MISSIONAL CHURCH
First up, what I’m about to launch into is written in the spirit of long term goals. Secondly, it’s up for debate – this is intended to be an open-ended conversation. Thirdly, I hope none of you know where I live.
As you may have guessed from the title I’m addressing the role of professionals: those people paid full or part time to carry out work for, or on behalf of, the church or para-church organisations. I may hastily add that I work for one such organisation. This is my argument in a nutshell: over-dependence on ‘professional’ Christians within church life has played a major part in creating the weak discipling culture we now have in the church. We’ve made discipling a job for paid staff alone and now we’re reaping the results.
Let’s face it: most church adults’ disciple-making muscles are weak, because they haven’t ever had to exercise them; they just let the senior leaders and youth workers be Arnold Schwarzeneggers on their behalf.
To mix my metaphors, church has become a catered event when it should be a bring and share meal. We let a few specialist chefs with specialised skills produce a lovely meal for us, whereas church should be about us all bringing the results of our individual skills and wisdom to the table. So, only a precious few know how to cook with confidence. That’s why youth workers are always struggling to get volunteers full stop, let alone volunteers who are confident when it comes to discipling.
And this is increasingly important: when youth workers build relationships with young people with no prior church connections, they rarely feel comfortable feeding those young people into the mainstream adult congregation. Why? Because they feel that there’s no one there with the necessary skills to continue the discipling journey.
This highlights a core issue in the fresh mission context we find ourselves in. Bringing young people from unchurched backgrounds to maturity in faith is long, hard work. It requires vulnerability, availability and focus. It can’t be accomplished by a once a week drop in, cell group or Sunday service. It’s intensive work with small numbers that will make the real difference. But will churches want to employ someone to work with just a handful of young people over long periods?
This work cannot be left to individuals alone – nor should it. And making missional church the preserve of professionals would be both unhealthy and unsustainable. There’s no time now to unpack what we mean by ‘mission’; suffice to say that disciples are only ever matured through undertaking mission; Jesus ‘forged’ his disciples within the crucible of mission. By allowing the majority of the laity to make mission a spectator sport and by focussing their energies on internal maintenance – worship services and Church resources – we’ve spoiled them for successful outreach.
The future of disciple making doesn’t belong to lone rangers, but to missional communities dedicated to the task. This is why one of the big questions we have to ask is what is the future of youth work within emerging church? If we all need to be disciple makers, how do we get there? And once we are what happens next? Back to my chef scenario, once the chef has trained everybody else to cook, what do they then do? The simple answer to that is they move on and start all over again elsewhere. I think the Bible called those people apostles, which means literally ‘sent out’.
There are other negative effects of a culture dependent upon professionalism. I’ve already hinted at this but we run the risk of disenfranchising people if we make an increasing amount of roles for ‘specialists’ alone. And the truth is many churches can no longer afford to employ full timers.
There’s no problem with people training to be counsellors, preachers, youth workers, worship leaders, children’s workers; but it will only be those churches with deep pockets that can employ team ministries. Will those churches inevitably go on to create monopolies? Will they drain vital people and vital ‘resources’ from other churches?
Another side issue, but a hugely important factor when it comes to long-term strategy, is that perhaps too many young people see ‘full time Christian work’ as a ‘glamorous’ alternative. If we’re going to see real difference in our society we need more Christians in key positions in traditionally ‘secular’ fields of work.
That’s why the future is for amateurs and part timers. The drive to spiritual maturity that is so evident within New Testament is an effort to make all of us Olympian level disciple-makers, not just a few. Come on, you know it makes good mission sense. Making espressos in your local coffee house three days a week, leading a church that meets in the coffee shop for the rest of it…