This year’s theme was “Inside Out: Inwardly Strong, Outwardly Focused.”
Churches must confront and move beyond old thinking and old ways if they are to be vibrant and relevant to God’s kingdom — as a first step. “The weight of tradition, theology, and authority causes organizations to kind of freeze, to toe the line,” said plenary speaker Alan Hirsch in the opening session. To renew and revitalize itself, the church must first recover “the absolute centrality of Jesus in his own movement. … The more faulty our conception of Jesus, the more dangerous we are. It would almost be better to be atheist.” Hirsch is an Australian missiologist and director of the mission strategy organization “Forge Australia.”
He pointed to Jesus’ challenge to the religious order of his day.
“The religious leaders didn’t like Jesus but the outcasts loved him,” Hirsch pointed out. “It is very tempting to take Jesus out of the equation, because his Lordship is too demanding for most of us. So we get caught up in the rules and regulations and lose the heart of his ministry.”
The overall renewal theme quickly homed in on the current missional state of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In the quest for renewal, Hirsh said even Presbyterian roots didn’t go far enough back. “If we are going to renew any denomination then it is not good enough to go back to Calvin,” he said. “It is back to Jesus that we have to go to find ourselves.”
Another necessary step is to discover or rediscover discipleship as a core task of the church, according to Hirsch.
Discipleship means becoming “a little Jesus — if the gospel is true, it must change your life and you must understand that it’s not your life, but Christ’s life through you, “he said. “If you’re not doing discipleship, forget about mission — movements can grow only in proportion to their capacity to make disciples.”
God is looking for “credible witnesses” who will follow Jesus’ example of building bridges and reaching out to the marginalized and downtrodden of the world, conferees were told August 15 by Brenda Salter McNeil. She is the founder of Overflow Ministries and formerly served on the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
Preaching Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, once again, Jesus is breaking barriers of culture and religion to reach an outcast.
“Jesus always surprises, shows up at times and in places that flip the script,” said Salter McNeil. “And to be a missional church is to be ready and open to those surprises.”
Jesus’ offer of water to quench her thirst forever was “an interesting and intriguing alternative,” she said. Christians today have to invite people in interesting, intriguing ways, Salter McNeil pointed out. “Right here, right now it’s time to be the missional church. … The world is hungry for that kind of reconciling work,” she said. “If we show them that we are for real, they’ll believe us. They’re looking for that ‘living water’ Jesus speaks of.”
God is also looking for something, she added.
“The Father is seeking out a church that will be a church,” she said. “A church that is not stuck on debates that keep us going around and around in circles.”
Mike McClenahan, pastor of Solana Beach Church in San Diego, one of the conference’s host churches affirmed the need to focus on Christ in PC(USA) congregations.
“I’m guessing that none of us became Presbyterian to become politicians that follow Robert’s Rules of Order, but to be connected to one another,” he told the August 14 session.
Clark Cowden, executive presbyter for San Diego Presbytery, which has just declared itself a “missional presbytery,” decried the “amnesia that clouds the PC(USA) focus on mission. He challenged participants to “break through the amnesia and figure out who we really are.”
Some conferees, especially in breakout sessions, voiced questions and frustrations with the current tensions in the denomination and how they “cloud” the focus on mission. Others voiced their sense of being missionaries within the denomination.
“I’m doing ministry in Nineveh,” said one participant. “Jonah wanted to run and sometimes I wanted to run,” he confessed.
Leaving the denomination, as some have, is not the solution, Cowden said.
“Figuring this out means staying where you are planted, in the muck and the mess. The grass is not greener on the other side. We’ve been Presbyterian for 500 years. This is where we belong but we need to fight together through the muck and mess to figure out who we are missionally. That’s why I and our presbytery support PGF.”
Perhaps churches should think less organizationally and more apostolically?
To regain its identity as missional and disciple-making, the church must recover the ethos and structure of apostolic movements, said Hirsch. “What we need are movements that are missionally responsive, culturally adaptive, organizationally agile, and reproducing and reproducible.”
PGF was created to foster such movements, said McClenahan, co-chair of the conference with Mark Brewer, pastor of Bel Air Church in Pacific Presbytery.
“Our vision is not to accept declining numbers but to begin a new movement that will bring vitality to the church in this post-denominational age.”
