Guest post by Mike Breen
It’s time we start being brutally honest about the missional movement that has emerged in the last 10-15 years: Chances are better than not it’s going to fail.
That may seem cynical, but I’m being realistic. There is a reason so many movements in the Western church have failed in the past century: They are a car without an engine. A missional church or a missional community or a missional small group is the new car that everyone is talking about right now, but no matter how beautiful or shiny the vehicle, without an engine, it won’t go anywhere.
The Engine of the Church
So what is the engine of the church? Discipleship. I’ve said it many times: If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.
If you’re good at making disciples, you’ll get more leaders than you’ll know what to do with. If you make disciples like Jesus made them, you’ll see people come to faith who didn’t know Him. If you disciple people well, you will always get the missional thing.
Always.
We took 30 days and examined the Twitter conversations happening. We discovered there are between 100-150 times as many people talking about mission as there are discipleship (to be clear, that’s a 100:1). We are a group of people addicted to and obsessed with the work of the Kingdom, with little to no idea how to be with the King.
As Skye Jethani wrote in his Out of Ur post a little while back “Has Mission become an Idol?”:
“Many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God.”
Look, I’m not criticizing the people who are passionate about missional – I am one of those people. I was one of the people pioneering Missional Communities in the 1980′s and have been doing it ever since. This is my camp, my tribe, my people. But it has to be said: God did not design us to do Kingdom mission outside of the scope of intentional, biblical discipleship and if we don’t see that, we’re fooling ourselves.
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A book out there "What's right with Church" I believe by Erwin Lutzer. The churches are doing what they are according to Ephesians 4:12-13. Jeremiah 23:28 Let the prophet ........who has my word speak it faithfully."
Richard A. Tomporowski said:
Good Afternoon disciples.
Keeping the populace attentive to Jesus Christ. Let no soul be untold.
In John 21:22 Peter was asking Jesus about another disciple; namely; John. However, Jesus' reply was: "What is that to you? You must follow me."
Speaking as though Jesus' agenda for Peter may be different than John's. So to with 21st century disciples, His agenda may be different than those of the 1st century, but we must agree on the basics. He died. He rose from the dead. He is coming again.