No Members, Only Missionaries

I have always respected Erwin McManus. He’s a guy that has a heart to reach the lost, to bridge the nations & to have kingdom impact in place of ‘church growth.’ I’ve heard him say before that they have actually shut the church doors, change strategy &/or moved to a new location at times when they felt like the ratio of Christians to non-Christians in their services was getting too lopsided. I doubt you’d find many pastors willing to go that far.

Just got finished flipping through the latest Catalyst Monthly newsletter and read a great feature article entitled “No Members, Only Missionaries” by McManus. I’ll leave you to read the whole article by yourself (it’s excellent), but here’s an excerpt. I can almost see his voice raising and his adrenaline flowing when he gets to this point in the article. Good stuff…

At Mosaic we have no members - only missionaries. There is nothing to join except a community on mission. We have little patience for self-indulgent spirituality that insists on everything being about us.

And there are implications. We have a zero tolerance policy for religious jargon or “Christianese.” We have little room for traditions that mean something to us but nothing to a person searching for God. We will not forsake the word of God for the traditions of men. We are committed to removing every non-essential barrier between God and humanity. We refuse to allow the gospel to become lost in our nostalgia or to appear irrelevant because we are.

And I must confess we are less concerned about whether mainstream Christians get us than about whether those searching for God get Him.

And if this makes us the bane of the church, then so be it. Paul said he would be accursed if only Israel would be saved. If he was willing to take on hell for eternity, we can take a little heat from the watch-dogs of Christian orthodoxy.

You can read the full article here: “No Members, Only Missionaries”