In today’s church planting movement, almost everyone talks about “mission” and being “on-mission” and what it means to be “missional” or “relevant.” Mission is this really hip, and ultra-cool buzzword that, when used, evokes this sense of understanding in all those “in the know” that proves you are part of the in-crowd… one of the one’s who “gets it” rather than all those others who are stuck in the past and simply don’t get it!

We must ensure that we drive forward for Christ’s sake and not get stuck protecting an old, unworkable, and obviously wrong method of building churches… I mean, it’s obviously failed. Look at all the dying churches! Look at the statistics! Look how much everyone in this country hates Christians! Look at all the Christians who are obviously NOT Christians (I mean, it’s obvious, am I right!?)

It’s high time that we start getting this message out and start letting people know that there are Christians who truly get it. We understand the plight and toil of the lives of the people who we toil next to. I mean, just last week I gave $5 to a homeless guy because he had a sign that said “lear jet out of fuel” and I thought to myself - wow, how far down do you have to go before you resort to badly copied attempts at humor to get people to give you money?

So, let’s start a movement. Let’s start telling people how much we get it and how important it is to save Christ from the phonies. Those others can’t possibly love Jesus as much as we do! I mean, hell, they just sit in their pews and listen to canned sermons and sing stupid songs with phony smiles plastered under phony hairdos and wearing phony clothes (ones that make you look like you’re respectably well-off but were bought at Kohl’s).

I say we start meeting in living rooms and start calling our meetings “bible studies” and “gatherings” and make sure everyone knows it’s perfectly alright to dress in jeans and shorts and wear flip flops and make sure the preacher says “dude” or “hip” or “cool” or softballs a meaningless curse word like “hell” or “damn” from time to time just to prove we’re different. We should start wearing regular shirts that don’t have stupid Christian slogans on them and start playing hip music that makes it incredibly obvious that everyone is in the presence of people who GET IT!

Yeah - I got carried away… what in the world does mission mean anyway? What does it mean to be missional and why in the world do those of us who take a missional approach wear smug expressions showing how much better we are than those other churches (you know the one’s that taught us who Jesus is in the first place)?

Guess what - we’re all idiots. The mission? Yeah - hasn’t changed in 2,000 years. Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every living creature. We’re no better than those who have gone before - we don’t have fresher revelation (we all have the same Bible) - we don’t know God better - we aren’t better Christians. We are simply men and women who are being sent out to a different culture for a different season with the same glorious and captivating message that has been declared since the dawn of time: God made everything, God is holy, we are miserable lousy sinners who deserve to die a miserable and excruciating death, the God-man Christ came to earth to pay the penalty for our sins by dying that miserable and excruciating death for us and then, because He’s God, raised Himself from the dead to be a constant intercessor between us and the Father and, miracle of miracles, reconciles man to God that we might actually commune with and know the Creator of Everything.

Know this? Accept this? You are saved forever. Amen.