Can Mission Ruin You?
Published by Matt Glover October 28th, 2005 in Emerging Missional ChurchMy interns and I spent the day yesterday with the people from Urban Seed and Green Collect.
What we were trying to do was to get a feel for expressions of mission and church that were in different cultural settings to our own. Both of these are located in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD. Urban Seed works with the homeless, addicted and poor of Melbourne’s streets, while Green Collect promotes sound environmental sustainability in the form of waste management and recycling with the city’s corporate and hospitality people. It was a challenging day in many ways, particularly when confronted with some of the stories of the homeless people we had lunch with in Credo Cafe.
One thing that I found most challenging though, was an answer to a question I asked the director about the Urban Seed interns. Recognising that fitting back into “normal” life after such an intense experience of mission and discipleship is incredibly hard, I asked Mark, “How do your ex-interns cope with fitting back into any sort of church and life away from Urban Seed?”
With brutal honesty, Mark said, “They don’t. Urban Seed ruins them.”
The MBC internship is based around the framework of keeping Jesus central to all that we are trying to do and be, letting Jesus then be the motivation for how and where we do misison, and finally letting the mission we are involved in shape the form and structure of the church community. Frost and Hirsch have said that much of the time, the Christian community has got this order around the wrong way. The structure and form of church has come before the mission of Jesus and thus those who are immersed in mission such as US and GC struggle to know where they fit. If faithful Christian people are struggling to fit into a church, is it any wonder that those that aren’t Christian are not interested in the slightest?!
Interstingly, I don’t think it is just the traditional/established church that is to blame here. More and more seem to be finding the emerging church scene just as irrelevent, inward looking and shallow. My feeling is it is because much of the emerging church movement still places the form and structure of church before the mission of Jesus.
But all that theorising aside, I think the experience of Urban Seed, Green Collect, and to some extent my own interns as well, sounds a call to care for, nurture and disciple our local missionaries/ministers/leaders/interns/whatever and not just see them as hands and feet to get a task done. If the misison expereince is ruining a person, making it impossible for them ever to fit into the body of Christ again, then surely we have got something way out of balance.
Let’s get some integrity back into what we’re doing.
Mate lots of wisdom in what you’re writing there.
I know that we need to think about the fact that what Jesus calls us to is really tough. In other words give up your life, take up your cross and follow me - it’s a death sentence.
Thankfully God didn’t leave us in the lurch though. He gave us the Holy Spirit to guide and encourage us. I love the fact that “she” is called the Comforter.
Now here’s the point. It’s terribly important to have the right ’spirit’ in what you do, what you hint at when you suggest Jesus is put central. So often in my time serving God through Brigade ministry I’ve had to confront things I’d rather not have. I’ve been pulled from pillar to post, but I have peace and am serving out of a right spirit.
Pastor Paul Scanlon talks and writes on this when he discusses the concept of ‘Soul Prosperity’. In it the main thrust is that the heart was wanting to go, but the soul was not ready for it. We want to save the world, but our souls are too shallow to have the humility required to have that sort of an influence.
A good bit of soul work, along with the getting of the hands dirty, and a constant stream of encouragement is what believers need - of all ages and experience. A lot is made of the upfront gifts of the Spirit but an under-rated one is the gift of encouragement and exhortation - this is one I’ve found lacking in heaps of churches and it means people are doing it tougher than they need.
I encourage you Matt in your nurturing and agree it’s a soul issue, not an issue related to church structures but the human heart.
(That said, praise God for the mighty work of the inner city ministries, they deserve much more encouragement and prayer support than I currently give them.)