Mission statements

Mission has become a new buzzword among Christians. Beyond the squabbling about whose vision comes closer to eternal truth, there is some obvious value to talk about our mission, particularly as it pertains to our church.

As every introductory business course teaches, no business or organization can succeed without a well-defined mission statement. A good mission statement means you have thought through your objectives. It is the starting point for your business plan.

Scot McKnight has an elegant synopsis of our mission as the body of Christ:

1. It’s about God’s mission in this world.

2. It’s about God’s mission in this world in Christ.

3. It’s about God’s mission in this world in Christ in view of the Age to Come/Kingdom of God.

4. God summons humans to participate in God’s mission by becoming oriented to God’s mission, to others, and to the world — in the context of the (local) church.

The result of this is very, very important: nothing can be called missional until the mission of God is defined, which means nothing can be called missional until it is connected to Jesus and the kingdom of God/the Age to Come, and nothing can be missional if it is not shaped through the local church. Missional gets its start when we discern what God is doing in this world and particularly what God is doing in our community and what God is calling the ecclesia to do in light of that big mission of God.

It is hard to argue with that core mission. It is not our mission; it's God's. It is our privilege and responsibility to be a part of that mission. Our mission is grounded in our local church and the surrounding community. In other words, it is about 'us' in action rather than 'me' in action. The body is more effective in serving God's mission than an uncoordinated collection of body parts.

While all of this makes perfect sense on some level, it does carry a potential pitfall. Suppose our church is grounded in an affluent community. Might we be tempted to think "mission accomplished" if our congregation is Christ-centered, we share God's love with our neighbors, and we are quick to minister to the needs of the few lost or broken souls in our midst?

The parable of the faithful servant in Luke 12 ends with a warning in verse 48:

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

There is a great temptation to be satisfied if we never look beyond our community. We can satisfy the minimum requirements of mission by caring for our neighbors, but can lose sight of the bigger picture.

Let me illustrate how easy it is to be short-sighted. There has been many discussions of mission in our congregation. Out of these discussions have come innovative ways to serve God and others in our community. Yet, I cannot help but wonder if we are falling short. Falling very short.

Not too far from our community is a larger urban area plagued by poverty and violence. No one living in the Chicago area can claim to be ignorant of the problems and despair. It constantly makes the local news. Yet, you have to ask why so few Christians outside these broken communities have come to help. It feels wrong.

How is it that people supposedly in tune with God's mission through the Holy Spirit can turn a deaf ear to people crying out for relief from poverty, violence, and shear hopelessness? I cannot get my head around that. Have we become so well-practiced in disobedience that we can tune out the cries of those in desperate need? Easy, breezy following of the Holy Spirit. As long as we knock on a few doors, display our belief in Christ on every social media, attend church services, tithe, and vote for correct political candidates and issues, our ticket to paradise is punched. That smells funny to me. It does not sound like Christ's mission. It does nothing to repair the world. Tikkun Olam.

Rev. Julian DeShazier, senior minister of University Church of Chicago, has written about the violence and despair in some Chicago communities in Sojourners magazine. Here is how brother Julian introduces the nightmare conditions in some parts of the city:

How violence begins is mostly understood. Here’s the widely accepted equation:

Poverty + Ghetto-ization + a Culture of Violence + Gangs + Access to Guns + Drugs = Violence

On the left side of the equation, everything seems true. Many Chicagoans experience a scarcity of resources; many of them are black and poor and live together (if you didn’t know, Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the nation: everybody has a “town,” and the boundaries are invisible but strict). America does seems to have a fixation on Chicago’s rich history of mobbishness and corruption (thank you VH1 for “Mob Wives: Chicago”), and there is a curiously high level of access to guns in Illinios (perhaps because of too strict gun laws?). Plus, the paradigm of the Street Gang as Corporation began in Chicago, drugs are everywhere, and most if not all of the violent crimes in Chicago are related to one or a combination of the factors on the left side of the equation.

Rev. DeShazier is also a hip-hop musician on top of his clerical duties, who performs as J.Kwest. Here is how VerbalKwest describes the situation in rhythm in the music video for "Crazy Streets."




Many of the lines in that song stood out for me.

"If don't nobody help then I am army of one, Army of two because I ride with the Son."

So where is the rest of the army of the Son? Of all the people that call themselves followers of Christ living nearby, how come so few have helped? If our mission is be apart of the healing of this broken world, then how can we neglect such suffering? Someone explain that to me.

"If you see God and happen to speak, Tell Him it is crazy in these streets."

God knows it is crazy in the streets. God is not pleased that more are not listening to the cries of these people and coming together to help. But for the people on the streets, they do not believe God hears their cries.

"It is hard right now to start judging But when you get enough pain And there has been enough tears You start to wondering if God still loves us, You start to wondering if God do hate us" (2:22 -2:30)

What Rev. DeShazier and others are doing is to minister to the psychological and spiritual wounds of the people in these communities. They have created a program where ...:

... young adults (most of them high-school dropouts and barely escaping or trying to exit gang/drug culture) now have a music studio where they write, record, and own their own music. This sounds like a record label, but it’s not. We ask them to write about what is meaningful to them; I don’t judge content. After recording, we talk about how they chose to say what they said. Stories come out. Trauma is exposed. It is uncomfortable at first, but eventually they know they are in safe space. We record songs as one way to expose trauma. And it has been working. Young folks are earning their GED’s and seeing beyond the limited scope of the barrel. They believe in something bigger than their reality, and it is transforming their reality.

Everyone needs to hear those stories, especially those of us that follow Christ. Bending an ear, opening our hearts, and lending our hands to help these people is unquestionably part of our mission as Christians.

The problems are severe, but God did not make this mess. We did. And we damn well better fix it or the Lord will demand to know why.

Prof. McKnight says a major part of our mission is to become oriented to God's mission. You cannot just learn about what God's plan is. Knowing that plan requires action. It requires rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty in the mess we have made on this earth.

While we on the subject of mission, perhaps we should question how our religious leaders have failed to energize Christians to the problems described by Rev. DeShazier in the Sojourners article.

They are experiencing violence as perpetrator, victim, and witness, and they are no less exposed to the trauma. The trauma of being poor. The trauma of being hated by your government (if education policy is any indication of this). The trauma of broken families and unresolved relationships. The trauma of feeling foreign in other parts of the city. The trauma of degradation at even the most superficial level: the only popular rappers are the drug dealers/addicts/selfish/near-prostitutes, etc.

Perhaps we have not been able to fully participate in God's mission because too many of our religious leaders are distracting us with manufactured outrage over issues like contraception instead of listening to the cries of people in need.

Orientation to mission is not enough. We must act.