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The Partnership
for Missional Church (PMC) is based on the conviction that God
has gifted every congregation for a specific ministry in their
own community. Mission isn’t just about sending money
to far away lands or providing goods and services to the needy.
Mission is about spreading the Good News to people in our communities
by forming caring relationships with them. For many congregations,
the shift towards having mission at the center of their identity
will require significant change. Change isn’t something
Lutherans do well. Change always causes anxiety. We prefer to
be comfortable so we want things to stay the same. Zion Lutheran
in Phillipsburg, Kansas is no different from the majority of
ELCA congregations in that regard. We prefer our traditional
worship style. We sit in our usual pews. We talk to the people
with whom we are the most familiar on Sunday morning.
God doesn’t
call us to be comfortable. God calls us to be faithful. When
“being comfortable” is our primary concern, we are
serving ourselves. Faithfulness is about participating in God’s
work and mission. It isn’t about us. It is about reaching
out to other people with the love, the forgiveness and the welcome
of Christ. Those “other people” may be members on
the margins of our congregations or they may be people who have
never seen the inside of a church building. If we wait until
we feel comfortable doing that, it will probably never happen.
 How
has God gifted Zion to reach out to others with the love, forgiveness
and welcome of Christ? The PMC process is about discovering
the “how” of God’s mission for us.
The information
our steering team has gathered over the last nine months has
begun to shed some light on that for us. As we have looked at
our data, it has been important for us to keep in mind the difference
between technical and adaptive change. Both are ways of responding
to the problems or situations in which we find ourselves.
Technical
change addresses problems that can be solved in fairly straightforward
ways. The furnace breaks down, you call the repair technician.
Sunday School teachers are struggling to fill the Sunday School
hour with meaningful activities, you change the curriculum to
one that gives the teachers more activities related to the lesson.
Technical changes are fairly easy to make. Often you can call
in a professional to take care of them for you. However, if
we try to address deeper problems with technical solutions,
our results will be disappointing. Deeper problems require adaptive
change.
Adaptive
change is a much bigger undertaking. It involves a major overhaul
of our identity and priorities. We have to explore questions
like, “Who are we and what is our purpose? Are we here
for our own comfort or do we exist to do God’s work? How
can the traditions of our congregation help us in our mission?
How is 'business as usual' hindering us?”
As Zion
moves into Phase II of the PMC process, these ideas about change
will become challenges to take action. The words are about to
take on flesh as we begin experimenting with ways we can participate
in God’s mission in our community. From the information
gathered in Phase I - the Discovery Phase, we have discerned
that the Holy Spirit is leading Zion to reach out to families
with children in our community. We call that our “missional
challenge.” We are in the process of forming a team that
will dream up concrete ways we can do that. Over the next year
we will by trying out their ideas and listening for the Spirit
in those experiences. Those experiences will reshape and fine-tune
our 'missional challenge' until we find the place we feel God
wants us to be.”
If the
Holy Spirit is going to breathe new life into Zion, we will
need to be open to adaptive change. It will be uncomfortable.
Some members may resist the changes we need to make. We may
need to give up some of our favorite habits because we find
that they are not helpful in the mission God has for us. But
if we are committed to seeking God’s will, we will do
it anyway, trusting that God will see us through the discomfort
and bring us into the joy of living with God’s work and
mission at the center of our community of faith.
Rev. Lorna
Paulus
Zion Lutheran Church
Phillipsburg, Kan.
July 10, 2008
“Be
strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for
the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua
1:9 (NRSV)
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