Lk 16:29-31
“Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ But he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!'”
So the rich guy was implying that even though he ignored Moses (the Law) and the Prophets, he would have changed his mind… if only God had raised someone from the dead. In other words, “It’s not all my fault! If God would have done more tricks to impress me, I would have put him on my calendar!”
- Get people to attend a church service;
- Get people to feel guilty enough to “serve” in the church;
- Get people to say the right thing instead of the true thing;
- Get people to think spirituality is about the quality of a show;
- Get people to focus on a certain leader or religious organization.
It’s interesting that he doesn’t really use the term “missional” in the illustration, but “mission culture”. When I look at the chart, I see mostly characteristics that reflect a leadership culture rather than a philosophy of church. All of the items, like being “lay-centered”, “bi-vocational”, “apostolic”, “build leaders”, and “rapid reproduction”, are in my experience ultimately determined not by strategy, by by the culture of the core leadership.
I personally have been bothered by what seems to be an attempt to market countless different flavors of “church” by using the word “missional”…as if it somehow makes everything a church is doing relevant and “cool”. Are we (The Journey) a “missional community”? I guess I would leave that to others to decide. I see many of the factors in the chart above in our culture, and I know that they are intentional – but not because they are what someone called “missional”, rather because they are aligned with how Jesus began to build His Church. I think that’s a good enough reason to do them.