2. Integrity
We all have the tendency to let our talk outpace our practice. It takes discipline to move beyond the viral chatter we participate in. Sometimes the missional conversation is reminiscent of my time in youth ministry when I eavesdropped on a pack of junior high boys talking like they were Casanova. The missional conversation is in jeopardy of merely hovering at pontificating status. We need integrity in our speech. Integrity is forged in testing. The best diagnostics and valuable conversations are squeezed out of real-time practices that have survived the harsh elements.
In my own trembling faith plunge, missional ordinariness has taken me to task, tempered my adolescent exuberance and caused me to “bring it down a notch” when speaking about how dynamic missional living can be. Over the years, a more weathered passion has formed in my gut from the trial of submitting my ideas to a flesh-and-bone community. A good half of my ideas were half-baked and blinded by idealism.
For example, I’ve been part of the multicultural conversation for years, advocating for racial reconciliation, but it is one thing to be passionate about an issue like a “diverse church” and another reality to build solidarity in trust-soaked, diverse friendships. The same ethic goes for justice. Instead of trying to drum up a justice initiative that makes large, sweeping projections, instead, loyally and quietly, immerse in a couple relationships with impoverished people around you.
This ethic again goes for community. Stop wishing the people you’ve connected with online were your “community” and dive deeply into a spiritual family for hell or high water. It’s honorable to want to “save the city,” but it’s humbled by learning to “love your neighbor.”
3. Impact
The word “impact” has connotations of a meteor slamming into a region, leaving a massive hole behind. Instead, redefine success around sustainability. Don’t turn missional into a program, a weekend city event with a magnetic slogan, or a sermon series to get things moving. Resist the urge. This is pseudo-activity and is only cosmetic.
I relate with an imagination that longs to be part of something significant, but I’ve observed how our dreams cause us to brush off the most essential ordinary habits needed. It takes a certain measure of rebellion to fight off the undertow to fabricate energy. When we claw for self-importance outside localized community, our fragile egos are exposed.
Pursue self-awareness: Are we emotionally detached from our neighborhood? At this precipice in history, earthy traction will come from seedling communities that inhabit with a rooted, open-handed, sacrificial, unassuming presence in the wake of Jesus, the Servant King. Missional is not a four-lane paved highway, rather it’s an overgrown dirt path forward. There is no missional fast track, and there shouldn’t be one. It’s not a martyr syndrome I’m advocating, just a marginal one.
It’s not pragmatic to shoot for ordinary. We’ve been lulled into thinking extraordinary is where the real world-changing happens. I contend that the West is fried over on ambition; tantalized into comatose. What beckons us now is a supernatural, subversive ordinary; one where the mustard seed offers us a template for the everyday. Call out those little thieves that come to steal away your enjoyment of missional ordinariness. Embrace the ordinary way of being in the world.
