Time To Be "Mission Edge"!
- bordenmscott
- Feb 6, 2023
- 5 min read
This coming Sunday (Feb. 12th, 2023) Faith Baptist will begin a process of visioning and discernment about our future using a concept from the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada called The Mission Edge Church. If you want the more concise and formal explanation of what that means, you can read this letter:
And if you'd rather watch me explain it than read about it I've got that covered here:
But if you want a less formal and more meandering description of what's coming and why that's what the rest of this post is about.
Last fall we had our first full ministry season that I would call "post-pandemic". There were no more public health restrictions to try to manage or concerns that plans would be interrupted by new measures. That doesn't mean that everyone was comfortable coming back to in-person worship, but we got the chance to see what the state of the church was in a more reliable way.
Our reality, as seems to be fairly common compared to other churches, was one of having suffered loss. Over the past three years we have held several funerals, seen a few core leaders move away from Halifax, and experienced a decline in our financial resources and available volunteers.
We've also added some new members, new leaders, and continue to see some people return and re-engage - this is not a doom-and-gloom story! But the overall trend is the opposite of the numerical and financial growth Faith Baptist was experiencing before the pandemic arrived. That's the reality, and we have to start there. To chose not to change in light of this reality is choosing death, at least in the long-run. Followers of Jesus are called to chose life, not death!
The way I've tried to sum it up is to say that we aren't the same church as we were in 2019, and we're not living in the same world as we were in 2019 either. The pandemic has affected everything - including what people inside and outside of the church want and need in their personal and spiritual lives.
To reckon with all this our deacons and pastors have been looking at some options to bring people together to think, talk, and pray about what should come next. What is the version of Faith Baptist Church that can best meet this moment and do what God wants it to do in 2023 and beyond?
We wanted a process that would involve anyone in the congregation who wants to contribute, and which could be initiated quickly. That led us to a tool called The Mission Edge Church.
The Mission Edge Church concept is something that comes from our larger Baptist family, the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada. One of the goals that the CBAC set a few years ago was to try to encourage the majority of our Atlantic Baptist Churches to adopt this outward-focused mentality.
The official definition of Mission Edge Churches is this: “communities of Jesus- followers who align themselves around His continuing mission of sacrificial love – starting right within their neighbourhoods, and from there radiating His love to neighbourhoods all around the world.”
One part of our Mission Edge journey will be studying six "mission markers" that define this kind of church over the next six Sundays. In out gathered worship we will explore these things starting on Feb. 12th:
1. Live the Jesus Way
2. Radiate Hospitality
3. Have fluency in the Good News
4. Embody the Good News
5. Embrace Partnerships
6. Practice Contextual Responsiveness (understanding your neighbourhood/community and engaging with its needs in a relevant way).
The next part of the journey comes through small group interaction. All our current groups will switch to the Mission Edge material for four weeks starting in mid-February. Each week there will be a Bible passage to study and some questions about how it relates to your life and the life of our church. The questions and conversations are designed to help us to start to look at where we are as a church now and what might be something God wants for our future.
After the Sunday services and small groups finish we’ll have the biggest event in this process, our March 25th visioning day. That’s a full Saturday event with lunch and child care provided. Rev. Dr. Greg Jones, who developed the Mission Edge material, will come and help facilitate that day for us. We hope to walk away with lots of wise thoughts and practical ideas, as well as a shared sense of hope for what God can do with what He has given us.
After the visioning day the results will be taken by our deacons and pastors and turned into an action plan with some clear and measurable goals we can start implementing soon. That action plan will be presented to the congregation by the beginning of June to seek your approval.
That's the roadmap. It's not overly complicated, and it's not meant to try to change everything about our church all at once. It's about taking a hard look and what we have that God can use and how we can use those things in a way that will truly make a difference.
Here’s how you can be a part of this and help make this a season that really helps your church going forward.:
· Try to make it a priority to join us on these next 6 Mission Edge Sundays, or check out the teaching that we put out online if you miss one, so you get all six Mission Markers.
· Attend your small group, or join a small group for this season if this is an option for you. Get in on the initial conversations to help you get thinking about these ideas and concepts.
· Save the date on March 25th and plan to come out for the visioning day. Bring your positivity about the future, encouraging spirit, and desire to serve God in whatever way He asks.
· Pray for the process and the leaders helping put it together. Pray that God would speak and we would listen and that we would have unity along the journey.
That prayer part is a big. If you can't participate in some of the other aspects of this process but can play regularly for God's leading and guidance you will be doing something deeply meaningful and helpful for your whole church family. Because without God's leading, this whole thing falls flat.
There are some problems where the solution is fairly clear, but people just don't want to do the work. I could lose 15-20 pounds and be in better shape. I could start on that tomorrow with some changes to my diet and exercise habits and get that done without any new knowledge or outside intervention. I just don't want to. I don't want put in that much effort, which would take away from the effort I put into other things.
When it comes to churches and planning for the future it's never that straight-forward. There's no full-proof plan that will simply make everything better, no guarantees that this initiative or change or plan will lead to the results you hope for. But these things still take effort. New things come at the expense of existing things. If you choose the wrong things you can end up sacrificing what you had and not getting to where you want to be.
For The Mission Edge Church to work we need two things to happen:
1) Be humble and open and pray and listen to God so that we can truly discern what God wants for our next chapter
2) Be willing to put in the effort to do well what we feel God is calling us to do
We can do that, God helping us. And let's remember that, with God, there is never a reason to doubt that the best is yet to come in the life of our church. There is nothing God cannot do, no resources that God cannot supply, and no limit to who God can call into our midst to help us. If we are faithful we’ll see wonderful things in this next season. Let’s be faithful!
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