Home Outreach Leaders Articles for Outreach & Missions How to Kill a Missional Culture: Casting Vision Without Practice

How to Kill a Missional Culture: Casting Vision Without Practice

After casting a vision for mission, we kind of swung the pendulum to casting vision for the gospel. But we were still primarily only casting vision.

We became a broken record for gospel-centrality. When anyone asked the question, “What should I do?” basically the answer was, “Repent, believe the gospel and go on mission.”

So if someone came up and asked:

How do I reach my neighbors? Repent, believe the gospel, go on mission.

How do I serve the poor? Repent, believe the gospel, go on mission.

How do I fix my car? Repent, believe the gospel, go on mission.

We became annoyingly gospel-centered. To some extent, that’s a good thing. 

But a vision of the gospel mission without practices is exasperating for people who want to be on mission.

People are told to believe the gospel, and they have a desire to be obedient to Jesus, but are left without any way to actually do it. Or even worse, they’re killing it on mission but still feel like a failure.

We had told our people true things, but had forgotten to teach them helpful things as well.

Derek’s Story

I recently had a coaching conversation with a friend who leads a missional community in my neighborhood. We sat down for an ice-cold beverage at a local establishment, and I asked him how things were going.

After taking a long drink, he looked at me and said, “I feel like a failure as a leader.” When I asked him why, he responded, “I can’t get people on mission.”

I started to ask him about some of the people in his community, and their stories. It turns out there was:

1. A couple who was in a rescue adoption situation—they were a newly married couple who were in faith adopting a family member’s child out of an abusive home.

2. There was a woman who was diagnosed with kidney stones in their group, and they prayed for her to be healed. The next day she received a report from the doctor that the stones were gone!

3. They have had several non-Christians regularly join their community for a meal.

4. Another guy in the group was currently studying the Bible with someone who didn’t know Jesus.

How in the world did this guy think he was failing?

I think it’s because he heard vision and the gospel, but didn’t have anyone affirming the basic practices of Christian discipleship. He had heard us talk about reaching our city, but hadn’t had anyone regularly teach and celebrate simple acts of obedience.

Our city is going to be reached one neighbor, one conversation, one kind act of love at a time.

You see, we failed to equip him to act the vision in his suburban context—in the mundane of every day.

This is the work of equipping the saints for the work of ministry. The gospel certainly is the foundation of equipping, but it doesn’t make practical stuff unnecessary. We had failed to help our people act themselves into a new way of thinking.