Mission in the Modern World

Introducing the MISSIONAL LABS Newsletter

Welcome to the MISSIONAL LABS newsletter!

This is my first post, so forgive me for needing to learn the ropes on substack (I really like it!).

You might be asking, “what is this newsletter about, and why should I care?” Consider this post to be my introduction and explanation, over coffee if you like.

Enjoy!

Tyler

Our Cultural Moment

As Christians, we live in a fascinating time in history. 

In the West, we're in the middle of the ongoing and large-scale transition from an historic christendom, to a progressive secularism. In the midst of this decline of faith, we are already beginning to see the fracture and bad fruits of our epistemological autonomy and radical individualism. 

We’re also in the midst of the consolidation and redistribution of economic value in the age of digital capitalism - we’re only a decade into a world where everyone has an iPhone, and it’s hard not to see the brave new world being built right in front of us, catalyzed by distributed computing, big data, attention-commoditizing algorithms, and a high definition camera in the hands of every person.  Markets and firms, like cities, are being consolidated into winners-take-all competitions by the distributive power of the internet. 

We live in the most globally connected period in human history - you can fly anywhere in the world in 24 hours - and have seen some of the largest great migrations in all of human history in the past few decades, and the world’s most intense period of population growth and urbanization.  Yet at the same time, we see a powering-up of nation states, a consolidation of power blocs into the US-EU-China-Russia-Everyone Else world order, and the coronavirus of 2020 has shown us how quickly our globalism - travel, economics, and more - can all be shut down in a matter of days. 

We live in the middle of the globalization of culture and politics.  The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked massive protests beyond America, in London, Amsterdam, Paris, New Zealand, and beyond.  The Black Lives Matter movement has gone global, and western media platforms continue to shape global narratives on almost every facet of public life. 

More practically, we’ve seen a massive growth in consciousness about the world’s problems - from poverty to systemic injustice and more - and have begun to build that awareness into our business models.  Companies must have multiple bottom lines, funding for Corporate Social Responsibility, and clear statements of position on any larger cultural issue.  We’ve developed various models of private-public-social ventures to leverage capital to solve social problems, and the nonprofit “third sector,” as well as strategic philanthropy and impact investing has never been larger.  To be an entrepreneur is still seen overwhelmingly positively, and a social entrepreneur even more so. 

The church, meanwhile, faces decline in the West, as the nominalism of one generation leads to the dismissal of faith in the next.  The larger plausibility structures for a radical and passionate faith have all but disappeared, disintegrated by a materialist worldview and a consumerist ethos.  The global church, we hear, is doing just fine, with the rise of the “Next Christendom” and the emergence of a global pentecostal spirituality, even though persecution, lack of access, and unreached people groups still remain high in the margins of our world. 

I believe it’s a fascinating - though challenging - time in history to be a follower of Jesus. 

Does the Church have a future?

We actually know most of this, or at least feel it, if we are paying attention to the larger cultural conversation.  But in the middle of all of this, we very rarely ask - does the church have a meaningful role to play in the future world that is emerging? 

It would seem so - as has been shown by so many others, Christianity has grown and thrived over the past 100 years - it’s just that its center of gravity has changed.  It’s no longer primarily a Western religion, but the religion of the Latin American, of the Africans, of the Chinese, of the Indian, and more.  Pentecostalism has been widely regarded as the most successful social movement of the past century, seen globally.

In the liberal west, of course, we have seen massive decline - look at Europe.  In America, we see a schizophrenic relationship with faith - entrenched in our culture and values, but marginalized to our “private worlds” as much as we will allow, and weaponized into a political force (Donald Trump’s inability to say anything specific about the Bible, but brandishing it nonetheless, being the symbolic example).  

However, in the middle of all of this, a refining and pruning seems to anticipating new signs of life, at least in the West.  Church planting movements, revival movements, worship movements, and more are emerging as artifacts of a passionate and living faith in the middle of a secular milieu - a far cry from the copycat artifacts of the Christian 90s.  Christianity in the west seems to be beginning to urbanize, as seen in the leadership of Keller and more, and cities continue to be places that aggregate creative capital and drive innovation and creativity.

The church has always been at its most potent as a creative minority, and it has never particularly relied on a Christian context in order to flourish.  The church in the West has been notably disappearing, but it seems that some of its best days, a reappearing, might actually be ahead of it.

Mission in this Brave New World

What then does “mission” look like for the Church in the midst of these tectonic plates of change, and massive acceleration and disruption?

The relationship between the church and its surrounding culture has always seemed to be reductionistic, toward either a liberalized syncretism, or a recalcitrant and defensive withdrawal.  It’s the churches and communities that have sought to walk the balance, between faithfulness and creative engagement, that seem to find life in this moment.

This makes sense - mission has always been about the tightrope between faithfulness and fruitfulness, between church and culture, between confrontation and accommodation.  The church is the most interesting at the “edge,” the place where the future is being worked out, on the street in real contexts, where believers are working out their faith relationally, with co-workers and creatives and journalists and baristas they talk to everyday as they go about their work and live in cities. 

Mission, historically, was about sending.  It was about reaching the far horizon - the “over there” of the world.  It implied leaving, crossing a cultural boundary, and translating the Gospel into a new place.  A “missionary” was a vocational category that created clarity.  

Cultural elites in cities like London, with resources and dense networks, would form “mission societies” (where this newsletter gets its name) with explicit vision to make an impact “over there.”

Not so much any more - the postmodern and postcolonial mood, highlighted by Lesslie Newbigin’s return to England after 40 years on the mission field in India, highlighted just how much this mood had changed.  

As Newbigin highlighted, the work of the church in the emerging age has been a “return to the local” - primarily (though not exclusively) viewing mission as incarnational living, being good neighbors, and seeking the renewal of the surrounding neighborhood. This has been a good recovery of the incarnational presence and ministry of Jesus.

But, as Newbigin showed us, the Christian faith has to be valid everywhere for it to be valid anywhere, and in the age to come, we need to recover both the local and the global story of what God is doing in the world - in the West and beyond.  

Mission in the future will be bi-directional - a globalized learning community, pursuing mission on multiple frontiers and edges.

Narrating Lessons from the Frontiers

So, that’s what this platform is going to be about.  

Mission is the place where the church creates the future in culture - the public intersection of people of faith, and places where following Jesus isn’t particularly plausible or desirable, and the way that creative communities of Jesus followers connect those dots, in step with the Holy Spirit.

We will focus on Churches - highlighting what the actual body of Jesus doing around the world, as it gathers, worships, and is sent out into its context.

We will focus on Culture - on the trends, particularly in technology, economics, politics, and sociology that shape the operating reality and the imaginative horizon of churches, leaders, and christian institutions, and how they relate to each other.

We will focus on Cities - the places where local and global trends overlap, where creative capital is concentrated, where the means of production of modern culture are located, and where the patterns created now will flow downstream in the years to come. 

And, we will focus on Creativity - the things that are new, the “fresh expressions” so to speak, the products and resources, and the communities and pathways of mission that are emerging in our world in real time, both from the organized church, and from the everyday believers working out their faith in public. 

In all of this, I’m aiming to have a balanced global perspective, and an honest assessment of the challenges and failures where we see them.  

I believe in the possibility of the church as an agent of genuine renewal, and believe that there is a larger conversation missing about how to connect the dots and learn from each other at a large scale, in a way that doesn’t just catalyze theological reflection, but catalyzes missiological practice and organizational expression, on the ground.

What’s Next? 

That’s what this platform will be about.

My hope is to make it part of a larger ecosystem - training courses on missional discipleship for local churches, a framework for faithful ministry design and innovation for leaders and practitioners, and media and content highlighting trends, and more.

Stay tuned! Thanks for reading.