The Missional Challenge of Change

Recently, we have been studying The Church That Love Builds: What Jesus Wants to Love us into as Individuals and a Community.  Over the past couple weeks, we have looked at the Mission of the church and spoken of what it means to be a “missional” church.  It's why we exist; but it is far from easy because it involves change and it involves renewed focus. 

One of the challenges of becoming a church on mission is that we must learn to focus our activities according to our vision rather than our preferences.  Let me share a couple quotes from Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passions and Practices of Missional Churches to help us think and pray through this further:

When missional churches order their actions according to their purpose, they must continuously let go of those activities that do not result in accomplishing their purpose.  They must be ruthless in this difficult endeavor.  As Peter Drucker puts it, "The question has to be asked… If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?"  If the answer is no, he says, we must decide on new courses of action.  Some find it easier to say, "Let’s make another study” or “what we are doing is meaningful to some people” than to say, “It is a good thing, but it is not helping us achieve our primary purpose.  Let it go!”  It is only the latter response that orders actions according to purpose…

 

The challenge of discontinuing practices is not unique to churches.  Addressing change, Drucker identifies policies that must be implemented if any business is to successfully manage change.  Foundational to all other policies is one he calls “organized abandonment,” which consists of “abandoning yesterday” – freeing up resources committed to things that may have worked in the past but are not working today.

 

There are many good things disciples and their churches could do.  Those who intend to be missional know they cannot be everything and do everything.  They are focused on the purpose for which they have been sent and they are not taking their eyes off of that purpose.  They order their actions according to their purpose.

 

Change is normal in a world that is broken, but being redeemed.  But confidence amidst change takes both faith in our sovereign and good God and a resulting commitment to follow wherever He leads.  Pray with me that God would both strengthen our faith in Him and His purposes for the church and make us willing to change to persue the vision He’s given us to become a community of grace that connects deeply with Christ, genuinely with one another, and lovingly with the world.  And let’s pray that as we change to pursue that vision, that God would use Wellington Presbyterian Church to change the Western Communities with the gospel!