A Brief Discussion of Missional Outcomes and Missional Means... very brief

" [God's] intent was that NOW, through the CHURCH, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Ephesians 3:10-11) This is a missional statement and what Paul offers in his letter to the Ephesians are means towards that end.

I have a sub-folder in the "My Documents" folder on my hard drive that I named "Missional SACCC." That word - missional or mission - has been a part of my vocabulary for most of my life! Long before I picked up my first leadership or management book or sat in on a seminar or took a class on either of these topics, the idea of mission was deeply imbedded in my thinking by the rather dramatic and quite stirring accounts of the missionaries that regularly showed up at Bethany Church of Alhambra. Of course in this context mission was an activity that took place in distant and exotic lands, "The Foreign Fields!" (At the dinner table when my dad prayed over the meal, he ALWAYS included something like, "... and bless the missionaries in the foreign fields" which in my young ears was "farm" fields.) My early understanding of mission was that it was something a special group of people did far, far away from where I lived. However, just as I eventually realized my dad was not praying for the farmers who raised the food we were about to eat, in time, I learned that mission was not something that was done in far off, exotic lands by a special group of people called missionaries. I eventually came to realize that mission was core to the identity of what church was all about, and following soon on the heels of that insight, that every member of the church was necessary to the missional work of the church in every place she found herself planted and that this mission spans all time.

This realization came through reading the Scriptures and over the years coming to understand that God is missional and that is why the church is missional. The end game is the revelation of the glory of God in all creation, the bringing together of all things in Christ Jesus, God the Father building a dwelling place in Christ Jesus that he will inhabit in his Spirit - in short the ushering in of the fullness of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven! Paul expressed it this way to Timothy, "The GOAL ("telos" outcome, end game) of our instruction is LOVE from a pure heart, a clear conscience and a genuine (un-pretended) faith. (1 Timothy 1:5)" One of the challenges that we face in seeking this goal is always examining the means to the end. And one of the issues that all organizations must face is making sure they don't mistake the means to the end with the end itself. This was one of the things that Paul was trying to get across to Timothy in this letter. Jesus confronted the religious leaders with the same issue (same as the long tradition of the prophets of Israel. Quoting one of those prophets Jesus called his contemporaries to go and learn what the prophet meant, "I (the LORD) desire mercy and not sacrifice." Those Jesus was challenging with these words had confused the means for the end and as a result were missing the revelation of God standing right in front of them.

The Lord has determined to reveal his wisdom, his glory, his grace, his love to the realities that shape our world. He has determined to accomplish that goal through the church!