Translation

I have been thinking a bit about the churchy catchword missional lately, and I there has been this gnawing sense of unease about the word.  Usually I just chalk that feeling up to being jargon averse thanks to my undergraduate education in Environmental Science as well as my Seminary education and participation in Presbyterianism, each world being rather rife with jargon, and two of which have idolized to some extent the term missional.  I was just talking with some colleagues this morning at a Lectionary study group about idolizing mission, and the danger of the church becoming a service organization, and the bind that we find ourselves in, as pastors and stewards of an institutional structure.
Then I got back to my office and read this article.  It's kind of long, but I'll summarize: a couple of seminaries have recently run into rough patches because of the personalities and behaviors or their presidents.  I'm not going to comment on the particulars, because I think the article does that fairly well.  I also appreciate his connection of these crises in leadership with the Jerry Sandusky debacle at my alma mater, and I also like his use of Bonhoeffer and 2001, in short, I'm a fan of what he has to say, but I want to translate a little, from the context of an institution of higher education, to the local church congregation, because I think local churches have, by and large, been making the same mistake or substituting mission for formation.
One of my morning conversation partners is fond of summarizing the mission of the church as making disciples, which should seem obvious in light of the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, but which can be easily obfuscated by the general business and busy-ness of the church.
It is something we must recover if we are going to use the word mission with any sort of integrity.
As nice as it may sound, the purpose of the church is not to help the poor, or work for justice, or even educate people per se, rather the mission of the church is to form people into disciples who will do those things, and fully internalize those purposes.  When we attempt to perform those functions on an institutional level we are usually just successful enough to be dangerous, meaning that we can rob the individuals within the church of their identity as disciples.
Consider the rampant over-functioning of pastoral staff, an example I will use as a sort of mea culpa.  I know it is much easier to do things myself than it is to ask others to do them.  I know it makes me look good and valuable and worthy of my salary if I am always on the ball, and in the loop, and any other such metaphors you care to dream up.  But it is also true that if I do everything, people will let me.  I will never grow more leaders if I lead everything.  I will never make disciples if I do everything myself.
Jesus asked and expected his disciples to listen and learn, but he also required them to do.  Which brings me to another point that is central to the article and is also a function of our busy-ness: we are supposed to be making disciples of Jesus, not indoctrinating people into "the way things are around here."  Which is referenced in the article as a tendency towards isomorphism, and which I heard someone on a radio discussion describe as "the normative influence of the actual."  Which can also be said in less jargonish language as "what already is tends to seem right."  Which is a powerful force in the life of congregations: "the way we've always done things," which at best means mean we're rooted in tradition and at worst means we're stuck in a dysfunctional rut.
I sometimes wonder if it's essentially the only force that really stands in our way.
It would be nice if it was simply as easy as unplugging the memory chips from HAL 9000, but in the case of most church congregations, the memory chips are people.  They can be people who don't particularly agree with your approach to the mission parameters.  They can be people that mean well, but who simply aren't interested in becoming or making disciples.  They can even be people who see the mission, but just don't know what to do about it.  And a lot of times, these people can be the pastors of the church.
That's a somewhat painful reality, the people who are supposed to be casting a vision and leading people and continuing the chain of Christian discipleship, are often as caught in the systemic dysfunction as anyone, and so you have bullies, and people with moral failings, and all sorts of sinners, trying to lead congregations.  Even if they manage to differentiate from the system, that doesn't mean they'll be able to overcome the malfunction.  To go back to the 2001 comparison, even when Bowman realized HAL was the problem, he still couldn't solve the problem in any way that was going to allow him to get out alive (though again Jesus didn't get out alive in the traditional sense either).
In the case of Joe Paterno and Penn State, it was remarkable to see how his reputation fell from practical sainthood, to sinister villain and then settled somewhere around a sort of Frankenstein tragic figure who was destroyed by the monster he created.  It's what happens when we make idols: they eventually prove their falsehood.
So, I want to call out the idol of the word missional, because I think there are people out there who think that it's going to save the church, but it won't unless we understand that our only real mission is to make disciples.  To do some very hard formational and transformational work in the lives of the people we serve.  We are not here to fit people into an institutional puzzle, no matter how elegant it might seem.  We are here to live out a relationship with a whole bunch of different, broken and beloved children of God.
If you think about it, that's what Jesus did, and it all started with "follow me."