Mission-Critical?
The word “mission” creates confusion.
In the big picture, a Capital-M Mission is a reason for being, a purpose. It is the “why” of any organization or entity. For many decades, corporations have been expected to have a “mission statement.” But in the church, a Small-M mission is some kind of outreach. A church’s Small-M mission (or missions) might include running a school, a VBS, Lenten fish frys, a consignment shop, a coffeehouse, or maybe supporting a preaching station intended to become a daughter congregation.
This dichotomy between the two senses of the word “mission” leads to some confusion.
Many years ago, when my own congregation ran a large Pre-K3 to 8th grade school, our church constitution said that our church’s “primary mission” was “the school.” I understood this as the Small-M mission. In other words, the primary evangelistic outreach for our church was the school. However, this was often interpreted by many to mean that the Capital-M Mission - that the very purpose and reason for existence of our church - was to run a school. And this manifested itself in skewed priorities. I was sometimes reminded of this, and told to stay in my lane and do the little church thing. For the school was the “primary mission.”
We had an IT person (a faculty member and member of the parish) create a website for both our church and school. Many churches with schools navigate this by having an option to click on either the church or the school from the initial webpage. But at the time, our website went only to the school. Finding the church’s website was a chore, as it was just one page, buried among many of the school’s pages. When I suggested having the church easier to find, and more prominent, I was informed that we actually wanted people to go through the school in order to find the church, since the school was “the primary mission” of the church.
In our community, if we referred to our church by name, people would immediately say, “That’s a great school. My grandkids went to that school. Oh, there’s a church there too?” And why? Because the school was the church’s “primary mission.”
The School Board was very important to our church. In fact, the chairman of many years was so important, that he absented himself from attending services for well over a year, but remained an ex officio member of the church’s Board of Directors. When I raised the issue of his non-attendance, I was told that he was too important to require him to attend the church’s services. After all, the “primary mission” of the church was the school.
And when the reality of post-Katrina economics forced us to close our school, for a long time, people in the community would run into me and ask what I was doing these days. When I said I was the pastor of the church, they would sometimes look puzzled and say, “I thought that place closed.” And why? Because the “primary mission” of our church was the school.
To those outside the church (and to many inside the church), the Capital-M mission of the Christian Church is to run a small-M mission. An example of this was a Roman Catholic friend in our community. One day, he asked me what my church “did.” I was confused, because what the church does is confess and proclaim Christ in Word and Sacrament ministry, because we believe in Jesus. We believe in the Incarnation and the Atonement. We believe in forgiveness, life, and salvation. We believe in the “resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” As a Christian himself, why would he ask what the church does? I asked him to clarify his question. “Well, do you run a soup kitchen? Do you provide for the homeless?” In his mind, that’s the mission, the reason for the church’s existence. It’s what the church “does.” To him, the church’s Capital-M mission was to be a worldly social services provider.
I also had a Protestant Christian ask me if our church “does missions.” When I asked for clarification, the person asked me if we take a couple weeks in the summer to go to central America to do manual labor. For in the minds of many Christians, this is what “doing missions” is.
In the military, the Capital-M Mission is the central reason the military exists: to defend the country, by force if necessary. But there are, of course, Small-M missions that emanate from the Big-M Mission: individual objectives for individual units, projects of a limited time and scope to be completed: take that hill, sink that ship, bomb that munitions factory.
This confusion of Capital-M Mission (purpose) with the small-M mission (evangelism) is a big problem in the LCMS. It is exacerbated by the reality that all across Christendom in the west, the numbers of Christians has been dwindling for decades. And this is also true for the LCMS. And while I believe the reason why is as obvious as an elephant in a parlor, the response among the modern incarnation of the Church Growth Movement, that is the “Pastoral Leadership” and “Best Practices” faction of the LCMS, is to be “more missional.” And by “missional,” they mean that we should see the Capital-M Mission of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church to be the small-M mission of evangelism - and, of course, to do “vision-casting,” engage “systems,” and read books written by entrepreneurs, as if making Christians is just another manifestation of making and selling widgets “in the marketplace.”
The LCMS has always emphasized the mission of having the laity tell their friends about Jesus. We have had decades worth of synodical programs and campaigns, bridging the Left-Right divide, to essentially confuse the Capital-M Mission with the Small-M mission. Of course, we want everyone to confess Jesus. No one is discouraging this. But is that the church’s Capital-M Mission? Is it why we exist?
Much of our liturgical anarchy in the LCMS is because of this confusion of the two missions. If we believe the Small-M mission is identical with the Capital-M Mission, then anything and everything that we do is for the sake of evangelism - including worship. And while I agree that how we conduct worship is related to evangelism, and is a component of it, it is not the purpose of it. In other words, the Small-M mission is not the Capital-M Mission. For we exist - individually as people bearing the image of God, and collectively as the body of Christ - for the very purpose of worshiping God for eternity. Our eternal purpose, our Capital-M Mission, is to be whom God created us to be, and we do that by virtue of the sacrificial and atoning blood of Christ. And yes, we engage in missionary outreach because of both our love for the lost, and the command of Christ. But there is so much more to the Christian life than selling Jesus as if He were a product at Walmart, and measuring results, as if human beings were consumers racking up measurable revenues on a balance sheet.
The biblical understanding of worship - of a formal sort that includes beauty in all of its components, including the vestments of the ministers and the elegance and aesthetics of the furnishings used in the sanctuary where God is miraculously present - is found in Exodus 25-31. It’s important. It can’t be dismissed. It resonates with how we are wired, with what it means to be a human being created in God’s image. This is how God teaches us to worship Him. The children of Israel had only recently been freed from their slavery in Egypt. They were still four decades from entering the Promised Land, and five centuries from the time in which God would instruct them to build a permanent structure to be used for worship. Nevertheless, the worship of God was a priority. In fact, it was given as the Capital-M Mission of the children of Israel. The First Commandment is about the proper worship of the true God. And God Himself gave details about what worship would look like per His preferences (not ours). Those who claim to be bound by the Bible cannot dismiss this reality that the Holy Spirit caused this to be written for our edification. It is not merely a quaint historical relic or a curiosity, like a shard of pottery, or the archaeological remains of an ancient privy.
Even though the tabernacle was merely a tent, it was not cheap, tawdry, or pragmatic. God gave Moses careful and detailed instructions regarding the beauty and opulence of the sanctuary where His Presence would dwell among His people. The Israelites were told to go to great pains, and much expense (even in the middle of the wilderness) for the sake of worship. It wasn’t convenient. It wasn’t efficient. It made no logical sense. But it reveals the very God whom we worship to this very day. Of course, God could choose to be present in a hole in the ground or a pile of debris. God could have chosen to be worshiped more humbly, freeing our resources to be spent elsewhere. But He didn’t. Rather, God instructed the people to utilize the best craftsmen, whom He supplied, to donate sacrificially, to fashion a place of opulence, and to create a location of stunning beauty for Him to be worshiped.
And, of course, there is no expectation of evangelism or missionary outreach among God’s people at this point. God simply demands and commands that His people worship Him in a way that is formal, beautiful, and expensive, in a way that confesses that He is supernaturally and miraculously present with them, and are to offer this worship of God as part of who we are. And this was true even where the Israelites were not “missional” in the least. God doesn’t care how the unbelievers might react to this “waste” of resources.
Our medieval ancestors understood this. They invested not only entire lives, but multiple generations of lives, to build magnificent cathedrals and churches - even though most of our ancestors were peasants, and the craftsmen lacked power tools, gasoline-fueled lifts and vehicles, and computers. Stained glass, mosaics, and statues were painstakingly constructed with an eye to transcendent beauty and minute detail. No expense was spared (even though today, many would suggest money should be spent on the poor or on “missions” instead). And even in humbler churches across the countryside, the clergy were vested. Art graced the walls and altars of the sanctuaries. The Divine Service of Word and Sacrament was formal and dignified. Beauty was not negotiable.
But today, beauty is only a consideration in the context of the Small-M mission. It’s okay to spend a lot of money, but only if it serves outreach. This reminds me of a local LCMS church that decades ago built an elaborate school, but built no sanctuary. And their boast was that they value education above everything else. They worship in the gymnasium. Maybe their school is also their “primary mission.” To our self-described missional friends, architecture and beauty are fine if they are measurably “missional.” There is a pragmatism that was missing in the days of the medieval cathedral and in the Old Testament tabernacle. Today, worship is no longer the Capital-M Mission of the church, but is rather a means to an end. The Small-M mission of evangelism has displaced the Capital-M Mission of worship for the sake of worship, worship that extends into eternity. And that pragmatism led to experimentation in entertainment-worship, starting in the 1960s. And I believe this pragmatic view of what worship is led to churches that turned the Small-M mission into the Capital-M Mission. That movement is still with us today.
When people use the word “missional,” they inevitably mean it in a pragmatic way. Are the numbers growing? Is it effective? And so today, “missional” worship can theoretically be either formal or informal. In reality, it is generally informal and entertainment-based. But the question that the self-described missional experts ask is, “Is it practical?” Does it work? That is what they mean by “missional.” And they betray themselves when they ask the question: “How many do you worship?” Maybe the more important question is “Whom do you worship.” For we don’t worship numbers, nor do we worship the people in the pews (or modular chairs). Perhaps their very speech betrays them.
Maybe instead of seeing the Small-M mission (evangelism) as the Capital-M Mission of the church, we should, first and foremost worship God according to God’s preferences. Maybe we should consider worship to be simply what Christians do - especially as we gather around Word and Sacrament - whether our numbers grow or shrink. Maybe we should sacrificially make our sanctuaries as beautiful and ornate as possible (knowing that the realm of possibility will vary from one congregation to another), with fine craftsmanship, and yes, expense. And maybe we should focus on this whether it “works” or not to bring people into the church. Maybe the Holy Spirit is actually in charge, and we should keep the Capital-M Mission central, while not neglecting the Small-M mission.
Maybe Jesus really is miraculously with us in worship even when there are only two or three present. Maybe people really can’t come to faith by their own “reason or strength” (SC 2:6) - even if we make use of entrepreneurial techniques , psychology, emotional manipulation by repetitious music, or by principles of marketing and advertising. Maybe evangelism is supernatural, and not a matter of reading the right books by the right entrepreneurs and “vision-casting” social scientists. Maybe our God really is a God of beauty, who does unexpected things when we obey Him and act in accordance with His will and with our created nature, who doesn’t conform to the world’s paradigm of marketing and widget-sales.
And maybe we should focus on being faithful to the Capital-M Mission first and foremost, and make the Small-M mission conform to it, and not the other way around.