Living In The 3rd Culture: On Being Missional

^“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:1-20).

For many years the United States was considered a Christian nation, as such the culture as a whole affirmed the existence of the church and many in fact considered themselves to be Christians. Going to church was not only acceptable, but in many parts of the country was expected of every good citizen. Most of the country had ordinances, called “blue laws” that kept most stores closed on Sunday. Church buildings were located on the square and highly visible to all. Competition between churches was through buildings and architecture, each church constructing a higher steeple than the other. Though many churches moved away from the authority of Scripture, and were irrelevant, people still came simply because they should.

By the 1970’s the societal changes that were occurring began to have a striking effect on the churches as attendance declined. For the first time in their history many churches had to determine how to get people back to church. The consensus was to make the church more attractive through programs and methodologies that would be attractive to the un-churched. As a result we began to see terms like “contemporary worship” and “seeker driven” in defining philosophy of ministry. Through aggressive marketing plans this method did in fact draw people to the church and is basis of many of the mega churches in the United States. In the 1980s it was not uncommon for churches to study corporations as McDonalds and Disney to learn their methods of marketing and customer service. Unfortunately, they adapted too much of McDonald’s methodology and produced a generation of people whose spiritual food was as nutritious as McDonald’s burgers and fries! In this era, people came to church because the marketing worked and they stayed as long as they liked the product.

Marketing the church has run its course and is no longer effective for the average church. People are weary with empty marketing and are looking for what is authentic and addresses the deeper issues of life. Even more disturbing is the awareness that marketing has resulted in an increased skepticism of the church as the programs rarely address the true issues of the heart and promoted a self-centered consumer attitude. Though there are more mega churches, there are few churches per capita and the United States is becoming increasingly less Christianized. We are now a mission field! In fact, missionaries are now coming here from countries we at one time sent our missionaries!

If the United States is a mission field, then the church must be missional[i] in that it has the responsibility of equipping its members to live out the mission given in Matthew 28:19-20. All of God’s people are called to be missionaries in the places they live, work and play. The church cannot assume people will show up simply because they exist, and they cannot merely market themselves and believe many will be drawn through their doors because of creative programming. Rather the church must be committed to sending her people out of the church to reach people in their spheres of influence.

There is not ample space in this context to fully address all that has been written on being missional. Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion surrounding the term resulting in both a shallow missiology and an incorrect ecclesiology. Many in fact have turned the popularity of this movement in to another program! Never the less, at the heart of being missional is a call to be God’s witnesses, or to state in more pointedly, evangelism. Any missional approach that does not have this as its end goal is not truly missional.

In his book entitled Bible and Mission, Richard Bauckham writes, “Mission is God’s work before and after it is ours. . . God continually makes more of what we do for him than we can make of it ourselves, and God continually prevents the harm our foolishness and failures would do. The Bible does not map out for us the path from Pentecost to the kingdom. It invites our trust in God rather than the mastery or calculation of history. God can be trusted to be faithful to his promises, but remains free in his fulfillment of them. . . In many ways, therefore, mission is not the imposing of predetermined patterns on to history, but openness to the incalculable ways of God in history. . . Scriptures often associate mission with the making known of God’s name. . . Witnesses, then, mediate the particularity of the biblical story and universality of its claim. . . When Christians find their metanarrative in confrontation with an alternate, aggressive metanarrative – whether that of globalization or Islam or something else – nothing is more important than telling the biblical stories especially that of Jesus, again and again. This is both an essential part of our witness and the way we retain our knowledge of what it is to which we witness” (pp 99 -101)

In conclusion my challenge to all Christian leaders is that they begin to look beyond the church doors and see themselves as missionaries to the world around them. That they ask the Father for a fresh appreciation of the Gospel and a deep compassion for the lost that moves them to deep and lasting friendships with non-Christians. And as these relationships are lived out in the routine activities of life, the biblical stories and their own conversion narratives are a constant subplot pointing to the hope that is in them.

[i] For more information on this topic please read Tim Keller’s excellent article entitled The Missional Church.

Third Culture Defined

The term “Third Culture” has been used in various ways. One “Third Culture” group “consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectuals in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.”Another common use of “Third Culture” in fact describes my personal experience. The term was first coined by sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, professor emeritus of sociology and education at Michigan State University. She used the term to describe children growing up outside their citizenship countries because of a parent’s work abroad. A “TCK or Third Culture Kid has since been defined as, “someone who as a child has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture" Though I am a TCK, it is my desire to use the term in referring to the people who make up the true Christian Church (Theologically defined as the “Invisible Church”). In other words, the Church is a Third Culture. Scripture teaches us that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law and the punishment of Hell, and through faith in Him we become citizens of His Kingdom, receiving not only the full benefits of citizenship in His Kingdom, but indeed the right to become sons and daughters of God. The moment, we step into this Kingdome we experience a new and different culture. We are no longer in the kingdom of darkness, but now live in the kingdom of light and that changes everything! At the same time we never went anywhere physically as we continue to work, live, and play with the same people as before, we see the world differently, we no longer truly fit – we are “in the world, but not of it” -- we have a new culture. For most of us this life changing experience occurs within our birth culture and our Christian experience is saturated by those influences. For those who grew up in non-Hispanic White North America, Christianity is uniquely different than those who grew up in an African American context. Our birth culture effects how we live out our faith in the Kingdom of Christ. Yet the Kingdom of Christ requires one more cultural shift and that is away from birth culture and into a culture made up of people of every ethnic and cultural group that has ever existed on the face of the earth. This Kingdom is no more North American than it is Tanzanian or Tibetan. It is a unique or shall we say a “Third Culture” that integrates elements of all cultures into one new and better one, where there is no Jew or Greek, slave nor free, male nor female“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal 3:26-298). In fact Revelation 7:9-10 gives us a description what this will look like one day:“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." A Third Culture Perspective is one that understands and appreciates that God gathers people from every ethnic and cultural group and brings them into the new culture of His Son Jesus Christ. It is a perspective where birth cultures are appreciated and respected as coming from God, but none are superior. It seeks to have a deeper understanding of the Gospel, pays attention to culture, our own as well as others, and then attempts to bring them together. It is a perspective that “seeks first His Kingdom and His Righteousness” and lovingly and passionately enjoys and glorifies God in all we do. It is a perspective that welcomes immigrants….

On Being Missional

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