Called to be Sent

Ted Magee offers the following reflection on the Living On The Edge (LOTE) experience..

 Anthony J. Gittins description of “Missional” as boundary-breaking rather than boundary-maintaining resonated with the group doing the LOTE course who saw their role as religious as being individuals and communities who disturb.

MISSIONAL CHRISTIANITY

– from “Called to be Sent” – Anthony J. Gittins

 Missional describes a lifestyle that is specifically and intentionally exocentric rather than endocentric, boundary-breaking rather than boundary-maintaining.

Jesus came precisely to break down (other translations say “push through”, “erase”, “obliterate”; see Eph 2: 14 – 18) the boundaries of privilege and segregation, to include rather than to exclude, and to welcome openly rather than to admit reluctantly.

This is Missional living, and every professing Christian must urgently discover and practise it.

The three main components of Missional Christianity are:

1.      It is built on faith more than simply on belief;

2.      It is more a process than a state, and

3.      It is manifest in both skills and virtues.

Missional Christianity is beyond belief;

Although formal doctrine is a particular characteristic of religion, not every religion codifies or formalises its doctrine, nor does it need to. Of far more significance is “religious behaviour” or the behaviour a particular religious orientation or attitude generates.

A Shinto priest said “We don’t have a theology; we dance.” He was drawing attention away from theory or rules and toward practice itself. “We dance” could also, imaginatively, describe the way Christians actually behave, but few Christians think – and far fewer of us “dance’ – in this way. Virtually all Christians describe ourselves in terms of our beliefs; few of us identify ourselves in terms of our embodiment or incarnation, despite the fact that Christianity is par excellence the religion of incarnation: the Word became (human) and dwelt among us.”

Faith has something to do with a personal relationship, something to do with actually knowing God. This, frankly, is an astounding claim: that we can know God! Faith is a conviction that God is, that God is faithful, and that God is truthful.

Authentic Christian spirituality is expressed in the daily living out of the conviction that God is a loving creator who initiates, sustains and restores or mends relationships. Those who walk by faith and not by sight refuse to be limited or constrained – or to claim to be justified or vindicated – by religious rule-keeping alone. They aspire to going beyond the letter of the law and living by its spirit, which they identify with the Spirit of God.

Far from producing a privatized spirituality or even a religion of pious observances, such an attitude calls us all to a radical engagement with the world, with social justice, and with the rest of humanity. This is the religion of Jesus.

Missional Christianity implies an ongoing process.

Missional Christianity is a lived experience rather than a fixed attitude or patterns of set behaviour. Such spirituality should mature as one grows into a greater conformity to Christ, which is a lifelong process. It is a great shame that many Christians seem not to mature in the faith or even seem to realise that baptism is supposed to initiate that process.

Missional Christianity requires both skills and virtues.

Authentic Christian spirituality should be identifiable in terms of its fruits, manifest in a range of actual skills and virtues.

These skills are both innate and acquired. The same is true of virtue.

They are acquired through repetition and practice.

Every Christian needs to practice and come closer to what God invites and calls us to: discipleship and sense of purpose. We are not called in the same way but we are all called to be a person of integrity and faith: in fact, a disciple.

Jesus called anyone and everyone to come and follow him. Each, in their own way, is invited to change course in order to follow the Way.

The purpose of growing "in wisdom and age" is to nourish a developing – never-ending, never static – relationship with God. This is the only way to discipleship and the major criterion of authentic Christian spirituality. Authentic Christian spirituality matures through prayer, meditation and contemplation, not only according to each one's capacity but according to each one's practice and perseverance.

Implications for our daily lives.

Three growth points or components of our conversion are:

• Commitment to a developing relationship with God implies and requires a healthy relationship with God’s creation: people, living things, and the broader environment.

We learn

to decentre ourselves

to reach beyond self

to engage with God’s creation

to engage with God’s people and,

to engage with God’s own self.

A self-centred Christian is a contradiction, and self-centred Christianity is an oxymoron.

Our example is Jesus: we must reach out, go beyond, break boundaries, and encounter others with respect.

• We must learn to be receivers as well as givers.

A gift is only a gift when it has been acknowledged as received.

If relationships are to mature, both sides must be committed to giving and receiving.

A degree of reciprocity is critical to true relationships of mutuality.

Gift exchange is based on mutual indebtedness or ongoing reciprocity.

Giving and receiving are equally important, just as givers and receivers, or individuals who practise both, will always be necessary.

• Authentic spirituality does more than feed our inner or private life.

True Christian spirituality must open us up to other people and enable us to combat structural sin in our own culture because we are gifted with wisdom and the freedom of the children of God

Authentic Christian spirituality enables us to respond to God’s grace and become more conformed to Christ , even as we become more authentically human and more people of real integrity.