The Church, Missions & Technology

3 Noticeable Observations: Missional Living

The third noticeable observation is that people in the church talk a lot about being missional but they have no idea how to do it. They continue to compartmentalize work, family, and church. I am not sure that their parents or pastors have taught them to live this way. It’s just how they role. I have talked to several people who say, “I just don’t know what to say” or “I don’t think I can love that person as my neighbor”. Well if that is the case you have a Jesus problem. Most people who attend church can learn how to listen and share the gospel. Our biggest problem in this whole thing is we have lost the ability to share a Gospel conversation after we have listened to someone tell us something about their life. We don’t have to make it strange. We can use language that they understand in order to tell them that Jesus loves them and that He commanded us to love our neighbor. Because we do not know how to live as missional believers we miss opportunity after opportunity. We tend to stand in the corner and ignore all that is going on in the world, even if it is right in front of us in the grocery line.

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In order to live missional, we need the desire to live this way. It is a behavior shift as well as a lifestyle change for most people. My concern is that most of us are happy to take time out of our summer or year and go on a mission trip spending thousands of dollars but we have no desire to live that same life daily in front of our neighbors. Hey Phil you better watch it, I know my neighbors and they go to church. If that is true, then great. You are lucky, but you still have to treat them the same way you want to be treated. The sad part is most of us want to be left alone. But Christ did not design us to live alone. He designed us to live and be in community with others. When we are in biblical community it is easier to live a missional lifestyle because you are not doing it alone. You are a missional group encouraging each other and holding each other accountable for missional living.

For years, many of my friends in the church have experienced lives that for the most part have been silos. We would have our church life, work life, and then our extracurricular life which could be camping or sports. These Christians would act different in each group. They did this because it is easier on the mind to be able to turn off one compartment and turn on another. So back in the 90s we started asking people to merge the church life with the work life and it didn’t really work because we never taught them how to do it. We didn’t take the time to show them how, based on their job, and skill set how they can best be light among the darkness at their place of employment. Most of the time church members do not realize that God has already placed them to love and minister to others. I believe that this is one of the most fundamental problems with the church today. We don’t know how to live our lives for Jesus all the time. After thinking about this for several weeks I believe that if we do not act as missional Christians in our communities, if our churches do not send out its members into the community the be light, then it is the same as not sending missionaries to the nations. Romans 10 gives us a super clear picture of how this works. The church sends, missionaries preach, the lost hear, then they believe and its awesome. But there is only one place for all of that to get messed up and it has to deal with the church. Because if we stop sending people to our communities, if we stop sending missionaries to the nations then they won’t preach and the lost will not hear and if that’s the case they will not believe and they will spend an eternity in hell because we as the church stopped sending.
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