ABOUT BEING MISSIONAL

On the Resonate.ca mailing list, Linea wrote:

"Sometimes I see the spurts of 'Missional" activity as a bit artificial, as if to show that we are doing some good deed for Jesus. You know what I mean? Then the activity is done and we go back to our own routines. Would be much better if our routines were missional wouldn't it? Like a light burning 24/7 in some dark corner rather than just a match struck from time to time."

I'd venture to say that living our lives daily and loving people, is missional. It's a lifestyle or letting ourselves be changed with regards to other people's perceived needs. Mission is to bring the kingdom to someone, ourselves being the vessel, and at times we're blessed to witness the response from the person who has, through these acts of kindness, been brought to the kingdom.

For myself, I discovered that programs were necessary, but for a season. They are field trips at the school of discipleship. However, yes, we need to graduate, and as the field expands, As I walk into the field by myself, and my exposure to its condition is unprotected, challenged by someone else's need, I can walk into the reality that surrounds me responding from a heart of compassion, where the immediate end-goal is not to see that person come to my church, but rather for me to love that person.

I've lived in Winnipeg for a couple years, and was part of the Winnipeg Centre Vineyard on Main (in the old place). For the first few months I was able to hang out at the Centre almost every day (I wasn't working), amidst the glue sniffing crowd. Sometimes, I was given $20 to go buy this guy or that one a pair of shoes. These people's stories are unreal. 99% native and often coming from families decimated by abuse, drugs, alcohol, violence.

The main room there was divided in two sections: on one side, a small kitchen, tables and chairs, on the other, chairs and a stage. There would be worship from 10:00 to 11:30 am, then sandwiches and coffee, tea or pop was available. We would walk around and pray over these precious ones, not try to convert them. We'd sit with some we felt led to, or simply respond to their invitation to talk a bit. Just being one suffereing human with another suffering human, although one's suffering can sometimes be more visible than the other.


After a few months of that, helping and being helped, I couldn't do it anymore. I was traumatized by so much brokeneness barging in on my own. I stopped going. I met those broken friends on Sunday, David (Ruis) insisted that all we were asked was to love them, not to convert them. Some of them only started to open up and tell their story after 2 years of coming to the Centre almost every day.

Early on, John Rademaker, one strong lover in action, asked me to drive the main drug dealer who hanged out at the Centre (!) to get some shoes as well. John knew who he was. But still. In my car, the smell coming from the man was so foul, I was driving my window fully opened, my head almost completely out, on the edge of barfing the whole time, there and back. He kept asking me to take him, and there, finally to take him home.

There was too much I could not process. My own needs were screaming out. I myself was going through horrible circumstances that left me emotionally debilitated for years, and coming to Winnipeg was the beginning of my healing. Now I was in the midst of a community that believed in loving the unlovable, the poorest of the poor. And it was really hard, every time.

One morning I was playing with the worship team, and afterwards I kept playing softly. Charlie came to the piano and just stared for a while, under the influence. He asked me to show him how to play some time. Charlie was a prolific poet. He loved writing. Inside I was screaming, unable to feel the moment, running from the implication of having to face my fears of not knowing how to be with people under the influence. I come from a heavy drug abuse background, and got very triggered by the intensity of the needs. I just could not see the person. And mumbled something to the effect that yes, it would be cool, and I'd do it... some time soon... I never created the moment for it, I never responded to that simple request.

After singing on the album No Fixed Address, a collective work from WCV with Kevin Hildebrand and Andrew Smith, Charlie was found one morning in an alley... he had been murdered, and I'm convinced it was for some stupid reason.

I never fuly recovered from that.

So yes, being missional is being who we are, where we are, where we're at, being exposed to the needs of people who are where they're at. And that is the stage where the Lord comes in and work in us at the very moment where we work for others.

My own dysfunction is still very much alive, but I found that at the moment of meeting with people in need, if I want to, if I have that mind in me, then there is the presence of Jesus between us, like a spark between two rocks. I only wish I could slow down time so as to take in the moment and be pliable to the movement of giving of myself. But more blessing than that would be that I'd be healed from the expectation that things should be different. Love can often be a sacrifice, it can hurt. Does it always have to? Something about boundaries?

I think I might have taken this beyond the point of the discussion, I hope you'll forgive me...

Being missional is being present in the moment of need as if this was a "Eucharist moment," taking communion. In reality, isn't it dying to self, preferring the other? Maybe one day this will crash the walls I've built for self-preservation, replacing them with the steady presence of God's Fatherness through the Holy Spirit.

Oh how I long for that day... !

I also think that loving people AND letting ourselves be loved is a very important part of God's design for reaching out with a kingdom heart. By me reaching out, God reaches out to and through me.

Andre