Faith and Mission for Churches

What Might Churches Need to Leave Behind in order to Go?

What does it mean to have faith? How is faith necessary for participation in the mission of God?

These are the kind of questions that I reflect on as a pastor and pastoral theologian interested in helping the church live as followers of Jesus. Such questions seem very important for churches in North America where secularism is readily apparent and, following the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a rapidly growing disinterest in “going to church” on Sundays.

The question then is what can churches do to live as witnesses of Jesus Christ in a society where the church is not something people are interested in?

Well, churches can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Doing so is, as you know, the classic definition of insanity. So this question impacts both the way we go about planting new churches as well as leading renewal among existing churches.

Now there’s a lot more to this question that can be said in just one post. In fact, we could spend an entire year reading books about church, mission, and leadership, and still not address every matter on this question. However, I do want to share something from the life of Abraham that I believe bears the two questions this post began with… What does it mean to have faith? How is faith necessary for participation in the mission of God?

Back in Genesis 12, the Lord summons Abram, whom we know as Abraham, saying verses 1-3:

“Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, those who curse you I will curse; all the families of the earth will be blessed because of you.”¹

Abram is told to “leave” or “Go” (NIV, NRSV) but regardless of how the Hebrew is rendered in English, this is an imperative. So the Lord is mandating to Abram that he must leave/go because what God is calling Abram to go towards requires Abram to leave something behind. That is, Abram must first let go of something in order to go participate in what God is calling his into. Specifically Abram must let go of is his land, family, and father’s household, which is his safety net for living. So Abram must choose the risky proposition of faith over safety position of security.

And risky it is. Abram is never told how God will accomplish his promise, what sort of timeline God has in mind, or what sort of skills and resources Abram might need. Instead, Abram is simply told to go with a promise that God will bless him. Now for those of you who might work as engineers, project managers, or in some leadership capacity, try getting your team to pursue a goal without saying a word about how the goal will be accomplished, what resources are needed to accomplish the goal, and so forth. Nobody would get on board and yet, that is exactly what God calls Abram to do.²

This is also the kind of faith that is necessary for churches to participate in the mission of God. That is if churches are going to live as witnesses of Jesus Christ in a society where the church is not something people are interested in, then there is something churches need to let go of in order to risk going where God is leading.

So what might churches need to let go of in the broad North American society? I want to humbly submit that churches might need to let go of the Sunday/building-centric approach in which nearly everything revolves around a church building and getting people to participate in activities Sunday church activities. That’s a difficult concept to imagine, and it’s difficult for even me, because our buildings and Sunday church activities are the way we’ve always done things. So it’s what we know, which means it’s less stressful and more safe clinging on to that Sunday/building-centric approach than taking the risk of letting go in order to go where God is leading when we’re not entirely sure what that future looks like.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying it’s wrong for churches to gather for worship in a building on Sunday. What I’m suggesting is that we now live in a time when more people than ever are not coming back to worship gatherings inside a church building on Sundays. So perhaps God just might be saying it’s time to focus on going outside the church building throughout the week rather than what happens for a couple of hours on Sunday mornings inside a church building.

Again, there’s so much more that can and needs to be said. Right now, I’m just trying to provoke a conversation that needs to be had among churches. So I ask what might churches need to leave behind in order to go into the future on mission with God?

1. Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are taken from the Common English Bible, copyright 2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

2. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 122, notes how the summons to faith in this story is a challenge to our ideological thinking which longs for “settlement, security, and placement” against God “who sojourns and moves about” (cf. 2 Sam 7:4-6).