Some Splaining

There's a word I hate when it comes to church-y discussions.  That word is "missional," spell checker gives me a red squiggly line under that word, and I agree it should be there, it's not a normal person word.  It's a bit of the argot used by church wonks and insiders, and it is often used to cover up the fact that we either do not know, or at the very least have little consensus about what we're talking about.  It gets used in vision statements that start off with Matthew 28 citations. It gets used to evoke an idea that is rather important, but then squashes it into a package that no one finds palatable, it's like that Christmas gift fruitcake that dear old Martha gave you, the intention is good, but the reality is just going to fester on your counter until you sadly give up and throw it away.
I may have flirted with it, I may have even cut myself a slice and chewed wistfully on something that "a lot of people" say is a good thing, but I am throwing it away now.  Most of us have not wrestled adequately with what the mission of the church actually is to be able form it into a meaningful adjective.  We need to understand the nominal truth behind the word before we use it to describe ourselves or our activities or especially our vision.
In seminary, we are required to take a class called Missiology, which is the study of the mission of the church.  My teacher was Dr. Scott Sunquist, Dr. Sunquist and another Mission type faculty member, Dr. Don Dawson of the World Mission Initiative (WMI) were also weekly participants in some pick-up basketball games down in the gym at East Liberty Presbyterian Church.  It was through this extra-curricular activity that I got myself and my lovely wife roped into going on a short term mission trip to Guatemala with a local church during one of the summer breaks.
Sunquist and Dawson are veterans of the mission field, and as such they are dangerous sorts to get involved with, because casual conversations have a way of ending with you on a plane to some place where you never really expected or wanted to go. In fact, both of the major mission trips that I have taken in my life started out with a shrug of my shoulders rather than an enthusiastic, "Here I am Lord."  I didn't really know what I was doing or why I was doing it, and that probably was the saving grace of the whole experience.  When I was a junior in High School, I heard about a trip to Alaska with the Synod of the Trinity. I said to myself, "Hmm, that seems cool," and I went, I had no grand vision of saving souls or valiantly serving the Lord in far off places.  I was 16, it was Alaska, for a month, it seemed like a more intense sort of a vacation, and essentially that is what it was.
Guatemala, likewise, it was service of a sort, but there was a very real sense in which we got a lot more than we gave.  On either trip, if I had gone with visions of being the savior or the bearer of light I would have been largely disappointed.  We certainly saw things that broke our heart, but we also experienced things that filled them. For the most part these "missions" were not "missions" in the traditional sense of the word, they were life-changing journeys for us.  By contrast, they were most likely fairly unremarkable for those we went to serve.
As one grows into a greater awareness of the oneness of God, and the true magnificence of grace in Christ, you stop thinking so much about faith as a series of actions and start understanding faith as a state of being. The mission of the church is supposed to help us grow into that awareness, that is what making disciples means, instructing (in word and deed) and baptizing people into Christ.  In other words, bringing them into the kingdom of those who live with the awareness of God's grace and goodness.
In my experience at least, this journey is better started with a certain lack of expectations and more of a sense of general willingness.  It is not thinking that you specifically have some great power to share, but in openly wondering, "why not?"  This is another thing the Camino (in concert with Alaska and Guatemala) taught me: you are most engaged in God's work and most thoroughly on the journey, when you get yourself out of the way.  I know this sounds sort of Buddhist, but they're not wrong about this: letting go of yourself, your expectations, your desires, and simply being present to the journey, to the world around you, and to others along the way is the path of enlightenment.
If you reduce the mission of the church to a program, an event, or even acts of service, you are missing a big idea. The mission of the church is emulation of Christ, do what he did.  What did he do? He went from place to place, sometimes across the Galilee, sometimes to Jerusalem, a few times to Samaria, maybe up to Tyre and Sidon, but for the most part he hung around Capernaum, not too far from Nazareth, in the midst of his supporters and away from the dangers of Judea, Rome, Herod and the Sanhedrin.  The message of the kingdom was constant: God is with us, the reality of that drawing near to us.
It is interesting to me that we often miss the mission, or even worse pollute it with our consumerism by turning it into "mere" charity, or religious tourism. Let's face it, when it comes to charity, we can be outperformed by the Red Cross or FEMA (sometimes) or any number of secular organizations who don't have to deal with messy theological considerations or things like worshiping or living together as a community, they just ride in, do good and go home. To top it off, we often come on the scene pretending we totally are Jesus, rather than his disciples, and this opens the door to all sorts of problems.  We can so often bring our imperial and paternalistic attitudes into the process, not recognizing that we are in need of transformation as much, if not more than the ones we go to "serve," or evangelize. We need to remember that being the Body of Christ means we follow his example in how to meet people where they are.
After the Guatemala trip, I did an independent study project about the religious history of the country.  I had in my mind an experience of profound darkness, night in a village with no electricity, under the heavy tropical clouds.  My original title was "Into Darkness, Bringing Light."  In a discussion with Dr. Sunquist who was supervising the independent study, I realized that I had that all wrong, profoundly wrong, totally backwards as a matter of fact.  I changed my title to "Into Darkness, in Seeking Light."  The darkness that I went into was not a spiritual darkness, I mostly brought that with me, it was simply a darkness of poverty and lack of things most of us take for granted. The light that I found was not in some grand theological statement or cultural insight, it was just that we go where God sends us and try to be fully present for the journey.
That is the mission of the church, whether we are in a foreign land helping orphans, in a church in a little logging town in Alaska, on the Camino de Santiago, or at home making a jello salad for a fellowship dinner, or even sitting in a committee meeting talking about a budget.  The task of being present and in the presence of God is all we ever need to have in our hearts and minds.  Don't get me wrong, that's not easy, in fact, the more mundane the circumstances, the more difficult it is to keep that mindset and that open heartedness.  That's why I think it is good, despite all the valid critiques, to occasionally get up and leave your comfortable nook and go somewhere else, step out of your comfort zone and try something big and bold. It is also important to bring the awareness of your identity to all of the small things you do as a part of the Church, you are being the Body of Christ then as well.