Here’s a fascinating quote from Church on the Edge, by Stoddard and Cuthbert:
“In Computer-speak, applications will always go back to the default setting even if they have been temporarily altered. For a permanent change in how the computer responds, you have to change the default settings. The default of the church as we have known it tends to be set for pastoral care and maintaining what we have. Sudden flurries into mission will always default back. Individual Christians do not have, as a whole, ‘mission’ as default in their thinking. That is not a point of blame, it is the result of history. But it is time to change the default of church life.”
I found the quote on the web site of a church in Belfast, www.wellsmoneyrea.org. The pastor is a former Anglican priest in the Church of Ireland, and obviously he hopes that this new church he and a few others have formed will establish a new default setting devoted to God’s mission to the world.
I think he’ll be disappointed. Many pastors who grew impatient with the form of the traditional church have decided to plant their own churches in order to get it right from the beginning. The charter members share a common vision and determine to stay the course. But ten years later, and sometimes as little as two or three years into the new venture, institutional concerns assert an increasingly potent centripetal force.
In light of the current interest in transforming churches into missional communities, the imposing weight of two millennia of churches defaulting into maintenance mode should give us pause. Is it possible to change the default setting?
Some emerging churches, fearing a slide into institutional preoccupations, simply refuse to organize themselves. They’re loosely knit communities with a mission. That will last for one generation only, I suspect.
I think there are two things going on in the inevitable loss of missional focus, one to respect and affirm, and the other to accept with calm resignation. The positive angle is that there is more to church than mission. The Presbyterian Church (USA), in its list of the six Great Ends of the Church, has it right: while four of the six Great Ends are missional, worship and nurture are also held up as top-rank purposes for every church. When the church settles down for the long haul, it is right and good that other concerns emerge.
On the other hand, the loss of missional focus is something to decry and resist. Sin finds a way to corrupt every good thing, and the inward focus of some churches is attributable to nothing less than spiritual entropy. Churches will always need prophets to get them back on track.
Missional leaders are today’s prophets, and we need to heed their voices. In a note of realism, however, I would say that one generation from now, when our missional churches have lost their way and have hardened into institutional dinosaurs, our savior God, who is determined to complete the mission despite our default settings, will send still more prophets to call the church once again toward its mission.
Posted in Missional Church



