From Mission to Missional
Presented by Chris Buja
Adjunct Consultant for Growth and Vitality
Metro New York District
Annual Meeting May 1-2, 2015
Opening Words & Chalice Lighting
• We come together every week
Bound not by a creed,
Or a mutual desire to please one God
Or many Gods
Yet we are drawn together
By a belief, that how we are in the world,
Who we are together
Matters.
We light this chalice,
together in the knowledge
That love, not fear, can change this world
-Jennifer Leota Gray
Takeaways
• Definitions, relationships, and distinctions of:
mission, mission statement, attractional,
missional, missionary, mission trips, vision,
and ministry
• Exercise to discern your own missional calling
(individual) and that of your congregation (if it
is there!)
• Small and large opportunities to do missional
experimentation
From Mission…
• Mission defined as:
– Purpose
– Reason for being
– “why” a congregation (or any institution or
organization) exists
– When mission is being accomplished, the “vision”
is being realized
– Everything a congregation does to fulfill mission
and realize vision is called “ministry”
…more on mission…
• Lots of books, workshops, webinars that
specifically address mission and mission
statements
• Briefly, the explicitly stated mission statement
needs to accurately express the actual, deeper
sense of mission
• If sense of mission and mission statement do
not match: “Houston, we have a problem…”
…a little more on mission…
• Assuming a congregation has a clear, concise,
compelling sense of AND commitment to its
religious mission (and a mission statement
that correlates)…
• What are the models that a congregation
might process that mission through?
Attendance-Size Culture Models
• Typical paradigm for categorizing
congregations:
• Family congregation
• Pastoral congregation
• Program congregation
• Corporate(Campus) congregation
• Each with corresponding characteristics of
attendance, structure, relationships.
…to “Missional”!
• “missional”- to be sent, being sent, to serve;
“misio dei” per Christian tradition
• A new paradigm…or more appropriately an
expansion, extension of the paradigm
• Those attendance-size culture categories can be
broadly defined as “attractional” models,
(sometimes attractional/extractional is used)
• “Missional” as another category, another model,
on the spectrum
• More than another category/model, a different
philosophy of mission fulfillment
Missional shifts
• Rev. Ron Robinson appeals for a shift to a
“bigger bandwidth” of what church means
• “Go and be”, as opposed to “come and see”
• From, “does the church have a mission?” to,
“does the mission have a church?”
Missional shifts cont.
• From extracting people from surrounding culture,
and attracting them into congregation culture; to
the congregation entering into the surrounding
culture- and being changed by it for the sake of
mission fulfillment
• Often reverses typical path of participant
– Large group worship to small group ministry to serving
others (attractional)
– Serving others to small group ministry to large group
worship- if at all (missional)
Missional shifts cont.
• Who does the church exist for, why does it
exist, for whom does one’s heart break for?
• Response to change in religious participation
trends
• Shift away from membership focus to ministry
by those who may or may not identify as
members or of a certain faith (gasp!)
Case Study: The Welcome Table
• Turley OK
• Rev. Ron Robinson, lead pastor/organizer/?
• Focused on serving a specific zip code, city
quadrant, that is drastically suffering by
numerous socioeconomic markers
Discernment
• Do you feel a calling, an inkling, a desire to be
a part of a missional congregation?
• Could your existing congregation become
missional? More missional?
• Could a missional community
launch/plant/emerge in your area?
Finding your “sweet spot”
• With full credit to Rev. Tandi Rogers of UUA
from this blog post; with some modifications
by me for this workshop
• Identifying the “sweet spot” for you and/or
your congregation
Sweet spot continued
• Circle: what you/congregation do well, skills,
gifts, that which brings joy
• Square: what breaks your
heart/congregation’s heart in community?
What are the unmet, undermet needs of
community? Who are the unserved,
underserved people of community?
• Where the circle and square overlap is
your/congregation’s sweet spot
What to do with that sweet spot?
• As an individual, enter into and engage that
overlap
• As a congregation, develop new outreach/service
to that overlap
• AND…could that overlap be an opportunity for a
missional community/movement to emerge
• To be or not to be a missional community is not a
decision to be made lightly and is probably
beyond the scope of typical congregational voteyou are or you aren’t, you become it or you don’t
Other things congregations can do
• Examine the activities you are already doing in
your building/attractional gathering space,
and experiment with doing them somewhere
else, out in the community, where more
community engagement is likely to occur.
• Get a percept data report on zipcodes near
you- demographic breakdown,
religious/spiritual trends- good info!
Multi-site synergy
• Missional and multi-site possibilities may overlap
in fortuitous ways
• Not just among UU congregations, but in
partnership with non-UU organizations, both
religious and secular
• Look at the geographic and demographic “areas
of operation” for various organizations- identify
the “neutral zones” that could be addressed via
multi-site!
• “3M”? Missional Multi-site Ministry?
Summary
• Whatever model, attendance-size culture,
philosophy you are/choose to be: religious
mission is the sine qua non of
institutional/movement success- for wherever
you are along the attractional-missional
spectrum!
• A missional movement can start anywherewith you, your congregation, beyond your
congregation.
Closing Words
• “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask
yourself what makes you come alive and then
go and do it. Because what the world needs is
people who have come alive.”
-Howard Thurman
Closing Words cont.
• Ask the world what it needs. AND, ask
yourself what makes you come alive. And
then go and do that which both the world
needs AND makes you come alive. Because
what is needed is a world and people that
have come alive.
Resources
• See handout for book, website, blog, article
links on missional stuff
• With deep thanks to Rev. Ron Robinson for his
time via phone, and a myriad of resources
available online!