In a previous post “Discipleship Catalyzed by Mission” I wrote on the importance of recognizing how God’s mission can (and should) catalyze discipleship. In the comment section someone mentioned the need to highlight engagement in mission communally—or with others. I wholeheartedly agree. Part of the need to do mission in community involves the need to create opportunities to reflect, or debrief, the how, what and why of missional engagement. The importance of debriefing with others is just one the “Four D’s” that I use to describe different components of living out missionality.
Discover
If it is truly God’s mission and not ours, then we must discover how God is at work. The first step in discovering what God is doing is through listening. Individually and collectively we must cultivate our ability to listen well on three fronts; to God, the local community, and to each other. It is simply impossible to ascertain the movement of God without carving out significant time to listen to His voice through prayer and Scripture, as well as the voices of those we desire to serve.
Discern
In addition to listening, participating in God’s mission will involve the difficult task of discernment. Not only will we need to discern what God is already doing, but we will need to ask the follow up question, “In light of my (our) gifts and resources how does God want me to participate in what He is doing?” The fact is we can’t do it all, which is true for both individual followers of Jesus, as well as local congregations. But it is also true that God has gifted us all to do something! The point of discernment is to determine where and how to participate in God’s mission.
Do
This may seem obvious, but the process of discernment is useless if we do not obey what God is calling us to do. When God prompts us to participate in what He is doing in the lives of others, we must be obedient to respond.
A story told by a friend named Sam, illustrates these first three points. Sam purchased a house in a very impoverished part of town. His intentions were to create a “mission house” that would be home to several volunteers that would invest in the life of the neighborhood for the purpose of seeing community transformation take place. One of their first projects was the “adoption” of the local elementary school. The plan was to invest in the school by providing tutoring to students, be a blessing to teachers, and provide simple maintenance for the school facilities. Who could argue with these great ideas?
One day, Sam decided to share his vision for the school with Nacho, a man who lived just across the street. He had two children that attended the school, and surely he would be very pleased to learn of Sam’s plans. However, as Sam began to share with him what they were gearing up to do, Nacho asked Sam to walk outside to the sidewalk in front of the house. At that point Nacho pointed up above their heads to the streetlight. He said to Sam, “If you really want to be a blessing to this neighborhood, then get that streetlight back on.” At first Sam was a little bewildered. It was in the middle of the afternoon, on a hot summer day. “What’s so important about a streetlight?” Sam thought. Nacho began to tell Sam that when the streetlight was not on it wasn’t safe for the kids to play outside after dark. When the streetlight wasn’t on, drug deals would go down on the corner. When the streetlight wasn’t on, cars got broken into.
Nacho then told Sam that he had been trying to get the city to come out and fix that light for nearly a year. Straightway, Sam called the city authorities, and that afternoon the streetlight was back on. There was apparently a language barrier that was prohibiting Nacho from making the proper city department connection.
The first time I heard that story I told Sam that from that day forward I was forever going to refer to it as the “ITSS” story. It’s The Streetlight Stupid! The point is that no matter how great our plans for a community might be, it may not be what the community really needs. We can’t assume we know. Instead, we must listen—listen to God and listen to the community. Then we must act.
Debrief
Throughout the process of engaging God’s mission we must create opportunities to reflect on our missional involvement. Sometimes this may simply mean we need individual “down time” to reflect upon our activities. We may need to ask God to affirm our involvement, or to ask for clarity of direction. But it will also mean we must carve out time to reflect with others among our faith community. We need to hear what others are seeing and sensing concerning God’s activities and to hear the stories of how others are engaging God’s mission. It is important for us to be in the position to offer feedback on what we are sensing.
To participate in the missio Dei is to play a personal and vital role in the movement of God’s redemptive mission. God is inviting us into his missionary adventure. Recalling a classic line from the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood had it right, “We are on a mission from God!”
Adapted from Missional Essentials: A Guide for Experiencing God’s Mission in Your Life
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