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The Church Worker and His/Her Missional Life

The Church Worker and His/Her Missional Life. ALBERTA-BRITISH COLUMBIA DISTRICT DISTRICT – WIDE CHURCH WORKERS CONFERENCE Wednesday, October 20, 2010 Rev. Mark G. Press, PhD Director, Oswald Hoffmann Institute for Christian Outreach . Personal Introductions. Who am I?

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The Church Worker and His/Her Missional Life

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  1. The Church Worker and His/Her Missional Life ALBERTA-BRITISH COLUMBIA DISTRICT DISTRICT – WIDE CHURCH WORKERS CONFERENCE Wednesday, October 20, 2010 Rev. Mark G. Press, PhD Director, Oswald Hoffmann Institute for Christian Outreach

  2. Personal Introductions • Who am I? • Some of my growth points in missional living and understanding • Why this gathering is encouraging to me

  3. Locating Our Piece of the Topic • Stewardship life • Spiritual life • Family life to follow

  4. SO. . . • What is “missional”?

  5. Definition of “missional” • My understanding of “missional” living Life that flows from the wellspring of God’s life-giving grace and that intentionally seeks to engage others with the life of the risen Savior

  6. Some Assumptions (Mine) • The “mission of God” overrules all the universe • Missional vision lies at the root of productive Christian living (“stewardship”)

  7. Some Assumptions (Mine) • Our “missional life” IS our life • All of life is to be lived missionally • Spirit or attitude (rather than set of activities)

  8. Some Assumptions • “Apostolic” means “sent” • When we confess that we believe in “one, holy, Christian and apostolic church,” what are we confessing?

  9. Salminen’s Picture of Man’s Search • Wizard of Oz as a paradigm • Scarecrow wanted brains • Lion wanted courage • Tin Man wanted a heart • The Wizard promised them their heart’s desires • How do we find our identity as “real people”?

  10. Biblical Foundations for the Church Worker’s Missional Life • Genesis 11:27 – 12:3 • Key points • God called Abram, not vice versa • The call came to the father and then to the son • Abram had to leave a lot behind • God’s blessing of Abram was intended to be a blessing to the world

  11. Biblical Foundations of Outreach

  12. Biblical Foundations for the Church Worker’s Missional Life • Jonah • Key points • Ethnocentrism leads to reluctance • God sought out Jonah • Reluctant preaching was a SUCCESS! • Watch out for displeasure with the LORD!

  13. Biblical Foundations for the Church Worker’s Missional Life • 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 • Key points • “Anyone” • “New creation” • Reconciled reconcilers (forgiven forgivers) • Ambassadors • “The righteousness of God”

  14. Biblical Foundations for the Church Worker’s Missional Life • 1 Peter 5:1-4 • Key points • Sharers in suffering (and, ultimately, in glory) • Shepherd/overseers (leadership is an issue) • Willing (nothing worse than “forced love”) • Eager servants (seeing others ahead of ourselves) • Examples to the flock (in serving and sacrificing)

  15. Biblical Foundations for the Church Worker’s Missional Life • Matthew 28:19-20 [Jesus said,] “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

  16. The Great Commission Handdesigned by Eugene Bunkowske Finger 1 Jesus has all Authority Finger 2 While you are going about Finger 5 Jesus will be with us always DisciplePeople By Baptizing and Teaching Finger 3 Finger 4

  17. Biblical Foundations: “Table Talk” • What biblical verse (or verses, books, sections, themes of Scripture) have been especially significant to you in your understanding and practice of missional living?

  18. The Personal Perspective • Beyond my own thinking • Contacts with 16 “missional” colleagues • Here are some of their thoughts!

  19. The Personal Perspective: Part I • Meaningful areas of life in terms of missional understanding and practice • “I take risks” • Seeing a person coming to the font for baptism • Experiencing the elderly embracing death with hope • Building intentional relationship with someone who does not yet know the joy of God’s grace • The “politically incorrect notion of hell for non-believers motivates me”

  20. The Personal Perspective • Meaningful areas of life in terms of missional understanding and practice • Association with people who are “not normal” (people who really “get it”) • “Reading/digesting the Word through the lens of God’s Mission” • Regular contacts with fellow missional leaders • “Everyday noticing” of people’s needs – open doors to spiritual conversations

  21. The Personal Perspective • Meaningful areas of life in terms of missional understanding and practice • “My everyday life, Wal-Mart and getting gas, sporting events, . . . I just ask people how are you really doing, listening is key” • “I look at every encounter with a person as a possible divine appointment, and I try to avoid being pushy while keeping my ears open for an opening to bring up faith in Jesus” • “Love for God leads to love for people” • “Recognizing what Christ has done for me”

  22. The Personal Perspective • Meaningful areas of life in terms of missional understanding and practice • Doing it – canvassing, visiting, listening to, reading about experiences of those in mission • Solid worship life, prayer and study of Word • “’Missional’ became part of my identity!” • “I keep meeting people who don’t know the joy of the Gospel” • “Times when I am faced with my own weaknesses and impossibilities, and God intervenes”

  23. The Personal Perspective: Part II • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • “The pastor who confirmed me had a very missional heart” • Advising student outreach program • “Life as a parish pastor didn’t really develop this missional life. It took time for the Lord to work in me an awareness of those who are lost and do not have hope in Jesus.” • Brother pastors, class discussions, advanced study

  24. The Personal Perspective • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • “Slowing down my busy lifestyle in church work to rub shoulders with those people right under my nose who are not connected to Christ.” • “Growing up in a home that supported missionaries with family finances and had them as guests at church and at home” • “Having a sister as a missionary, and having another sibling reject the church for a time”

  25. The Personal Perspective • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • “I didn’t develop a thing myself . . . It was HIS plan” • “Working with people and their most dangerous enemy, the ‘draw and attraction’ of wealth” • “I met a man who had given his life to the mission effort in . . . And I stayed with him and traveled 4000 miles to visit 52 mission stations, and saw the heart, the zeal and the urgency of this man”

  26. The Personal Perspective • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • “Personal contact with missionaries over the years, and learning to see myself as a missionary.” • “The missionary way of thinking and acting is the ‘normal’ that God wants” • “Books and blogs by current ‘big name’ Christian writers” • “Ongoing learning and growing is a key to missional living”

  27. The Personal Perspective • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • “A prof challenged us to found a society dedicated to missions . . . For decades the Mission Society was the largest and most dynamic group in the school” • “My pastor-father had a heart for mission and had set a good example, which laid the foundation” • Experience as a vicar in Latin America • “My father. . . was a church planter and outreach specialist”

  28. The Personal Perspective • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • “Being raised. . . with lay parents who took it for granted that they should open a Sunday School in our house because children in the neighborhood didn’t go to Sunday School” • “Six years in Nigeria discovering that God could run Church and world in ways that I never thought of” • “Several girls staying at a group home and going through the AA program. . . people with intense questions and spiritual hunger”

  29. The Personal Perspective • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • A fellow student “introduced me to SALT [Somali Adult Literacy Training] and got me started taking a bus to Minneapolis to tutor. . . a Somali woman who I still think of as the strongest woman I have ever known” • “I have a few mentors that ‘do’ missional ministry” • “My time on Taiwan helped me to be less judgmental against myself when a conversation does not lead to a positive response”

  30. The Personal Perspective • What experiences/people have helped you to develop a missional life and mindset? • “Seeing God absolutely change lives” • “Influential people were church worker parents, early Lutheran school teachers and Sunday School teachers as well as seminary professors” • “During seminary summers I made a lot of evangelism calls with ‘evangelism committee’ members”

  31. The Personal Perspective: Part III • How do you help other people catch a missional spirit from you? • “I am not convinced that teaching people the ‘right’ theology of mission accomplishes much by way of changing behaviors.” • “Missional actions are learned skills that require practice, coaching, emotional support and evaluation of performance. Most of these aspects are never included in course work at seminaries and colleges of the LCMS.” • “It takes persistence and patience.”

  32. The Personal Perspective • How do you help other people catch a missional spirit from you? • “Many times it is simply listening to the hearts of the people around you, to detect the spark of mission within them and then to build a fire of outreach passion through God’s Word and Spirit.” • “Sharing my passion and personal need for the Gospel, then giving concrete examples of missional opportunities around me, then sharing my fears and failures in those opportunities”

  33. The Personal Perspective • How do you help other people catch a missional spirit from you? • “I model conversations, share love for them and others, pray for the lost and missionaries, and boldly ask for prayers and money for mission work.” • “When Jesus walked on this earth He was a man of stories. I believe that people are so eager and hungry to hear stories. . . USE GOOD PICTURES TO TELL THE STORY.”

  34. The Personal Perspective • How do you help other people catch a missional spirit from you? • “Be very, very, very, very personal with people . . . and truly love people. The Holy Spirit will take care of the rest!” • “My conversations. . ., Facebook is a big one too – my posts share that spirit” • “Recruiting for and participating in missional activities here and abroad” • Praying with people

  35. Personal Perspective: “Table Talk” • What are one or two “foundation stones” for your own understanding of your life as a “missional” expression of God’s work? • Whom would you identify as one person who serves as a model of missional living for you?

  36. Leadership Perspective • Leadership is not an issue of power or position • Leadership is an issue of influence • From this standpoint, church workers bear a vital role as leaders • Modeling and teaching missional living does make a difference (just think about your own life, as you have discussed)

  37. Joseph and a MissionalReading of the Word • Go, Go, Go, Joseph • “Go, go, go Joseph you know what they sayHang on now Joseph you'll make it some daySha la la Joseph you're doing fineYou and your dreamcoat ahead of your time Go, go, go Joseph you know what they sayHang on now Joseph you'll make it some daySha la la Joseph you're doing fineYou and your dreamcoat ahead of your time“

  38. A Church Leader Reads and Proclaims the Word Missionally • Mission-oriented: Genesis 3 • Cross-centered: Exodus 12 • Counter-cultural: John 4

  39. Leadership Perspective • In this post-modern world, people are not moved so much by vision as they are by values • Modern people (many of us “Baby Boomers” would fit that category) are motivated by vision and the desire to reach it • Post-moderns are skeptical of this – they wonder where these visions have originated

  40. A Paradigm Shift of Our Time VISION POSTMODERN MODERN VALUES

  41. Leadership Perspective • What does this mean for a missional leader? • Proof of our values is in our living • Mentoring, discipling others is critical investment • Lifestyle changes demonstrate change

  42. Leadership Perspective: “Table Talk” • How would you describe “missional leadership” from your vantage point? • How has your life today been missional in nature? • How do you see the mission of God as part and parcel of how you act as a church worker? • What would change if your life were to be missional from beginning to end?

  43. Summary • If missional living is “Life that flows from the wellspring of God’s life-giving grace and that intentionally seeks to engage others with the life of the risen Savior” • Then. . .

  44. Some Resources • Schulz, Klaus D. Mission from the Cross • Salminen, Bryan No Ordinary Men • Luther, Martin Small Catechism • Bunkowske, E. God’s Communicators in Mission • Bunkowske, E. The Christian Family: Nurture and Outreach • Bunkowske, E. “A Hand of Life-Giving Love” (Lutheran Witness, Jan 2008) • (access at http://www.lcms.org/pages/ wPage.asp?ContentID=230&IssueID=18)

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