The Wisdom of Mr McLaren - Part Five: Missional

This is probably my favourite chapter of the book, there’s a beautiful poetic feel to the way Brian McLaren writes (which even gets covered a little bit later in the book) and it is intensified when he’s getting to the stuff that he knows is really self-evident. And to be brutally honest, I’m yet to have heard an argument against being more missional, being more deliberate about having a purpose. McLaren’s best definition of missional (although it’s not quite presented as a definition) is “To be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in authentic community for the good of the world”. As someone who has church planting on the brain a lot of the time, I can’t think of a more complete mission statement. That’s what I want to do and what I’d want to be a part of. And there’s no doubt that we’ve all missed some of that: some of us are so focused on making more disciples that we miss the spot about existing for the good of the world.

This chapter made me want to get out there and be a christian, more than I’ve felt for quite a while. The explanation of missional being defined by being a person in the church in the world, rather than being a person who has a church, who does stuff for the world (described in the two below remarkably quick and dirty diagrams) inspire thoughts of “Yes, that’s what this is about!”

And I couldn’t write on this chapter without including my favourite quote from the entire book, which when I read it out to the kids yesterday in my talk almost had me in tears of excitement. This is what I want to be part of:

“He selected 12 and trained them in a new way of life. He sent them to teach everyone this way of life. Some would believe and become practitioners and teachers of this new way of life, too. Even if only a few would practice this new way, many would benifit. Oppressed people would be free. Poor people would be liberated from poverty. Minorities would be treated with respect. Sinners would be loved, not resented. Industrialists would realize that God cares for the sparrows and wildflowers - so their industries should respect, not rape, the environment. The homeless would be invited in for a hot meal. The kingdom of God would come - not everywhere at once, not suddenly, but gradually, like a seed growing in a field, like yeast spreading in a lump of bread dough, like light spreading across the sky at dawn.”

That’s why I am a christian, why I want to be part of the church, even why I’m currently in the church I’m in. Cause when this translates in my life from words on a page, that’s the type of person, even the type of adventure that my soul yearns to be a part of. That’s what I know I was made to be like.