I stumbled upon Findley Edge’s 1971 book, The Greening of the Church, twelve years ago. Like Neo swallowing the red pill or Lucy pushing through the wardrobe, my pastoral life and worldview have never been the same.
Before Newbigin, Gruder, and Hirsh, Edge preached a missional theology of the church from the hallowed halls of Southern Seminary. In his chapter, “God’s Call to Mission,” Edge poses “the central question in the life of the modern church”: What really does it mean to be the People of God?
Edge’s answer could be taken from any of our current,
missional writers. Being the People of God means becoming “a people who understand the divine mission which God is about in the world and who believe so deeply in God and what he is doing that they give their lives to join with him in accompanying this divine redemption mission. And wonder of wonders – in doing this they find life!”
Since the day I experienced the eureka of Edge’s missio dei, I have invested my pastoral leadership in two churches with a combined total of 330 years of ministry and life together. Serving in the midst of this flow of history, I have discovered three vital, pastoral skills for leading God’s People.
1. Spiritual listening:
Engaging the world as the People of God requires skills in listening to God, each other, and the community. As Baptists we spend much time in prayer meetings, prayer conferences and other opportunities directed at our personal prayer time. However, we fail to develop the skills related to corporate discernment and spiritual listening.
At First Baptist Cornelia, we have experimented with the practice of spiritual discernment. Based on ideas from Transforming Church Boards into Communities of Spiritual Leaders by Charles Olsen, we reimagined our church conference and deacon agendas as opportunities of worship and developed orders of worship instead of agendas. We open with calls to worship and repurpose our reports as offerings to God. As pastor, I have learned the importance of consistency, repetition and language in breaking through the barriers of institutionalism.
Last summer, we worked on developing our spiritual listening skills through the practice of holy listening on Wednesday nights. I interviewed individuals and couples about their journeys of faith before the church. In response, I invited the congregation to state the observations of God’s movement they heard in the lives of these church members. I learned pastors need to do more than just teach spiritual listening; we need to invite others to practice it.
2. Faith Walking:
Engaging the world as the People of God also requires skills in faith walking. As Baptists we have thrived on the backs of strategic planning, organization, and mobilization skills. I once heard a pastor correctly say, “Our churches can thrive whether God shows up or not.”
Recapturing our mission as the People of God requires us as pastors to not only trust God with our congregation’s future, but also to lead our congregations (who are just as comfortable in the modern world as we are) to walk forward in trust as well.
I stumbled upon the need for this skill by accident. One May I found myself in a mountain cabin for my annual sermon retreat. In an effort to find a theme for the congregation’s strategic planning experience for the coming year, I chose 2 Corinthians 5:7 – “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” I called our initiative “Walking by Faith” and started organizing the church to achieve the purpose of a stated vision and values.
Then, God moved. The expression and experience of “walking by faith,” took hold within the church. Individuals and groups started challenging each other to walk by faith in their lives. Soon, we began to witness steps of faith in ministry taken in our church and community. Before I knew it, I was standing before our deacon body asking them to witness the movement of God happening among us and take a step of faith as well. It did not end there. Church members began inviting their community organizations to take steps of faith. I quickly learned that God’s People wait for and expect God to move.
3. Missionary Development:
Finally, engaging the world as the People of God also requires skills in missionary development. Edge says we have convinced our members to live good, decent, respectable lives during the week, yet nothing really happens – the world is never touched. Being transformed into the People of God means releasing our people “to invade the world for God” (Edge).
For me, this means more than simply sending waves of short term mission teams around the world. Instead, mission experiences are designed to begin conversations about God’s calling in our lives. When we send mission partnership teams to work alongside our sister congregation in Matagalpa, Nicaragua or to work in our community through Operation Inasmuch, we are engaging in the spiritual formation of those people.
Recently, I witnessed this phenomenon among our members. A movement of God has begun around Bob Lupton’s book Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help and How to Reverse It. In response, individuals have struggled with their sense of call and mission in the world. We have begun asking questions, such as, “How can God use me most effectively to make an impact for Jesus in my community and world?” and “How can our church best empower our community through the Gospel?” Through these questions I see God developing our church members into missionaries.
These three missional skills have guided me through the muddled “de-conversion from churchianity to Christianity” (Reggie McNeal). I am definitely a practitioner rather than an expert. Transitioning from leading a church as institution to church as the People of God is messy, uneven and extremely exciting. I can’t imagine a better time to be a pastoral leader.
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