This is a diagram I drew in class last January. I was relating an observation about life and more specifically discipleship in the exurbs. Here’s the gist of it.

*Built on the 1/3′s life model (1st Third – Formation; 2nd Third – Productive Time; 3rd Third – Giving Back)

*The first third for the most part are years where people are receiving and learning to give.

*Giving often goes hyper in the 18-25 age group as people are learning, passionate, free…and don’t have many obligations.

*They have time

….. (Let’s Fast Forward)

*After 55 (roughly) people have time again. The kids are gone + they have a lifetime of experience

*This group is often more financially stable

*They are often retiring soon…again they have space.

*They can be discipled and hopefully disciple others.

….. (What I’ve Come To Grow Deeply Concerned About)

THE LUMP!

*25-55: Mortgage(s).Careers.Kids.Soccer.Dance.Acting.School.Family.Friends(sometimes).
Football.Basketball.Cheerleading.Gymnastics.Trying to get a Workout in. Multiple Jobs.ETC.

*Oh yeah, church…which in the 21st century world most often = events

*Church events (worship, small groups, fellowship, retreats, mission trips)

*Those in The Lump…don’t have or don’t make the time. There is no space to be in a community no margin for time or often for giving of resources.

*At best what is most often happening is drive-through or 1 hour church which is far from discipleship.
Usually the worship gathering is all people give the community and discipleship isn’t happening.

*To be honest I’m not sure what what’s happening…what we are replicating/making.

…

What do you think? We batted this around in class for a while.

Are my fears real? If so how do we turn it around?

If we don’t, the suburbs/exurbs are lost.

 

 

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The Apache Indians of the American West practiced way of life that yielded an open system of community leadership that was decentralized. This made them hard to conquer as every person in the tribe understood the way of life and carried with them the ability to make decisions and act out of a communal ethic that at its core had the communities best interest at heart. When conquering forces came against them they were hard to defeat because there was no hierarchical structure or leadership. There was no one group to kill or take out to disrupt communication or decision-making; there was no head to “cut off.” The way of life they were committed to made their way of life continue on (Brafman and Beckstrom 2007). Church communities often struggle with over centralization. Leadership is often centered upon the few in a certain location. Everything of importance happens there and comes down from those people in that place. The missional community like the apache nation understands its shared values and lives by them as they are sent out daily into the world. God from the beginning seems to be sending us out but it is the tendency of humankind to settle in a place or for lesser things (Cole 2005). Missional communities must stand against this centralized urge so that people live with shared values and empowerment as they go out as kingdom people

Missional communities, I believe, must be committed to a decentralized pattern of leadership and engagement. The way of life is of utmost importance. Communities are created and led by the spirit of God (Van Gelder 2007) and are not just a gathering or an event. The members see themselves as the actual body of Christ not the machine of Christ (Frost 2006)
– a people living to model who God is as pictured in the life of Jesus (Stetzer 2009) [1] where God wishes to waste no effort or energy (Cole 2005) .

The community is then a group of individuals who are committed to a way of life that places them on daily mission individually and together out in the world – not just when they gather. M. Scott Boren points out in The Relational Way that this requires for many a different way of thinking – a different way of seeing what it means to be the church (Boren 2007) . Randy Frazee in a talk at Willow Creek Community Church in 2007 defined this change of vision as changing operating systems. He stated that we are not asking people to add a new program to their computers. We are asking people to switch from a PC to a Mac. Both are computers but how they operate is completely different. Missional communities see the world differently and live on a different operating system (Frazee 2007) .

In the same way, missional communities ask people to change. Strangers or guests who enter are asked to become part of a community that doesn’t just gather for events but that sees themselves daily operating in a new way. These communities are daily led by the Spirit of God to consider others more important than themselves and to look for ways to get to know, look to serve and grow to love those around them. But they don’t do this alone and the story is not about them. The story is about a God who goes with them into the world and community that is their to support, encourage and resource them along the way. The community must be a place of hospitality, a place where people thrive.

Missional communities keep before them the missio dei, the mission of God. The missio dei is as Darrell Guder points out “the result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purposes to restore and heal creation.” He later adds that for us to have a better understanding of the missio dei we must recapture the truth that God is missional and initiating; we are the instruments that he uses – not the other way around (Guder 1998) . Maybe a more simple way of putting it is, “Find out what God is doing and join in.” (Blackaby 1990) I have stated that God is missional. I believe that God is at work[2], that we are gifted to bring about good works, which God created us to do[3], so the question is are our eyes open and are our hearts ready to join him. The answer of those who claim to be missional or of those communities claiming to be missional communities must be a yes!

Part of the missional communities journey is a journey toward empowerment. It’s growth is not dependent on its programming but upon how well it empowers it’s members (Brewin 2007) . As stated earlier, systemic problems in the American exurban lifestyle fight against this empowerment, as people seem to no longer have the time to take up roles for which they are gifted. Kester Brewin later states, “Our problem today: our space for imagination to expand and take shape is inversely proportional to the speed at which we live”(2007:57). We struggle to slow down long enough to let God create growth in us or to see opportunities to love others well because our lives are driven by our desires for worldly things. Missional communities because of their pattern of considering others first must rise up against this pattern.

To stand against these patterns the missional community then meets the problems head on, where they originate – for our purposes in the exurbs. Missional communities join God in what he is doing in their contexts. This means that just as we don’t drive away to “do church” missional communities don’t drive away to do all of their missional activity. God is working here; the trick is to be open enough to find out what He is doing in the exurbs and join in. Alan Roxburgh points out that contextualizing is “weaving together.” (Roxburgh, Boren, and Priddy 2009) It is the community recognizing it’s gifting and using it to meet needs, heal hurts, answer questions and be the good news where they live. Members of the community are individually temples, places where people see and meet God, and we collectively are a temple (Cole 2005) . The missional community is committed to be a temple that shows off the beauty and grandeur of our God and invites other people to enter in.