Activity: Group “Field Trip”

Objective(s): to give the students a common exercise in ethnographic observation

Time: 15 minutes of observation, 20 minutes of discussion

Materials: audio-visual equipment appropriate for showing the entire class a video recording

Ideally, the best way to teach a class to observe difference and think missionally about populations is to go together to a place with the goal of observation and missional evaluation: a shopping mall, a city park, a particular neighborhood. Introduce the complexities of communication (you can, for example, describe the differences of communication in high-context and low-context communication cultures), send the class out with a set of instructions for observation of cultures, and then share what each of you observed. (For other examples of cross-cultural communication exercises, see http://www.culture-at-work.com/xcexercises.html.) But if this is not possible, then you can take one small step forward by watching and evaluating examples of cultures together after receiving observation instructions. Perhaps you could watch a few sample “gutter punk” YouTube videos, or you could show video footage of a Rainbow gathering (to use Western cultural examples). After watching, facilitate an evaluation of worldview, language, values, and practices and then begin to explore what missional life and practice might look like in the midst of this culture. You can expand the conversation to discuss the cultures that surround your own location. I think that it is best in these situations to start with a very “foreign” example, then to show an example of something more similar (still evaluating this culture missionally), and then to consider a shopping mall or something else right at home.

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Assignments

This week you will explore the world of missions. Whereas you examined personal integrity primarily from an individual point of view, this material is presented with the church in view. But throughout this week you should be thinking about how you personally fit in with God’s missional call of the church. The optional readings (and particularly the readings connected to the academic assignment) will give you a closer look at what I call the “new missions consensus.” By the end of the chapter and the assignments, you will be able to consider a strategy for a missional church (and your own participation in one).

1. Academic—A Survey of the New Missions Consensus

As mentioned in the chapter, in the past few decades there has developed what I am calling a “new missions consensus.” A few books have been critical in developing this consensus and transmitting the ideas to the current generation. I also mentioned that the gospel into which we are being formed is a “missional gospel”: a message that impacts not only our private devotions but our public ministry wherever we may live. Thus it behooves us, as students of spiritual formation, to grasp more deeply the development of this new missional consensus and to reflect on what it might require for us to be formed into this mission. This assignment is your opportunity to get acquainted with a few of the key writings of this consensus. You are simply to read the three samples. You will also want to look up each book online to get the background of the authors: who they are and why they wrote each book. Then you will write a book review summarizing and comparing these works. You will need to (1) briefly describe the context out of which each book arose, (2) restate the primary point of each work, (3) compare the three for similarities and differences, (4) give any responses of your own you want to share, and then (5) summarize what we have to learn today as students of Christian spiritual formation from this new missions consensus.

1. Lesslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Eerdmans, 1989) is a pioneer contribution to the consensus. See chapters 1 and 18: “Dogma and Doubt in a Pluralist Culture” (pp. 1–13) and “The Congregation as Hermeneutic of the Gospel” (pp. 222–33).
2. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, edited by Darrell L. Guder (Eerdmans, 1998), was another critical contribution to the development of this consensus. See chapters 1 and 4: “Missional Church: From Sending to Being Sent” (pp. 1–17) and “Missional Vocation: Called and Sent to Represent the Reign of God” (pp. 77–109).
3. Christopher J. H. Wright’s The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (IVP Academic, 2006) links the Big Story with the big mission of God. See his last chapter and the epilogue. The last chapter is on “God and the Nations in New Testament Mission” (pp. 501–30), and the epilogue summarizes the contents of this entire massive work, with some interesting formational implications (pp. 531–36).

2. Personal—My Mission Portrait

In this assignment—as before—you will rehearse your own history of mission. Where have you sensed yourself “sent” in your Christian life? Have you ever been on a “mission trip” or anything like that? What was it like? Having read the basic principles of the new missions consensus, how would you describe your own situation and trajectory currently? Take each of the basic elements of the consensus and reflect on them in light of your own missional life today.

3. Spiritual Practice—Paying Attention to People

As I mentioned in the final “Going Deeper” suggestion at the end of the chapter, the essential practice for missional life is ethnographic observation, which is another way of saying “paying attention to people.” It is not only when we come to know the gospel but also when we come to know others that we have the real freedom to share Christ in love.

In this assignment you will simply find a place to observe, and you will “people watch.” Go to a coffee shop, a mall, a park—anywhere where there are people. Spend some time observing. Let me know in your report where you went and how much time you spent observing. Then answer the following questions (taken from “Going Deeper” in chap. 4): What do they wear? What do they talk about? What are they interested in? How do they relate to one another? What is important to them? Why? What are the factors that make this person, this group of people, the way they are? Then ask yourself, “If I am going to share my life and my faith with this person, this group of people, what is a way of doing so that would make the most sense to them?”

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