Get Out!

Two for One:

It happened twice in one weekend, and by two different people! I wasn't sure if I was overanalyzing things (which I have been known to do) or was it a misconception of the whole?  It bothered me so much so that I could not not think about it.  During the whole ride home, a 9 hour trip, I kept questioning the foundational premise to both of these young men who were complete strangers to one another.  Why did they define it this way? Why did they see it like that? What was the missing component?

Our understanding of the term ministry in large part is directly linked to our comprehension of the nature of the church.  I've written elsewhere on the purpose of the church, if you are interested its is under "God is in the Business of Making a People for Himself". Majority of individuals walk into the assembly of saints and perceive that the people who do ministry are the paid staff of the respective institution while those who keep the seats warm are merely observers.  Ministry is a job, a vocation, an activity that "serious" Christians engage in by becoming pastors. But what does the bible say?

I'll get to that.

Stacking Chairs:

He'd stopped attending church and was taking a break.  He wanted to find a church that he could support the vision and mission while understanding that his main posture within ministry was not to be a public figure, but rather someone who assisted in the background.  I could respect that! But he wanted to stack chairs.

Stack chairs?!?

Nothing against it!  We need people who are willing and able to serve the local gatherings through set up, tear down, refreshments, IT, and more.  Those things are not bad in of themselves—they're actually necessary in the life of the church—but there seems to be an underlining perspective that misses the mark of biblical ministry.  Have we boiled down ministry to stacking chairs and greeting people? In embracing an ideology of ministry in America have we lost something beautiful that is mandated through the divine words of Scripture? Has church been consolidated down to Sunday?

Running Programs:

I wanted to give the next guy the benefit of the doubt.  I mean, he's really just a kid.  So, I shouldn't have paid no mind to his statement, but then again how are we training our young people to see these biblical principles? How do they understand the nature of the church? Maybe it was important that I pay him mind.  Maybe he was speaking on what he had unconsciously learned from the church; the culture; the practice of ministry in the local setting.

Maybe he was speaking on what he had unconsciously learned from the church; the culture; the practice of ministry in the local setting.

He was a teenager who was burned out from youth ministry.  He may have oversaw activities, events, or the boy's group.  Whatever it was we didn't get into specifics, but one thing was sure; by year's end he was tired of serving.  On the bright side, he was ready to get on the horse again.  To saddle up and jump on the beast of ministry and give her another go-a-round.  But then it struck me! Was what he was describing ministry? By not engaging in the programs, does that mean one is not called to Gospel ministry? Was ministry merely what is done within the four walls of the church during a particular day of the week? Did he miss the forest for the trees?

Minimize in Order to Maximize: 

The disciples were convince that the messiah would come and make an enormous bang by shacking up the Greco-Roman empire.  In their minds, the messiah would turn Rome on its head and Israel would ride off into the sunset.  Jesus came preaching the Kingdom (Matt. 4:17), and these twelve disciples were on the brink of reaping a harvest of sheer power, dominance, and authority (from a human perspective).  N. T. Wright articulates this reality by saying:

The phrase 'kingdom of god', therefore, carried unambiguously the hope that YHWH would act thus, within history, to vindicate Israel; the question, why He was taking so long about doing so; and the agenda, for those with watchful hearts, not only to wait for Him to act, but to work, in whatever way was deemed appropriate, towards that day. Furthermore, the idea of YHWH's being king carried the particular and definite revolutionary connotation that certain other people were due for demotion. Caesar, certainly. Herod, quite probably. The present high-priestly clan, pretty likely. When YHWH was king, Israel would be ruled properly, through the sort of rulers YHWH approved of, who would administer justice for Israel and judgement on the nations.1

Yet Jesus came not in a militant fashion, but rather gathered twelve men and pursued the cross of Calvary.  The inauguration of the Kingdom did not come by force, but rather by humiliation—namely the cross. It wasn't the Roman empire that was turned on its head, but rather the ideologies that placed God's redemptive plan in a finite box of the human mind.

Maybe the church was meant to be the people of God on mission with God for the sake of His glory.

Maybe doing church wasn't meant to look like a billion dollar corporation or a Thriller concert or the neighborhood Starbucks.  Maybe the church was meant to be the people of God on mission with God for the sake of His glory.  Just like how Jesus didn't come the way the people thought He would, the church is not meant to look like what the people want.  Maybe God's plan for the church; His set up, His plan, His strategy; is better!

Empower:

We hoard. We love to keep it for ourselves.  We want to do it big. We want to make a name for ourselves (I've heard that somewhere; Babel).  Yet Jesus started small, and He was less concerned with the size and more concerned with the movement.  "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19).  "[You] will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

Its interesting that both of these familiar verses are attached with empowerment.  The former is attached to: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me" (Matt. 28:18); while the latter is attached to: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you" (Acts 1:8).

What does this mean practically for the church? It means that as the church, in particular the elders and pastors, we must empower (by the authority of His Word) the people of God to go.  To go to their families and preach the Gospel. To go to their work places; their cubicles; their offices; their shops.  To go to their neighborhoods, their schools, their communities, and their circle of friends to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Gregg R. Allison reminds us that "[missional] is a matter of identity first, then function."2 As the church, we are to call the people to move and to empower them to go! Out of the outflow of the joy grounded in Jesus Christ we are to engage the nations. John Piper synthesizes this notion well in saying, "[worship is] the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God."3

Discipleship:

The programs of the institutional church is meant to be a means to posture the people of God to stand on a trajectory toward discipleship.  Mark Dever helpfully states, "[but] the ministry of the ordinances and the ministry of teaching primarily occur through churches. Churches fulfill the Great Commission, and discipling is the work of churches."4 The "apostles, the prophets, the evangelist, the shepherds and teachers" have been given " to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:12-13).  The movements that are mandated by Paul are captured in the terms equip and building up. They are the mechanism in which the saints are to obtain unity in faith and knowledge of Christ Jesus. All of which is to serve the end goal of maturity and full stature.

The activities of the institutional church is meant to be a means to posture the people of God to stand on a trajectory toward discipleship.

If this is true, then stacking chairs and greeting people can not be the pinnacle of church ministry, but rather discipleship that is grounded in biblical formation.  The church must fight against the tendency of making the means (programs, activities, stacking chairs, etc.) the end and the end (discipleship) merely the means.  The pursuit of the church is to engage in the sanctifying work of discipleship that cements the saints of God toward the glory of God. Jeffrey P. Greenman articulates it well in saying, "Growth into the likeness of Christ accompanies our participation in Christ's mission to the world, in the power of the Spirit."5

Die or Die:

The implications of the church's unwillingness to engage in discipleship with any type of seriousness and/or zeal will be the death of several local churches.  Not that the Church will die because Jesus said, "I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16: 18).  But many local assemblies will shut down due to an inability to engage in discipleship with the next generation.  The Hmong church in particular, with its tribal tendencies, are already in the midst of loosing many of the Millennials.  With the lack of discipleship and an empowering vision toward Gospel ministry, the next generation of leaders find themselves bored of attending programs.

What's the solution? In my humble opinion, death!

Instead of being about our local institution, we will be about the Kingdom of God.

In the first scenario, our current trend, the church will die due to an inability to reach the nations and generations.  The second scenario, my humble solution, is to pursue death by sending.  Sending our best and brightest members to go and multiple for the sake of the Kingdom.  Instead of being about our local institution, we will be about the Kingdom of God.  This type of death is Gospel death, and Gospel death always breeds Gospel resurrection when Jesus is at the center and core.  We send and build those who remain to the point of sending them out again.  Instead of hoarding to form a megachurch, we send to establish the people of God in communities across the globe for the Name of Christ.  J. D. Greer captures the heart of this dilemma well by saying,

Fill a heart with passion for the lost, and it develops the skill of sending. No shouting required. What keeps us from proficiency in sending, you see, is not a lack of competency, but a lack of conviction; not a scarcity of skill, but a paucity of passion. . . What your organization does best grows out of what it loves most. To send effectively, we must love the glory of God and the lost more than we love anything else. Then sending comes naturally. . . Motivation for mission grows out of deep, personal experience with the Gospel. When we are amazed at the grace God showed in saving us, going to great lengths to save others seems an insignificant thing. We yearn to see the glory of our saving God spread throughout the earth and others find in Christ what we have found. . . Everything in the Christian life grows out of the Gospel. Thus, the deeper you and your people go in the Gospel, the higher you will soar in the mission.6

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*footnotes

1. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 203. 

2. Gregg R. Allison, Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 147. 

3. John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 17.

4. Mark Dever, Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 19. 

5. Jeffrey P. Greenman, Life in the Spirit: Spiritual Formation in Theological Perspective, ed. Jeffrey P. Greenman and George Kalantzis (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010), 27. 

6. J. D. Greer, Gaining by Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 58-59.
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McYoung Yang (M. Div., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary). He is the husband of Debbie Yang and the father to McCayden (8), McCoy (7), McColsen (5), and DeYoung (1).  He has recently accepted the position of Associate Professor of Theology at Crown College in Saint Bonifacius, MN and will begin teaching in the Fall of 2017. He is currently serving as a Counsel member of the Youth Ministry of the Hmong District of the C&MA. McYoung is continuing his post-graduate studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where he hopes to obtain his PhD in Theology. He seeks to use his training and platform as a means to serve the local church in living life through the Gospel lens. McYoung enjoys reading/writing, sports, and playing with his children.