The Missional Church (Part 2)

This post comes from Wade Hodges, Minister of the Garnett Church of Christ in Tulsa....

Missions is the new worship.

That’s what a friend said to me the other day. I think he said he’d heard it from someone else. Since what this phrase meant to its originator is lost to us, I’m going to engage in some postmodern meaning making and tell you what it means to me.

In the last two decades, as non-denominational community churches have flourished and as denominational loyalty has given way to consumerism, church hoppers and shoppers have usually been attracted to the churches with the best worship “event.” This event would include both the music and the teaching. Both have proven to be essential to growing a large church.
Now I see things changing. Missions is becoming the new worship. What I think this means is that those in search of a new church are placing just as high a priority on the “missions” segment of a church’s life as they are on the worship event. It’s not enough to have good worship anymore, you’ve also got have a dynamic missions program. By “missions program” I don’t mean simply having a bulletin board in the lobby featuring all the foreign missionaries your church supports. It’s much more than that.

It starts locally. Have you adopted a local elementary school? Does your student ministry regularly volunteer at a soup kitchen? Have you built any Habitat houses? Are you collecting coats for the poor this winter? How many of your people went to New Orleans to help out in the aftermath of Katrina?

While traditional foreign missions is still important, it’s not enough to be sending money over to an American who is trying to plant a church in Kenya. You also have to demonstrate participation in some of the more trendy mission/social justice projects. Have you adopted a village in Africa? What are you doing to address the global AIDS crisis? How many water wells have you drilled?

It doesn’t matter how good your band is or how inspired the preaching is, if you can’t demonstrate some of the above mission activity, then church hoppers and shoppers aren’t going to take you seriously.

In our American consumer church culture, missions is the new worship.