Continuing Reflections on the Restoration Movement in Western Canada, Part 2:

 Approaches to church ministry constantly come and go; they rise up to dominate our efforts for a time, and after they have run their course without great success, we move on to another ministry paradigm.  Today I want to offer three significant areas of ministry concentration on which RM churches may wish to focus if we want to break free from what I summarily called stagnancy in my first blog in this series.  I will mention these three specific ministerial foci because from what I can tell, they have the best chance of standing the test of time, being successful in the long run, without being subject to the ever-changing verities of both society and church.

First, Intentional, Relational Discipleship.  Relational discipleship is, of course, as old as the New Testament.  Jesus did it.  The apostles did it. The early church rapidly grew because of its impact.  In the first decade of the twenty-first century, discipleship has arisen as a major focus for many churches, with some having a great deal of impact on their communities because they vigorously applied a well-constructed vision for carrying out discipleship.  Usually such success is accompanied by a well-developed plan for small groups, but what must happen, whether in small groups or not, is that more mature Christians must be reaching out to those who are either not yet Christians or who are less mature, intentionally and relationally helping them to grow.  Our lack of commitment to this task and the limited number of church leaders we have (Elders and Ministers, especially) who actually disciple others, is as likely as any other factor to be a key reason for our lack of success in reaching our communities for Christ.

 Second, Missionality.  Three caveats:  1) It is tragic that the words “missional” and “missionality” ever became buzz words within North American Christianity.  Because they have, it is too easy for some to view missionality as just another fad among ministerial foci.  It should not be thought of in this way.  It is far too rich an idea for us to be cast off because its use sometimes seems faddish, or because it can be a bit difficult to define.  2) Also, because the word “missional” is so closely grammatically related to “mission” and “missions” it is easy for confusion, as if a call to be missional is primarily defined with reference to world missions.  World missions should be missional, but missionality needs to happen domestically.  3) Further, because those who wish to be missional are often oriented toward social justice, it sometimes feels like being missional is exactly co-existent with and completely encapsulated within social justice.  This is far from the case for most who wish to be missional, and it certainly should not be all we think of when desiring to be missional.  Like mission and missionality, missional churches need to have a social justice focus, but missionality is not just about social justice.  In fact, missional churches should be significantly involved in relational discipleship.

Third, Church Planting.  There have been some monumental failures in planting churches in western Canada; you will receive no argument from me about this.  However, there have also been some wonderful success stories, including the planting of almost every church of which the readers of this blog are currently part.  Your church was planted by someone at some point!  Church planting has, since the Book of Acts, been a key component of the progress of the church, and it will always be, and certainly this is the case in our own time.  I wish there were fifty or 100 RM churches in Calgary.  And I wish they were all participating in relational discipleship, missionality, and church planting.  The Greater Calgary Church Planting Network needs to keep planting churches.  We need a large number of church plants to take place in western Canada, especially in Greater Vancouver.  Whether new churches arise as multi-sites or fresh, newly birthed independent offspring, we need more churches.  We need, therefore, to have a proactive church planting mindset among us, and we need to keep producing church planters.

Just imagine if all our churches were really successful at Relational Discipleship, Missional outreach into our communities, and planting churches.  The contrast between what this could look like and the stagnancy that some of us feel is striking.  How can the revitalization needed to make this the case best come about?  Honestly, I am not completely sure; but having a number of us engage in dialogue about such things could serve as an impetus or catalyst for our moving forward with success.