Zack Exley

Missional living 10 September, 2007

This morning, on our flight from Charlotte to Toronto, we sat next to Donna Sheets, who is the Missions Coordinator at Covenant Church in Winterville, NC. She heard us talking about this blog and struck up a conversation with us. In fact, she is part of the reason we have finally gone ahead and decided to make this blog public.

We were sitting there on the plane talking about whether it would be crazy to try to hold a conversation with secular folks about what radical Christians are up to—and whether maybe this “Christian revolution” is just a figment of our own imaginations and in reality is limited to just a few over-hyped churches like Mars Hill. Right then Donna pipped up and introduced herself from the seat next to me. Donna is completing her PdD at Regent University, which is the Christian University founded by none other than Pat Robertson. It was originally called “CBN University,” an outgrowth of Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.

Donna started her job at Covenant fairly recently. We got her talking about it and she gave us an overview of all of the organizations they work with on local, national and international levels and explained to us their framework for community involvement (while drawing a diagram for us, above).

Her missions team sees Church mission work in terms of four levels: She called the first the “Cadillac” level—as in driving through a poor community in a Cadillac, throwing money out the window. The next is the “Popcorn” level, where church members pop in and pop out of oppressed communities, e.g., going to a soup kitchen for a few hours, dropping off a Thanksgiving turkey to a family, etc…. The third level is the “Relational” level, where church members actually get into life relationships with those in need.

But their church, like many others these days, is attempting to move towards a fourth level, “Missional living“, which means totally altering your life and lifestyle in order to live completely and totally in the service of others—”sacrificially,” in their language.

We’ve heard this same kind of talk from the folks at Christian Community Development Association, Mars Hill and elsewhere. But to hear it from a Regent University student…it was enough to push us over the edge and convince us that this blog is definitely called for. This movement is HUGE and its story needs to be told to secular folks.
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Update: Donna emailed a chart with the complete “Four Mission Styles and Characteristics”…

4 Mission Styles and Characteristics

Mark Lykin 03-19-2007
Based on: Matthew chapters 25 and 28

June 1, 2007