So, it seems there is this sort of….reformation…going on in some ways. I don’t know if we’re going to see a German monk posting papers on any doors, but nonetheless, it seems that “something is happening,” as I’ve said and heard others saying the last year. In the last months I’ve talked with people from different parts of the country (and world) who all feel the same way. God seems to be connecting his children in pretty fascinating and beautiful ways. There is an undercurrent, a buzzing, and we all seem to have come to the same conclusion separately. And then we found that somehow other people had the exact same feelings and thoughts and questions and ponderings. (What I mean by this is that we didn’t all pick up the same book one day and then start thinking, but something is leading people toward the same thoughts, questions, struggles…God is teaching us, we’re not teaching ourselves)

Right now I’m working so I won’t go into detail at this moment, but I can see exactly how God reached into my brain, heart, soul, fears, dreams, insecurities…to wrestle with me in order to teach me. I can look at my journal and read my thoughts as I sat in a cemetary in Germany watching the s-bahn go by…I was scared and confused…I can read and see God breaking me down, humbling me, smashing my walls, and teaching me to walk in freedom. Freedom to wrestle with him, freedom to trust Him, freedom to not know any answers except Him. To stumble and hit the ground hard, to openly shout out, “I have no clue what’s going on or what I’m doing! My life doesn’t make sense!”…And then watch God work amazing things in our brokenness.

My point is that I keep meeting more and more people that have had this encounter with God. God has smacked us around and scared us and seared us, and made us question Him, and now He seems to be connecting people into community. Real, authentic, messy community. Community with everyone. With other communities, with ourselves, our families, our workplaces, the world. Culture. So, on that note, before I start writing another book, I wanted to link this article that Brian Smith brought to my attention about what it seems that God is birthing (amongst other things) from these encounters with Him: a missional church.

What does a missional church even begin to look like? What does that mean? This begins to articulate what people have been feeling, the rumblings that have been invading hearts for awhile now, it’s an interesting time to follow Jesus. I believe He’s chasing after us with vehemence, stripping us down, stealing us back, aching for transformation and a new life of wonder, surrender, and grace.

There is a fundamental schism in American cultural, political, and economic life. There’s the quicker-growing, economically vibrant…morally relativist, urban-oriented, culturally adventuresome, sexually polymorphous, and ethnically diverse nation…and there’s the small town, nuclear-family, religiously-oriented, white-centric other America, [with]…its diminishing cultural and economic force…[T]wo nations…”

From “The Missional Church”.