Partnership for Missional Church

This evening was our initial introduction to the Partnership for Missional Church process. I am excited by the potential for God to work through this process to facilitate transformation from an inward focus to one that is focused on fulfilling the mission Jesus gave us. After I got home this evening I found that Mike Cope had posted the following quotes from Dallas Willard on his blog today, and thought they were relevant to our discussion tonight and to the process we are beginning:

“Nondiscipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.”

And then this:

“Consumer Christianity is now normative. The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it.”

(From The Divine Conspiracy, pp. 301, 342)