Tag Archives: formation

Every Believer On Mission

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Christian Life, Church, Discipleship, Gospel, Ministry; Leadership;, Mission

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I’m not a handyman. In fact, I’m not even close to being handy around the house. There’s a running joke that my wife is more of a handyman (or woman) than I am. I have often expressed my gratitude for being in vocational ministry for it places me around people that can often lend a helping hand, show me what needs to be done, or be hired for the project.

Here’s an observation that I’ve made regarding our culture. We live in a culture of specialists. In the previous generation, like my dad and father-in-law (who both are in their 60s), they were generalists. On top of their day job, they could change oil, replace spark plugs, lay flooring, fix minor plumbing issues, install crown molding, etc. And I’m sure that I could learn many of those things and more—by just watching YouTube—but the problem is that I don’t want to take the time to learn. I simply know there are professionals that can do it and can do it much better than me.

The notion that we live in a culture of specialists—or professionals—has infiltrated the church to the degree that many don’t see mission as their job. Mission, as many see it, is the duty of those who have been “called” or hired.  

But specialization not only hinders everyone from seeing their call to mission, but the idea of compartmentalization does as well. The tendency of our culture to categorize everything, leads to an unintended consequence of the fragmentation of life. In other words, when we don’t have one overall arching purpose that connects each category of life, we tend to see that category stand all by itself. Therefore, mission gets placed into a category. For many churches they see mission as a “program” of the church or something that believers go and do. Mission for some, isn’t seen as something that’s part of the very fabric and DNA of each individual. 

The Bible has a very different view or vision of mission.

Mission is for everyone, everywhere, all the time and to all places (peoples).

This vision of mission can be traced back to the Old Testament. In Exodus 19, while Moses is on Mt. Sinai, God speaks to him and at one point says, “…you will be my own possession out of all the peoples…and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation” (Ex 19:5–6). 

Why is mission for everyone? Because God is on mission to create a people for Himself to reflect His glory—His rule and reign—throughout the created order. We see that idea in Exodus 19 when God expresses, “you will be my own possession….” If God is on mission, and God has created a people for Himself, then those who are part of His people have been grafted into His mission. Therefore, if God is on mission then all His people are born into and on that mission as well.

How is mission everywhere? If God is on mission to create a people for Himself to reflect His glory, He is going to do that through holy formation. Holy formation would involve all of life. Christopher Wright suggests, “The strong ethical demand of holiness in Old Testament Israel meant living lives of integrity, justice and compassion in every area—including personal, family, social, economic and national life” (The Mission of God’s People, 124).

This is why discipleship for New Testament believers should not be divorced from mission. Discipleship is the collision of the imago Deiand the missio Dei—as it is the process of learning what it means to be human after the likeness and image of Jesus. Being thus formed in Jesus, we are having the character of God forged in us that we might be a [holy] light to the world. As a result, how we live in all spheres of life matters missionally. 

If everything is mission, nothing really is mission…right? I disagree. I’ve heard people argue that if everything is mission then mission is watered-down to the point that nothing is mission. Given my broad understanding of mission, I don’t buy it. Why you ask? God tells Moses that His people will be a kingdom of priests. What do priests do? Mediate between God and others. Therefore, God saved a people for Himself forming and forging them into His identity and nature that they might live in a priestly, mediatorial, state between Him and the nations.

Similar language can also be found in the New Testament describing the people of God, a.k.a, the Church. Peter writes, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession…” (1 Pt 2:9). 

Such would lead me to conclude that everything that I do (in all spheres of life) matters to God—as what He is doing in me, He wants to leverage through me. In other words, how I live my life, how I relate to my family, how I treat my neighbor, how I engage the oppressed and marginalized, how I approach work, how I view and use my money, even how I leverage my social media account (and more), all are missional levers that display what God has and is doing in me through the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.  

In closing, our vision of mission should be more comprehensive—everyone, every sphere of life, and all the time—and not specialized for professionals or compartmentalized as just a branch or department of the church.

But there’s one more thing that fully completes this vision of mission and that is the posture or direction that it takes. While such a vision of mission should first and foremost have a vertical direction—the glory of our King—it most definitely should have a horizontal direction as we direct our lives towards all ta ethne as we declare God’s glory among the nations (Ps 96:3) and proclaim the praises of the one who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pt 2:9b). It is to this vision of mission everyone is called!

Review and Interaction of “Desiring the Kingdom” by James K. A. Smith

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Theology

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James K. A. Smith sets out to argue, in his work, Desiring the Kingdom, that liturgy (worship), whether sacred or secular, shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desire and our most basic attunement to the world (25). He goes on to note that liturgies train our hearts, teach us to be a certain kinds of people, and develop our worldview(s).

Smith argues that the problem with evangelical discipleship and formation is that the focus remains towards a more Enlightenment slant of learning focusing on information—theories, ideas, and beliefs. In other words, current discipling efforts in evangelicalism focus more on worldview and information rather than formation. Basically, Smith believes that believing right, does not necessarily lead to right behavior; but that loving (worshipping) right leads to believing right, which leads to behaving right. Therefore, he argues that man, or what he refers to man as “animals,” (I wish he would have used another word) is a desirous creature before he is a worldview one. In other words, he is a worshipping creature rather than a “thinking” one.

For both missional churches and church planters, discipleship is of great importance given the fact they are passionate about reaching people with the gospel. In, Desiring the Kingdom, Smith provides an articulation of how the church (although he applies it to the university) can accomplish the task of forming disciples. There are at least two contributions of Smith’s argument that can be applied to the realm of discipleship for both the missional church and church planting.

First, Smith teaches believers that to form disciples for the good (eschatological) vision, or kingdom, the church needs to understand the antithetical visions of the kingdom in secular liturgy that exist in culture. In other words, in order to lay the foundation for the good (eschatological) vision of the kingdom, he provides an exegesis of “secular” liturgies (Ch. 3).

Identifying modern-day idolatry, or secular liturgies (how people are innately worshippers), Smith zooms his focus on three cultural institutions: the mall, the stadium, and the university. He summarizes that these secular liturgies are visions of the kingdom—visions of human flourishing that are antithetical to the biblical vision of shalom (121). By providing a cultural exegesis of secular liturgy, Smith demonstrates for believers how to identify the idolatry of the culture at large. If believers can identify the cultural secular liturgies around them, they can then enact and articulate a counter-formation and worship. The stark reality is that this ethos is scarce in the current North American church. In fact, as Smith argues, the North American church finds itself adopting and forming to the cultural secular liturgies.

Second, he outlines his vision for Christian formation, or discipleship—one that is founded upon worship. Smith believes that “Worship is the ordering and reordering of our material being to the end for which it was meant” (143). In short, worship is holistic. This foundation becomes the launching pad of developing an exegesis of Christian “social imaginary” that embeds itself in the practices of Christian worship. In other words, Smith believes that worship leads to practices, and practices leads to habits. In the end, these all lead to a formation of discipleship by which the people of God are “called to be the church to and for the world—not in order to save it or conquer it or even transform it, but to serve it by showing what redeemed human community and culture look like, as modeled by the One whose cultural work led him to the cross” (207). In another place, Smith writes that the goal of Christian worship is, “to form radical disciples of Jesus and citizens of the baptismal city who communally take up the creational task of being God’s image bearers, unfolding the cultural possibilities latent in creation—but doing so as empowered by the Spirit, following the example of Jesus’s cruciform cultural labor” (220).

My major concern with Smith’s thought-provoking work rests in his focus of worship preceding worldview. He writes that Christians worshipped “before they got around to abstract theologizing or formulating a Christian worldview” (139). In other words, it seems that Smith believes that Christians had the right worship before they had the right worldview. In essence, Smith argues that if Christians would desire (or love) right, then they would think (or believe) right, which means they would live or behave right.

I am not convinced this is the case. As a rebuttal of this thought, I think of Jesus being the very Word of God, who  took upon flesh, and pointed people back to God. I think of the essence of the good-news, it is a proclamation, an announcement that Jesus is Lord; He is the King who has come. Acts 2 expresses that Peter preached the gospel and people responded. In addition, the church in the later part of chapter 2 is seen “devoting themselves to the apostles teaching.” In short, ideas, beliefs, and theology redirects the worship, or desire, of people. Think of it this way: ideas, theories, theology, or a biblical worldview, invites people back to the garden to do what they were intended to do—worship God.

Nevertheless, Smith provides a sound, thought-provoking argument for believers to have a more formative discipleship rather than an informative one, and one that is built upon a holistic worship of God as they seek to be his worshipping agents embodying and enacting the redeemed and restorative eschatological (future) kingdom.