Carried Away on Mission

"Mission is inevitable when Christ is incarnated, but without incarnation mission looks a lot like busy religiosity." - Dwight Friesen

This quote is from an article in which the author explains why he does not consider himself missional. It's not that he doesn't believe we have something to accomplish but he doesn't like how we use the term mission. He says that when we are on a mission anything that doesn't contribute to the mission is marginalized and not given proper respect. In a church setting this usually means that everyone needs to be on the pastor's mission and whatever unique mission God has given them personally plays second fiddle.

I think I agree with his sentiment. Now I'm sure it is very easy to overstate the case and I imagine that there are people who would read this and be turning to Matthew 28 just as fast as they could. But I get tired of that. Pastors do have a tendency to try and get people to join a mission that has more to do with their own personal goals than anything else. The danger with that is that there is a tendency to subvert a relationship with God by interjecting oneself in between people and God. I know Paul wrote "follow me as I follow Christ" but I don't think that is what he meant.

Friesen wants incarnational living instead of missional living but I don't think I like that term either. The problem with that term is that people think that they are to be Christ instead of Christ like. I can't be Christ because I'm not Christ. That means in a given situation I want to do not necessarily what Christ would do but what He would want me (Tom) to do. That is what I think it means to present an incarnate Christ through me to the world.

Most of this is nothing more than semantics but it still drives me crazy. Have you ever been in a room when people are agreeing and saying the same thing but you know that they are really thinking something different? That's why it can get tiring keeping track of all the definitions of the terms we use.