A recent post on the Christianity Today website covered the news that two Neo-Reformed mega-churches pastored by John Piper and Mark Driscoll would each be starting their own degree-granting and I am guessing accredited seminaries. Many have decried this from the standpoint that they believe any seminary built up under the auspices of an iconic figure, like either of these men are in their circles, is bound to produce ministers and theologians that are indoctrinated and dogmatic in regards to a particular theological system.

I would argue though that this trap has long affected schools and seminaries that are rigidly aligned within the hierarchy of any religious institution. It is a safe bet that you will not have many undergrad theology classes in the Nazarene spectrum dealing heavily with something like a doctrine of election for instance. We do not have to be attending Liberty or Oral Roberts to find ourselves being taught with a particular theological framework and assumptions in play.

I believe it was last year that there was much turmoil at Olivet as one of the professors was rebuffed for his stance of theological-evolution. There are are many ways in which a school that is aligned with a particular religious institution can be influenced by their affiliated denominations, it doesn't require a single iconic individual. I also do not mean to single out Nazarene institutions with this particular post, as this exists across the private religious school spectrum, however the Nazarene schools are the one with which I am most familiar.

The issue I take with denominational (or church based) institutions is that they are pressured to take ecumenical and broad-based theological constructs and then recast and stamp them with their own particularity. There has been a recent push within the Nazarene church to identify ourselves as Missional. The concern I have with the Nazarene interpretation and usage of missional is that it is closely aligned with eduction in our Nazarene higher educational system. It is an ecumenical error to use the term missional in a particularistic and self-advantageous context. It is also important that if the church is serious about being missional that we move beyond the limitations of our current educational paradigm.

Rick Meigs describes missional:

A helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the "come to us" invitations with a "go to them" life. A life where "the way of Jesus" informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower."

In many ways missionality is a direct attempt to bring back together the realms of ortho-doxy and ortho-praxy under the same ecclesial tent. It is a shift in critical theological thinking that begins to place missiology in a paramount context to ecclesiology. In order for an institution of learning to truly be missional it must be intentional in it's incarnational presence as the body of Christ.

If missionality is to be taken seriously in our educational contexts it must be approached ecumenically and can not smack of the particularization that is inherent in denominational thinking. Missional can not and must not be reduced to a selling point for future students, rather it must be a fundamental element and core in the educational effort and graduation requirements. Missions and missional theology must be taught and required for every single degree if we are going to claim missional as a trait. It must be pervasive and and dive deeper than one or two courses out of 30. What the western church needs more than anything is thoroughly missiologically trained students, students that are not just competent in exegesis, homiletics, history and doctrine.

The second problem I have with this alignment of missional with our educational systems is that I am frankly not sure our higher educational schools are up to the paradigm shift's challenge. There is a tie to historical tradition and modernistic assumptions on the importance of a particular pedagogical method of training. There needs to be room for parish-based forms of education (somewhat ironic to my point I know) that are rooted in incarnational ministry and experience. With the technological means of today the years of needing to convene in a single geographical location to interact with peers, scholars and professors is dying and outmoded. While I understand the need for a handful of academic-track students to maintain residence that is not what the vast majority of our future ministers require or even need.

Imagine, if you will, the ability of students to live together in small cohorts of 15 or 20 in a given city or area of the world and to engage as a cohort together in missional living and education. Each group working through the same coursework and authors together in order to build community and trust. Each student is required to give a portion of their time to being present in their communities and local church bodies. What impact could this have on the missionality of our denomination?

I do not believe the method of education I propose is the best or only, but simply the one I believe would begin to transform the Nazarene church into a truly missional body of believers that is ready and equipped to engage a globalized and multi-cultural reality with a knowledge not only of history and study but of engagement and incarnation.

Do you have a mission statement?  I think ours says something about being an authentic community of Christ followers or some such statement.  Have you ever really sat and thought why you have a mission statement?  There was probably some point in the late 1990's early 2000's during some church growth seminar in which some well meaning person equated the church with the business world.  They saw the business world creating vision statements and mission statements and thought it would be a good thing to adopt into our Christian marketing portfolio.

But have you ever really thought about what a mission statement is, it's real purpose?  A mission statement says absolutely nothing about the organization to which it is attached.  It is meaningless.  A mission statement is merely the means by which an organization controls the perception of others of what it is that the organization does.  In reality the organizations work is not only different than the mission statement, it is antithetical.

Take the insurance industry.  A health insurance company may have as it's mission statement; we exist to provide our customers with the best health care options at the lowest price.  That however is not the mission of the company.  Their real mission is a simple economic one; to spend less money than they take in.  The insurance company however realizes that if they owned up to this real mission that no one would do business with them.

But you may say, the church is different than a business, we are real and authentic.  Really?

There are a couple of different reasons why a church would have a business statement.

1. To attract Christians from other churches with code words that denote that they are indeed cooler than your current church.

2.  To act as a placebo for the congregation to believe that by having a mission statement they are actually being missional.

Let's unpack those.

Often the mission statements of a church are front and center on their marketing, their slides, their literature, etc.  When in print however this is nothing more than a co-opting of the secular marketing world's idea of 'branding'.  Make no mistake that a slogan is nothing more than a public relations vehicle by which you attempt to control the public perception of your purpose, it is not your real purpose.  It is not our job to control the public perception of our intent.

I also say that a mission is often a placebo in that it becomes a mantra by which the organization lulls itself into the false reality that they are actually doing what it says in their mission.  By having a mission statement we allow individuals and organizations to mask over the shadow missions that are the reality.  We slowly begin to believe we are actually fulfilling our mission by the very virtue that we have a mission statement.

If a church is truly being a church then a mission statement is not only needless, it is boarder line idolatrous.  After all, there is but one mission; and it is God's.  When we adopt mission statements that causes the attention of the individual to fall on the church, rather than the God of the church.  So please, drop your mission statements, precisely so that you may embrace your missional calling.

One of the images used to describe the Lord's people is the 'bride of Christ'.  In wedding ceremonies the bride is often beautified with dress and jewelry, her hair is done and makeup is applied.  She is radiant as she walks down the aisle and her grace is evident.  She is attractive in her beauty and in her character, her purity.  She is so beautiful.

Does that really sound like the church?

Of course we all know that the 30 minutes a bride stands before a group of individuals is not her every day persona.  She is an office worker, a teacher, a doctor, a student, a lawyer, a homemaker.  She has her good days and her bad days, her moments of exhiliration and her stretches of drought and normalcy.  Throughout all of this though her husband remains committed, he did not just marry the gilded and adorned beauty that walked down the aisle to meet him.  No he married her largely for her consistent character and faitfulness to their marriage vow.

One thing I have come to notice over the years is that married couples who are passionate about each other are beautiful.  In their age and their years they acquire a beauty as they fall ever deeper in love with the other.  It is a beauty that spills out into the laps of those that are near them, they inspire others towards connectedness in their relationships and a deep intimacy.  This is a love not easily feigned nor imitated, because it is a love that knows beauty is more than cosmetic, it is it's own language of knowing the other.

The church is not perfect, we are after all human.  However as we continue to fall in love with our spouse, with our lover and creator our love can become a beautiful thing.  We do our love with Christ a dis-service when we describe it solely in the realm of the platonic or brotherly.  The relationship of God's people (our own relationship) with Christ is to be passionate, romantic, intimate and deeply connected.  Perhaps if we really embraced this truth the church could begin to really be the church.

I would argue that largely the church today is concerned with cosmetic beauty, and as a result we end up looking worn and trashy.  The world is to look at the church, to smell the perfume of our relationship with Christ, and to be attracted to that covenant.  They are to see a transforming power at work in the world, but instead they only see human political parties and hypocritical nationalists.  Through our actions we have not shown that God can change the hearts of men, we have instead shown that God likes to boycott Target and water board Muslims.  We do our groom a disservice when we pursue after influence among the powers of the world, when after all we are already betrothed to the Lord of All, the Lamb of God.

She is so beautiful, and the beauty is held in the intimant closeness of Christ.  We must not look elsewhere for our affirmation and power or we will surely become an adulteress.