A Missional Metamorphosis

I’ve always liked the word metamorphosis!  It means much the same as the “in” word transformation, but it provides such a visual picture.  I find it hard to hear “metamorphosis” without thinking about butterflies – and their life-changing moments in their cocoons.  My father used to catch and mount butterflies when he was a teenager.  I remember seeing boxes with glass viewing tops containing hundreds of butterflies.  Only one of those boxes remains today.  Yet it is precious to me with its mounted butterfly beauties that are now over seventy-five years old.  It reminds me at the same time of my Dad’s love of the outdoors and of the wonderful work of our Creator God.

Metamorphosis is a useful concept when considering how to move a congregation from an inner to an outer or missional priority.  Whereas the word “missions” tends to be identified with missions programs we give money to or to perhaps to a few short-term mission teams, the word “missional” is identified with a way of thinking about ministry as fulfilling the Missio Dei, the mission of God.  

Missional is more than a missions program.  It is how every person and program and ministry in the congregation is to engage their community and world on behalf of their Lord.

To instill an effective missional mindset throughout the culture of the entire congregation can be a complex undertaking.  We might get an activity here or there to make a missional shift in focus but for the whole church to get serious about engaging its community – that will mean metamorphosis – because most church activities today are inward in their focus.

Essential to a genuine missional metamorphosis is a growing clarity concerning what it means to be “missional” and its implications for leaders and participants.

Some questions to consider:

          

1.   What does a missional Christian look like in terms of faith and action?

2.   What does a missional congregation look like?  An increasing number of publications address the idea of missional identity and activity in the congregation.  As missional thinking takes root, individual congregations need to consider how such thinking inspires a missional lifestyle among the people and how it affects their actual programming such as ministry to children, youth, men, women, singles, families, and so on.  How are programs structured to implement missional ends different from the programs already in existence?

                          

3.   What does a missional denominational regional area “look like” in terms of its vision, organization, and implementation and how does that contrast from a present or “non-missional” vision and operation?  What is the regional area’s role in leading its congregations into missional endeavor?

        

With Joy - E. Stanley Ott