional Church, though not primarily attractional, becomes more attractive at various points.

The end of all of this is not that the Missional Church does so many different things than the Institutional Church, but that it does similar things with a different mindset, and, therefore, does them differently.  It also does them more effectively.

To synopsize, the Institutional Church meets as often as it can with the goal of increasing the number of its participants in the centralized meeting.  When it goes out, it has the goal of returning with more participants.  Our society doesn’t really want to particpate in this function and so the Institutional church is in decline.

The Missional Church is driven to meet by the draw of the Holy Spirit toward other believers, but sees its primary task as the relationship with those around each individual.  Their sphere of influence is used by God to draw the unchurched in to Himself and then the church, using the individual’s sphere of influence.

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Institutional Church

In the Institutional Church, we see that barriers that are erected around the church are also carried with the Christians as they leave the church facility.  When the Institutional Christian exits the facility, they carry much of what makes them unattractive to the world with them in their predispositions and behavior.  How many times have you seen Christians piously look down at the behavior of co-workers who are not believers?  Or use churchified lingo around people who are anything but churched?  Or blare their “Christian” radio station/music for others to hear in an effort to “be a light to the world?”

Right.  They’re actually creating a backlash and feeding the stereotype that Christians, and by extension God and Christ, are at least pious if not morons.

Missional Church

Missional Christians are extensions of their church philosophy, tearing down as many barriers to conversation as is possible.  This is not to say that Christians are to be sinful in their behavior, but that they would need to understand the world around them and go to it, rather than asking the world to come to their churched culture and conform - which is not going to happen.

Rather than thinking of their Christian walk in terms of the church facility and the people gathered there, the Missional Christian focuses their life on the domain of society in which they live in an effort to exert their sphere of influence.  As Bob Roberts explains in Glocalization, it is through the infrastructure that already exists in society that we connect with those upon whom we will have the ultimate influence.

Meaning that the Furniture Salesman connects with customers, co-workers, furniture reps, etc.  All of the people that exist in that realm of society and with whom he comes in contact are his infrastructure.  The Dentist has office workers, patients and drug reps.  Add to this the infrastructure that is represented by the hobbies and pastimes we enjoy and you get relationships that revolve around photography, Little League baseball, or even the morning celebration of java at Starbucks.

That is to say, random conversations with strangers and home invasion visitation strategies that expect an immediate conversion experience are expressions of an Institutional mindset.  This mindset calls on whomever to simply conform to the Institutional Christians belief system and behavioral standards over a structured conversation that is really more of a sales pitch.  I’m not saying it doesn’t happen.  I’m just saying it isn’t keeping up with the growth of our global or even American population.  This means that we had better do something different and do it quickly or the church in the west will become inert if not extinct.

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Short post today, but more tomorrow on using the structure of society to make our connections to those apart from God.

If the Institutional Christian is able to begin a conversation about Christ with someone living apart from God, it is typically a programmed sales pitch.  The mindset is that of drawing (attractional) the person into a system of beliefs and behaviors.  Tragically, this is not often well received and is increasingly rejected by those who are “targets” of such conversations.

The Missional Christian is one who will seek to start the conversation in a non-verbal way as an act of service.  By living a servant natured lifestyle, the Missional Christian invites those around him/her to appreciate something about them and accept them on a basic level, before a word is ever spoken about Christ.  Later, as the conversation becomes an exchange of ideas, the other person learns that the source of this behavior is that the Christian is modeling the behavior of Jesus Christ, who came to serve.

[edit]

I need to add that I don’t think that this necessarily takes that long.  In fact, a Missional Christian could be into the discussion of the Gospel in a substantive way in minutes, depending on the situation.  It could happen much faster than the programmed approach.  On the other hand it could not.  The difference here is “control.”  In the Institutional model, the “control” of the conversation is intended to be almost absolute.  There is no variance in tracts, EE or CWT outlines.  In the Missional model, the Christian is still seeking to move the conversation toward God, but in a more organic way.  A conversation that relates to the other person in it rather than demanding they follow a logical progression ending in their surrender to an outside belief system.  I want to note here that I believe the Holy spirit uses this method, just not very often.  I think He wants us to do it better.  More like He did it when He came to us in the first place.

[/edit]

The Missional Church is one that facilitates the individual members living incarnational service outside its walls.

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Along the theme of the Missional Church being one that is efficient in mobilizing the individual in engaging his/her social context…

Joe Thorn gives a great article on the ability of a Christian to transition a conversation about something else to one whose subject is the gospel.

Great thought:

To state it simply, the better you understand the gospel the easier the transitions become. If you are trying to share the gospel you will still sometimes make huge leaps that do not work. Sometimes the conversation will only connect to the Christian faith in part, without getting directly to the gospel. Sometimes it will all come together the way you imagine. The more you know the gospel (its essence and effects) and the more you practice this discipline the easier making comfortable transitions to the gospel will become.

Which is why making disciples of our believers really matters and the failure to effectively do that over the last several decades is a factor in the decline of the church in America, as I see it.

Gospel Connections in Suburbia : subtext.

Alan Hirsch follows up his first article on the Institutional Church [thanks again for backing me up on this, Alan... ]

The Problem of institutions (part ii) : The Forgotten Ways

Les Puryear has linked to a paper from Tim Keller on the variances of Church Culture as it relates to the size of the church.  Obviously, this matters because you have to understand your church culture if you want to remove barriers between it and the culture outside the church.  The first time I heard this concept was in seminary and I have to say it was eye opening for me - I admit I was a bit naive.  That’s what Seminary is for, isn’t it?  To knock the naivitee off of you?

Process Managing Church Growth

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The church as an institution has long held a “ya’ll come” attitude toward the world, which is necessitated as a centralized church.  We want people to come to the center:  attend our church, get plugged into our programs and pay our light bills.

It’s deeper than that, though.  The “ya’ll come” attitude runs well beyond attendance to behavior, dress and other general conformities to which we would like for people to come in and adapt themselves.  I have often said that I thought that the church would be satisfied if the people of America would attend half of the time, tithe, dress nice and behave in a way that would not cause us any undue discomfort.  Note that this does not have the people of America coming to know or love God.  Just acting “right.”

Because of this, and although we have primarily operated in an attractional context, we aren’t very good at it.  To put it another way, we just aren’t that attractive and for people who base their “survival” on attraction, it is no wonder the church in America is in sharp decline.  People living apart from God do not value the things we value and have no desire to be a part of an organization that makes no sense to them.  Further, we have maintained some values in our church culture that are not Biblical and have not been passed on to subsequent generations.  As a result, the Institutional Church is often not very attractive to its own offspring.

Which brings us to the new generation of churches on the horizon.  Over the last decade or two, churches have been planted with less barriers, but are still attractional.  Let’s discuss barriers for just a minute and then I’ll unpack that last sentence.

In this diagram of the Institutional Church, the box around the facility and the Christians gathered therein represents barriers that we erect that keep people out.  Note, please, that I did not say that they were erected in order to keep people out.  Not all barriers are there with the intent of keeping people out.  I think all barriers are there to protect the comfort of those within.  I would guess that most are simple comforts to those inside that aren’t comfortable to those on the outside, and therefore become barriers.

Institutional Church

The simple barriers consist of music, dress, “churchified” lingo and things of that nature.  The more destructive barriers range from  “holier than thou” attitudes to racial discrimination.

The more modern church does quite a bit to eliminate the barriers between itself and the culture by delving into multimedia (we’re in a multimedia age, after all), singing more contemporary music, dressing more casually, being more welcoming and less judgmental, as well as relishing a racially diverse congregation.

But they are still attractional.

There are a good many churches that have torn down as many barriers as they possibly can, but they are still focused on getting the people into the church structure, program and culture.  They also tend to grow - for now.  They reach their fair share of people, but they also receive the transfer of those stuck in more Institutional Churches that don’t want to tear down those comfortable walls.  As a result, those smaller churches get smaller and, though they say they want young people to come, they can’t understand why they aren’t growing and may not survive.

Meanwhile, the Contemporary Institutional Churches grow primarily by transfer, and the transfers bring with them the attractional attitude that will one day seal their own demise if they continue to adhere to it.  Why?  Because one of these days, their kids are going to want to worship with a different sound and dress even more differently than their parents.  Those barriers will again do their work, though no one noticed them going up.

A Missional church needs to do everything it can to take down the cultural barriers that keep people away, but it needs also to go further.  In the illustration of the Missional Church, you will note that the barriers have been replaced by spheres of influence.  I am not naive enough to think that all barriers will come down for every one or every church, but it is the goal.

Missional Church

Also, please don’t misunderstand that the Missional Church has no Attractional qualities.  It does.  It should.

In fact, these diagrams are really the absolutes on a spectrum.  No church is completely Missional, nor is any church completely Attractional.  However, I would argue that the middle ground between these two representations is not nearly so Missional as we need to be.  We need to trend as close to the latter as we can get.

We as Kingdom people need to be a going people.  God is a going God, a sending God.  While He did say,

32 As for Me, if I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all [people] to Myself. - John 12:32 [HCSB]

and

44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.- John 6:44 [HCSB]

he also said,

18 Then Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. - Matthew 28:18-19 [HCSB]

and

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. - Acts 1:8 [HCSB]

[edit] Let me add here that in the above Scriptures, although there is the “drawing” of people, only God is doing it, because only God can do it.  It is impossible for churches or individual Christians to “draw” a person.  the best we can do is eliminate as many barriers as possible.  In other words, we need to get out of God’s way within the church and be salt and light outside the church. [/edit]

Up next:  Mimicking God’s Missionality - Incarnational Servanthood.  (That’s not the title, but the subject…)

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We’re beginning to unpack the primary concepts that separate the Institutional Church and the Missional Church.  The key?  Centralization.

The Institutional Church is a centralized church.  Everything must flow through the internal structure of the church.  That is to say, it flows through the organizational structure of church leadership.  Over the years, we’ve built quite an infrastructure within the church.  In fact, most churches would be happy to “plug-in” every single person that attends the church.  It’s sort of the goal  of the Institutional Church to get everyone at least some responsibility within the church because that would then make them faithful attenders and givers - or so they hope.

I said before that any idea or initiative has to run through the processes of leadership.  Let me give you an example.  If you know, for instance, that someone in your office is having financial problems due to circumstances beyond their control, the centralized response is to bring the need to the Pastor/Staff as a personal request.  The staff person then finds someone on the Benevolence Committee (preferably the chair) who will then contact the rest of the committee who will discuss it.  Of course, they are governed by several factors.  Their internal guidelines allow them to give only a certain amount as a maximum to prevent anyone from taking too much advantage.  Further, they may not have enough money in the account right now to make a significant impact on the situation, even if they really wanted to do so.  A really dismal situation would be if the committee was not disposed to help the person because they don’t attend the church.  I’ve seen that happen over the years.

This is not the only example we could use, but it’s handy.  Generally speaking, if an individual at the “bottom” of the structure has an idea, everything has to flow up and back down the structure of the church.  If you have a great idea, you take it to the committee who talks it to death, and then, if it doesn’t die in committee, it gets sent to the relevant staff member (assuming you have more than one) who takes it to staff meeting (again assuming you have more than one staff member).  In some Baptist churches, the deacons are in there somewhere.  They could possibly be between the committee and staff or they could be over the staff.  I’ve served in a church that required the staff to present their ideas to the deacons, who then discussed, changed and often shut down initiatives that would have changed the church’s current practices.

The upshot of this is that the Institutional Church becomes more and more immobile and the congregation becomes mostly sedentary.  Their thoughts and ideas rarely survive the process.  Their church will not survive their immobility and sedentary nature.

The only ones that can really accomplish much in this scenario are the Staff, by virtue of their position and the “top” of the structure.  They become the “doers,” but to “do” anything, they have to enlist the appropriate committee and get them on board as well as clear other governing leadership, if the initiative is too far outside the norm.  Thus the Institutional Church becomes a struggle to advance, with Pastors and Staff being yoked to a barely moving wagon full of people telling them which way to go and how.  This is your typical smaller (Institutional) church.

There is a divergence here, though.  Not all Institutional Churches struggle with systems of control as bulky as that.  They have become large enough that the structure actually becomes more simple.  The Staff are at the top, they mobilize the appropriate committee, who seeks to mobilize a broader section of the church.  However, while a more efficient structure, it is still an inefficient method of engaging the world.  The ideas here flow from the top down, so the pool of creativity is slim.  Also, because they don’t have much input, most of the people simply attend and are not very involved.  The staff and volunteer leaders are the ones that work and everyone else simply shows up on Sunday.  This is your typical large (Institutional) church.

While they have more attending on a weekly basis, their impact on the world is often not significantly different than the smaller (Institutional) church.  They do more, to be sure, but that is simply based on volume.  The ratio of Christians engaging their world to those that simply attend services is not that much different regardless of the size.

The Missional Church, in contrast and as I said before, is concerned with mobilizing the individual.  As such, the method of engagement is empowerment of the individual church member to act on what they see as a need.  Rather than finding an co-worker with a financial need and returning with that need to the church, the individual reaches into their pocket and pulls out some money and hands it over, in the Name of Christ.  If they can’t do it alone, they might call on some other Christians, maybe in their small group, maybe in the church, maybe someone that goes to a different church or (could it actually be?) from another denomination.  Even more radical, they might ask non-Christians to help.  Maybe they make it an office project, but not a local church project.

Could it be that making such a thing an office project is considered a ministry oriented and Christian thing to do?  Don’t we have to tie such things, if not to the Denomination or even the church, at least to the Kingdom?  I would submit to you, that by involving the office, the Christian office worker has actually spread the Kingdom to many more than would ever have been reached by running it back though the Benevolence Committee.  All of those involved, both giving and receiving, see Christ at work in the organizer.  It makes a larger “splash” though not as overt.

Given our culture, though, overt is just the kind of thing that would alienate the rest of the office if they are not already a part of a church.  They would perceive the action as being done to “get something” - notoriety and recognition.

You might wonder what keeps Christians from doing this kind of thing now.  I wonder the same thing.  I was asked on Sunday, as I explained the differences between the Institutional and Missional Church to our Search Committees, if this was not mostly a mindset.  The short answer is, “Yes.”  While the structures of the church have to be simplified to keep things from being killed by bureaucracy, the heart of the matter is a mindset.

The Missional individual in a Missional Church recognizes that they are the church.  They are the body of Christ.  They are the one that God has placed strategically in position to minister in His Name.

15 If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.  - James 2:15-17 (HCSB)

11 And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, [growing] into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.  - Ephesians 4:11-13  [emphasis mine]

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Mr. Missional, Alan Hirsch, is blogging, at the exact same time as I am, about institutional churches.  As Charlie Brown would say, “AAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!”

Not really.

Although I had no idea that he was going to do this, I actually think it is quite Providential.  It gives a different (much better?  more clear?) insight into the exact same thing that I am trying to say and does so from a much more respected voice. Check this out:

The Problem of institutions (Part I) : The Forgotten Ways

I’ll add one more.  David Phillips is talking about Institutional and Missional in the Old and New Testaments.

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The Organ

Since we have been talking about the transition of the Institutional Church into the Missional Church, and music has been one of the primary issues churches are struggling with through the process, I thought you might find this article interesting.

Of particular interest to me were the two letters quoted complaining about the new songs being sung in the worship service.  Without any further ado…

From Dan Kimball’s blog, Vintage Faith, comes the story of the organ as it is has been used throughout the life of the church.  Turns out the organ saw controversy 1,500 years ago as well.

Vintage Faith: The controversial organ

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[For those in our Search Committee meeting yesterday, you may note that I have updated the article slightly and refreshed the diagram of the Missional Church in several ways.]

At this point, I think it is going to be easiest to lay out the structural differences between the Institutional and Missional Church and then unpack the details.  If you’ve not read the preceding posts on the Individual and on Culture, I urge you to do so.  Also, for additional flavor, You can check out a couple of Movie Quotes I’ve posted that relate.  One is on being Institutionalized and the other is on Hope.

Here are the two structures as represented by diagrams, according to my understanding:

Institutional Church

Missional Church

It’ll take a while, several posts at least, to unpack just what you see.  That doesn’t include some of the stuff that is implied but not represented by iconography.

We’ll start with concepts that characterize each:

The concepts that we will unpack for the Institutional Church are centrifugal, centralized, primarily attractional, culturally secluded, controlled, staff dependent and facility dependent.

The concepts to unpack for the Missional Church, obviously contrasting are centripetal, de-centralized, primarily going, culturally engaged, released, individually mobile and dependent on societal infrastructure.

[Note:  There is no significance to the number of those living apart from God, dechurched or Christians or the ratios between them.]