Intentional Remnant
I was at one of my favorite third places today… Barnes and Nobel, and was reading the epilogue to Marcus Borg’s new book Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary and was struck by something he said. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a piece of paper to write the quote on… so as best I remember I will summarize what he said. He was talking about how the decline of the mainline Christian church in USAmerica gives him cause to celebrate because the remnant that is left will be intentional not conventional in their approach to ministry and mission. Which then led him to high praise for the emergent church and where we are leading those who follow Jesus.
And I thought wow… what a perspective. To be intentional and not conventional is a great concept/reality. But never thought about the remnant factor and what that will do or cause the church to do to make course corrections. Thoughts?
12 Feb 2007 Martin Hutchison
Several thoughts here.
1. It would be helpful to examine from Scripture the times when God used the remnant, or a small faithful group, to accomplish his mission. Gideon’s army comes quickly to mind; there are certainly others, including the entire NT church, who were a mighty witness in the face of empire.
2. This has been something of the experience of my congregation, which had declined to the point that the future did not look promising—from a human perspective. The leadership has been committed to making changes to be intentional again. The next few months for us will prove that commitment. I have great confidence in them!
3. It’s easy to be excited about this. It’s also a humbling, even frightening experience (even while we learn Jesus’ command to “fear not.”) In such times, we must stress the first part of the Great Commission (Make Disciples: Go, Baptize, Teach). But we must learn to rely on the second (“I am with you always.”) It is a new way to learn depth of faith.
Tim,
I love your challenge in number 3 above… it is both an exciting and humbling experience to be part of a remnant… and you are right on, in my opinion, that moving out of the “great omission” (as dallas willard writes about in a helpful book The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship) into the real mission of making disciples of Jesus and being confident of Jesus’ constant presence as we join him in that mission is key to being intentional.
There is so much that we do as “church” that is more about convention and less about intentional mission and the rub comes when we must deal with those conventions that are distractions from mission.
Like you, I find that I am at a place where our congregation is faced with making the tough choices to move out of convention and into intentional mission of making disciples. This includes new strategies for making relationships with people in our community “more accessible”. Moving out of the “come and see” convention and into the “go and show” of actively reaching out with God’s love, hospitality, hope, healing, and peace.
So much of what we do, even when it begins with an intentional desire to be on mission for Jesus can quickly become a convention that is adopted and actually moves us farther from the mission of Jesus to make disciples.