Beth and I encountered Momentum Yes at ICOM this past November …

(ICOM = International Conference on Missions, the successor to the old National Missionary Convention. It’s an annual gathering of 5,000+ Christians from around the globe who believe in, support, and are active in missions.)

Recently, we’ve been watching Momentum Yes’s video curriculum. And the video that we watched on Tuesday had a quote from Alan Hirsch that BLEW. MY. MIND.

Let me set this up.

Jesus gave us our mission in Matthew 28 and Acts 1:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt 28.18-20)

“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1.8)

Let’s agree on a basic definition of our mission here, based on these texts. Our mission is to move people outside the church toward and into a relationship with Jesus, with the goal of making them disciples (followers). This work happens at several levels, e.g., meeting physical needs, evangelism, local and domestic benevolence, foreign missions. The consistent thread is that OUR MISSION = TAKING JESUS TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE THE CHURCH.

“Mission” is not the center of most churches. The way most churches are structured, MISSIONS is one of the things that the church does, alongside pastoral care, education, etc.

So here is the Hirsch quote that blew my mind.

“It’s not the church that has a mission, but it’s the mission that has a church.” (Alan Hirsch)

If this is true … and I’m asserting that it is … then our vision as a church has gotten a bit cloudy. Our vision tends to drift to internal needs and concerns. It’s really difficult to keep focused on the world outside the church. It requires consistent, prayerful discipline.

Now: I’m not saying that pastoral care, meaningful worship, education in the faith, etc., are not important (see John 20.21-23 and 21.15-17.)

I AM saying that those things aren’t supposed to dominate what a church does and is.

What does this look like? In the article from Tim Keller that I linked the other day, he describes the “evangelistic life cycle” of most churches. (You’ll have to click through to read the whole thing.)

Dozens of denominational studies have confirmed that the average new church gains most of its new members (60–80 percent) from the ranks of people who are not attending any worshiping body, while churches over ten to fifteen years of age gain 80–90 percent of new members by transfer from other congregations. This means the average new congregation will bring six to eight times more new people into the life of the body of Christ than an older congregation of the same size. 

Why?

… As a congregation ages, powerful internal institutional pressures lead it to allocate most of its resources and energy toward the concerns of its members and constituents, rather than toward those outside its walls. 

On the other hand, new congregations, in general, are forced to focus on the needs of its nonmembers, simply to get off the ground. Because so many of a new church’s leaders came very recently from the ranks of the unchurched, the congregation is far more sensitive to the nonbeliever’s concerns. Also, in the first two years of our Christian life, we have far more close, face-to-face relationships with non-Christians than we do later. …

(You really should read the entire post from Keller. It’s brilliant.)

Here’s the point. Jesus says that our mission focuses on the world OUTSIDE our churches. External outreach should not be ONE of MANY programs that a church has. External outreach should be the center of what the church does. And other necessary things, like pastoral care (also part of Jesus’ last words to his followers in the Gospel of John) should be in second place.

How can established churches accomplish this, bearing in mind Keller’s “powerful internal institutional pressures [that] lead [an existing church] to allocate most of its resources and energy toward the concerns of its members and constituents”? How can established churches maintain an external focus?

One vital and effective way is by being committed to planting new churches, in the USA and abroad.