Nonconformed but Engaged

One of the ways that we have described a missional church is that it is one where there is a balance between being not conformed to the world and and at the same time engaged with it. We are called to be both set apart from the world and to be in it; to be different but to relate or connect with the world. On one end of the continuum nonconformity might take the form of a monastery or an Amish community; on the other end it is impossible to distinguish the church from the world around it. To be missional means finding a balance.

This morning Matt Luna was speaking to the Men's Breakfast group about the weeks he had spent in China earlier this summer. He was describing what it was like to live for a short time in a foreign culture, and that the group of 12 college students and staff members from Campus Crusade became very close almost by necessity. They learned to trust one another and depended upon each other. It struck me that he was describing something very similar to what we had been talking about. He was with a group of exchange students in a Chinese university. They were surrounded by a different culture, different language, different food, different people. They were obviously different (nonconformed) from the world in which they were living, but were deliberately engaged with the people they encountered each day. Not a bad model...