The Sending Church (Urbana 81)

by Gordon MacDonald

Wherever the Holy Spirit is in charge, wherever the Holy Spirit controls the lives of women and men, there is a compelling sense of sentness.

Gordon MacDonald

I would like to direct your attention to a passage of Scripture which is found deep in the New Testament - the little letter that Peter wrote to a group of scattered Christians and congregations:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. I Peter 2:9-10 RSV

In the stories that General Eisenhower used to tell about his associates in the military and the government, there was one favorite in which he indulged at the expense of one of his chief aides, a man named George Allen. George Allen had the dubious distinction of having played in a record-setting football game in Cumberland College, during the early 1930s, I believe. The team lost 222 to 0. Allen played halfback on the losing side. After about three quarters of the game, when the score had begun to mount and the team was dramatically demoralized, there came a moment, in one of the few plays in which they had the ball, when the ball was snapped back to the quarterback who immediately dropped it. The opposing linemen came charging in, the ball was trickling around the backfield and the quarterback screamed out to Allen, "Pick it up. Pick it up." Allen took one look at the charging linemen and said, "You pick it up! You dropped it!"

Pick Up the Church

There are many people today who would say those same sorts of words about the church - people who, having come out of a background in which the church has been a bad experience or in which the church has seemed irrelevant, apathetic or simply stiffing in its institutionalism, have said, "Let somebody else pick up the church and run with it. I want nothing to do with it."

This is particularly true of the younger generation. And I say that with some degree of authority because it was true of me when, in my early twenties, I first made a commitment to Christian ministry. Entering seminary, I found myself saying on many occasions, "I will do anything but be a pastor. I will involve myself in anything but a church because that is not where the action is."

Now I start on that somewhat pessimistic note because I need to make contact with many of you who think the same thing and who have not yet understood that Christian mission, over the long haul, cannot happen until we understand the nature and the place that God has made for the church throughout all of history. The reason I quoted Peter's words is that they constitute one of the noblest yet briefest statements about the nature of the church. Not only is there something special about the content of those two verses, but there is something we need to notice about the man who wrote those words. For I have a suspicion that in some very general way he shared at one point in his life that rather dim view of the church.

1 Peter 2:9-10 easily breaks into two halves. The first is a statement of affirmation or esteem that Peter has as he writes to a group of people who have been dispersed apparently through persecution across the large reaches. Remember, these people are quite poor. They are perhaps a bit demoralized from having been wrenched from their homelands. They have few resources apart from their own energy. So when Peter talks in words like these, he is trying to lift them and build their understanding of their role in God's history. Look at the phrases he uses. "You are a special race. You are a holy nation. You are priests of royalty. And most important, you are God's own people."

Peter seems to be struggling to find the most magnificent, the highest of phrases, to elevate the self-esteem of these poor congregations. Peter recognizes, as we often do in the twentieth century, that people don't think that they have much to give until they see the specialness that God by grace has created in them. I hear Peter saying to these congregations, "You are really important in God's view of things. You are special; you are royal; you are holy; you are chosen; you are part of his family." In a whole different sense I recall the words of Paul to the elders in the Ephesian congregation: "Take heed for the church which God has purchased with his own blood." I worry about being critical of the church when I see it described like that.

In the second half of 1 Peter 2:9-10 Peter moves from the privileges of the people - their great position - to what they are privileged to do. You are going to proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into light. Remember who you were not; now see who you are. But the thrust of the challenge is this: you must act on the privileges that have come to you through the grace of God.

Where did Peter get such theology? such insight? Did he always think that sort of thing? Emphatically not. Remember Peter's encounter with Jesus a few years earlier, one of the first encounters that he had with Jesus. Remember the miracle of Christ's power in filling the nets with an overload of fish. Peter's mind was boggled. He was awestruck over the power of Christ. And he fell before Jesus and said, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man. I am not worthy of being a part of this equation. I can't live up to this stuff. Pick somebody else."

Jesus made a beautiful reply: "Peter, don't be afraid, this point forward, you are going to be catching men." because from that moment a countdown began and Peter moved from wanting to run from Christ to the place where, years later, he could with his pen articulate magnificently what it means to be special people doing a special thing.

The Sending Church

My question lies between those two extremes: What were the insights, what were the inputs, that led Peter to think the sort of things which called him to issue his challenge to the church? For Peter is attempting to take ordinary churches and create out of them "the sending church."

There are many churches; there are relatively few sending churches. Let me define a sending church. We can do it by way of a historical model, the church in Acts 13 in which the Holy Spirit was free to speak because he would be heard. That church called Saul and Barnabas and sent them out to the uttermost parts of the earth. That was a sending church. It was a church marked by intercession for world evangelization, marked with caring for the needs of hurting people, marked with a hunger for theteaching of the Word of God. It was a church marked with leaders who really believed the mandate of Acts 1:8. Into that sort of atmosphere the Holy Spirit can quickly move. So when he said, "Set apart these men," the church laid hands on them and "sent them off' (v. 3). It was a sending church.

By way of contrast let us look at what is not a sending church. We are not a part of a sending church when we are just part of a Bible study. Don't assume that you have built yourself into the sending congregation if you are just part of a Bible study. Bible studies are great, but they are not the church in its fullest form. We are also not a part of the sending church if we attend church on Sunday morning via television.

Moreover, the sending church is not just the American church. Let's not set in motion our North American chauvinism and equate the sending church with the church in the West. The sending church can be found any place where certain conditions are met. A sending church can be found anywhere: in North America, Africa, the South Pacific, Asia and so on. Likewise, nonsending churches can be anywhere.

So why is Peter so concerned in this epistle with the sending mentality of that congregation? First, he has learned something about the nature of a sending God. Second, he has learned something about the mission of Jesus Christ. Third, he has learned something about the enablement of the Holy Spirit.

The Sending God

Luke 24:27 has a magnificent description of a postresurrection encounter between Jesus and the disciples: he opened up the Scriptures to them and taught them from Moses and the prophets what his mission was all about. What could be a more marvelous experience than having the Savior open up the Word of God, as he must have done that day? And there was Peter sitting in the front row hearing Christ unfold God's work in history. I suggest that one topic Christ had to talk about was the movement of the heavenly Father in history. I can hear Peter thinking about things like this.

Sending first happened when God created the heaven and earth. The first thing that we know about the God of the Bible is that he created, that he sent something out of himself. By his word he created things out of nothing. We know also from Psalm 19 that when God created the heaven and earth, he created everything with a purpose - to proclaim his glory. Everything in all of creation that is untouched by the power of sin has one basic function - to raise and elevate the consciousness of all who see the glory of God. "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Ps 19:1 RSV). There is no language where their voice is not heard. All of creation was built to send, to confront people with God's creation glory.

In all of creation today the only objects that are not sending by instinct are human beings controlled by sin and those things in our environment which we have touched and exploited. When we exploit our environment, we diminish its capacity to send out messages about the glory of God. What God creates, he creates to send, and what does not send is a corruption of God's creation.

As Christ unfolded the Old Testament to Peter, as he developed that sending mentality for the old apostle, I can hear Jesus talking also about God encountering men like Abraham and Moses. What is the first thing God says to Abraham when he encounters him in his homeland? "Go forth to a land that I will show you. You are going to be a blessing wherever you go, and nations are going to be touched wherever you are willing to touch them." The whole encounter with Abraham is built upon sending.

So it is with Moses, too. "Moses, I send you to Pharaoh. I send you to create the conditions in which the liberation of our people will happen. I have been among the people. I have heard their cry. I know their affliction. I've walked among them. Now Moses, you go. I'm sending you."

When Moses and his people gather (in Exodus 19 and 20) at the foot of Mt. Sinai to hear the first orders which God is giving them as he forms those people, he uses the words which Peter quotes in 1 Peter 2. "You will remember," he says to Israel, "how I've drawn you out of Egypt on eagles' wings, and I have made you a special people, a kingdom of priests. Now I am going to send you into the world." Israel's great mandate was to be a sent people mandate that they never fully understood or put into action.

In Isaiah 43 when Isaiah is bemoaning the role of God's people in the world, he talks about a people who were formed at God's pleasure to be his very own. And for what purpose? To declare the praises of the God who created them. Wherever God touches people and things, sentness is the issue.

The great Methodist missionary, E. Stanley Jones, tells this delightful story:

I arrived one day at Pahlevi, Persia, which is now Iran, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, to go up to the capital, Teheran. The man in charge of transportation had difficulty because there were more passengers than cars. I saw a car with only one passenger in it, so I said to the man in charge, "Why can't I go in that car. There's only one man in it."

He said, "I'll see." But he came back crestfallen and he said, "I'm sorry, sir, but the man said you couldn't ride with him because he is a French diplomat and you are only a missionary." I suppose I should have felt squelched but inwardly I straightened up and I said to myself, "If he is a French diplomat, then he represents a shaky French kingdom, which has had twenty-six governments in thirty years. I am an ambassador of the unshakable kingdom of God which has had one government since the foundation of the world and will have one government to the end."

Later on the way across the Caspian Sea by boat the diplomat got caught by a treacherous lock in the men's room and couldn't get out. He waved at me frantically and he said, "Please sir, extricate me!" So the ambassador of the kingdom of God extricated the diplomat from France.

Is that what the ambassadors of the kingdom must do - extricate the diplomats of the world who have boxed themselves up in impossible ways of life? If they only knew it, they are crying out in more ways than one, "Please sirs, extricate us." And we must humbly but assuredly say, "Brother, this is the way. Walk in it, the way of God's kingdom."

The role of God the Father in sending from the foundation of the world: that is the sort of thing that must have swelled the soul of Peter, as he sat at the foot of Christ.

The Mission of Christ

The mission of Jesus Christ was also part of the sending mindset of Peter. Recall again that incredible moment when Peter resists the notion that Jesus can use him. Christ said to him in what must have been gentle but firm words, "Peter, don't be afraid, don't be afraid." And when Jesus invades that group of men in those first days they have anything but a sending mindset. These men are relatively poor, probably uneducated, come out of the simpler professions and have a provincial view of the world and of history. Moreover, they are poorly organized.

There is a "Peanut's" story in which Linus, Lucy's younger brother, is watching television. Lucy walks into the living room, looks at Linus's choice of program and says, "Change the channel!" Linus looks up and he replies, "What makes you think that you can walk into this room and just say like that, 'Change the channel'?" She says, "You see this hand? Individually these five fingers don't amount to much, but rolled together tightly into a ball-like fist they become a weapon formidable to behold." Linus changes the channel. And after Lucy is comfortably ensconced and watching her own program, Linus looks at his own hand and fingers, and says, "Why can't you guys get organized like that?"

This could have been said to the disciples to challenge them to become apostles. I wouldn't have picked one of those men. Indeed, there must have been moments when in his humanity Jesus must have said, "Why can't you guys get organized?"

The answer is simple. In the earliest stages of their walk with Jesus they were like many of us. They loved him; they were following him, but they did not yet think of "sending." They had to grasp the notion at the very beginning that God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son; he sent him into the world that the world through him might be saved. Until they knew that Jesus was the sent One from the Father, and that they in turn were to be sent by him, they could never mature and get organized as they were to be. Jesus was drilling this deeply into their spirits month by month in experiences of discipleship, failure and success, slowly unfolding to them this enormous concept that we are trying to grasp that every person is sent.

John 4 tells the story of the woman at the well in which Jesus talks to the woman and her life is scoured and changed. The disciples come back thinking that Jesus would be hungry for food. But he said, "Look, food is good, but that's not the important priority today. My food is to do the will of the one who sent me. Look out upon the fields and see these people coming. They are the most important thing." That's the way we think when we are sent.

Slowly, rhythmically, like a sledgehammer pounding at the resistance of their innermost spirits, Peter and the men around him are taught what it means to be sent.

In John 17:18 Jesus says, "Even as you, Father, have sent me into the world, so I have sent them." And in John 20:21 he says, "As the Father has sent me, even so send I you." Over and over, each time he is in the presence of Jesus, this great consuming theme touches Peter's life. He begins to see it as the important issue.

The Enablement of the Holy Spirit

When Peter in the next phase of his life comes under the promised power of the Holy Spirit, the polishing work of understanding the nature of sending becomes complete. Jesus returns to heaven. Peter and the others go to a room in Jerusalem. For days they tarried and they prayed. And they are not yet sure what this is all about.

One of my favorite stories is about an old New England prep school headmaster in the 1930s. One day he booted from school a boy who was the son of a wealthy Boston businessman. When the message reached Boston that the boy had been booted, the father caught the first train to Concord, New Hampshire, and rushed unannounced into the office of the headmaster. Now the words I'm about to say no preacher would ever say of his own volition. But he walked into that office, looked at the headmaster and said, "You damn well act as if you're running this school all by yourself." The headmaster stood to his feet and looped his thumbs into his vest so his Phi Beta Kappa key could easily be observed. And he said in a good New Hampshire accent, "Your language is coarse, your grammar is despicable, but you have grasped the ideal."

That is exactly what happened when the Holy Spirit came upon those one hundred or more men and women in that room. When he filled them to the uttermost, they grasped the idea that men and women following Jesus Christ, filled with his Spirit and walking in the nature of the God of the Bible are sent people. This is demonstrated in Acts 2. God the Spirit proved before scores of people from different lands, cultures and languages that world evangelization is a possibility for all who want to be filled with the Spirit. Throughout the book of Acts the story is the same. Wherever the Holy Spirit is in charge, wherever the Holy Spirit controls the lives of women and men, there is a compelling sense of sentness. We see it in the story of Peter's going to the house of Cornelius and later on justifying his act to the church at Jerusalem. We see it finally in one of its peak moments in Acts 13 when Paul and Barnabas were set apart by the Spirit.

As we read 1 Peter 2:9-10, we say, "Peter, how far you've come from Luke 5! How far you've come in understanding this concept that men and women are special only as they are sent to reveal the glory of God like all of creation and proclaim that glory in the salvation from Jesus Christ. And now, Peter, you are trying to convince churches that they should see the same vision."

No burden weighs heavier on my heart as a Christian pastor in these days than to help convince as many of you as possible of the importance of being part of a congregation that sends. And I suspect this message is relevant to every Christian. If we are part of a sending congregation, we will be called either to go out to plant sending congregations or to stay behind to release others to go. If we want to walk in the way of Christ, there are no other alternatives. No human organization is more beautifully fit to send than a congregation in which there is a cross section of generations, a broad mix of resources, abilities, talents, gifts, a steadiness in the disciplines of worship and spiritual growth, and a caring fellowship which spans young and old alike. Out of this environment, when the church is doing its job, come the sent ones who invade the world around that congregation and go all the way to the uttermost parts of the earth.

George Allen, the football player in a losing game, looked at a fumbled football and didn't want to pick it up. Likewise, some of you may not want to pick up what you think to be a "fumbled" church because it seems to have mistreated you, or it seems too stodgy, stale or irrelevant for your taste. Don't fall for that perspective! If the congregation which you are a part is not a sending congregation, then assume with the words of Peter that you are sent to light a fire in that congregation until it discovers its grand possibilities of sending. If you are part of those who are to go, then draw from the sending congregations in your world, the strength, the sustenance, the intercessory power that they must give you. So as you consider your role in the sending church, I challenge you as a new generation to pick up its possibilities and potential. Pick the church up. Please, in your generation, pick it up!

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The Sending Church (Urbana 81)

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December 27-31, 2009