Being

One of the great dangers in North American Christianity is that a lot of Christians have experiences that allow them to feel spiritual with out actually being spiritual. This creates a false sense of spiritual awareness that leads to a stunting, or even halting, of one's spiritual growth. In extreme, it derails faith altogether.

I obviously have missional ideas rolling around as is evidenced by the number of posts on the topic, but it serves as a good example of this because I think it is easy to act missional without actually being missional. Let's simplify missional down to "being a blessing." A church might create opportunities for the church community to be a blessing. They might see this as part of their equipping role. They figure some good lessons will be learned in the process and several of the participants might catch "the bug" of being a blessing. So let's say the church organizes a food drive and distribution for needy families in the community.

No doubt the activity would be a blessing to the recipients. You could probably even find participants who found serving others to also be a blessing. In fact all of those who did the serving would probably feel pretty good about what they have done. But my question is whether they have been transformed, or in the process of being transformed, into some one who is a blessing, or if they are simply people who have participated in a blessing activity.

I think there is a danger of filling people's calendars with blessing activities and creating the impression that they are "being" spiritual when actually there has been very little heart transformation. They could end up as very good people with no relationship with Jesus.

I think being a blessing as a community is a good thing and I think there are a lot of valid reasons to create those opportunities. But I think we need to be clear that the outward expression needs to go hand in hand with an inward transformation. We need to be people who are a blessing whether it is in an organized event or just out on a grocery run. It just becomes who we are based on a relationship with Jesus. God doesn't want obedient slaves, He wants sons and daughters.