Becoming Missional

Faith Community puts on a really lousy show on Sunday mornings.

Paul's summary of 1 Corinthians 11:1-14:25 guides what we do and how we do it:

"What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together everyone has a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church." (1 Cor 14:26)

It's not a pretty sight for consumers of religious products and services. It's definitely not seeker-sensitive.

Our music team doesn't practice. It rarely has more than one song, hymn or spiritual song in mind when it leads. It asks people to tell it what they want to sing and expects to hear suggestions. Frequently, what we sing is unknown to many. Some love Fanny Crosby era stuff that others never heard of before. Others love the latest hits on the contemporary Christian charts. For consumers wanting polished excellence that's offensive.

We never know if one person or one dozen will pray aloud or if the time we spend praying will last three minutes or thirty.

People who speak don't use notes. Often people who have earlier said, "I don't have a message today," end up speaking. Speakers are interrupted with questions or comments. One person's message is often responded to by someone else. People sitting on their hands are often asked direct questions by the speaker.

In a culture in which religious people are conditioned to consume, what we do is offensively counter-culture to many.

So, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the size of our Easter morning crowd didn't make the local Fire Marshal sweat. In fact, by attractional standards, we did very poorly. The number was lower than usual. We don't count Sunday morning attendance. I honestly don't know for certain what the number was but it was low.

Interestingly, though, on the Tuesday after Easter, the congregation had volunteered to go into the center of Lancaster city--about 15 miles down the road from our facility--to feed a meal to homeless people in the kitchen of a church that makes itself available for that purpose every Tuesday evening. That Tuesday was one of ours.

We achieved a sort of goal of mine in that more people participated in the preparing and serving of that meal than attended the Easter morning show.

More 'visitors' fed the hungry with us than sat their fannies in our seats for the Easter morning show.

More than 100% of our Sunday morning attendance--on EASTER Sunday--actively fed hungry people in the name of Jesus as a part of our ministry!

I'm still trying to figure out what missional would look like if we achieved it. I'm still trying to overcome the impulses to be attractional and inwardly focused. I believe that, on that day, many pew sitters are going to be among the people to hear Jesus say, "I never knew you," (Mt 7:23) and, "I was hungry/thirsty/a stranger/naked/sick/in prison" and you ignored me.

I think that missional fruit is being born.