Kindle the Missional Imagination »
By jay on Feb 17, 2010
“The imagination is how things get done. You have to cultivate creativity.”-Russell Simmons
How do we lead faculty and students to engage mission as a way of life? As movement leaders, we’re always in the process of directing our movement’s imagination toward new possibilities and applications. Henry Ward Beecher once described faith as “spiritualized imagination.” David Fitch, Jonathan Dobson and others suggested the following ways to cultivate missional habits of imagination. I rewrote them for our situation of building movements on the college campus, helping faculty and student to live with more missional intentionality.
1.) Direct imagination towards ways of connecting with people where they are. Have faculty and students see ways to connect with people in their everyday situations, for example, by going to the same place at the same time every week. Help them see the way ordinary life is a stage on which God wants to work. Instead of hopping all over the city for gas, groceries, haircuts, eating out, and coffee, go to the same places at the same times. Get to know the staff. Smile. Ask questions. Be a regular. Build relationships. If we visit the same places at the same time every week, connecting with others regularly we can revolutionized our missional lives with not a single ounce of extra-expended energy spent.
2.) See mission in other life rhythms as well. Kindle imagination toward seeing mission as part of regular daily, weekly and monthly life rhythms. What do you do regularly? Jog? Work-out? As we live out those rhythms, we need to help people be ready to minister out of their everyday life, assuming God is already working ahead of us to bring people to Christ. Rather than going to a church gym, inhabit the gyms already in our neighborhoods or campus locations. We should avoid creating our own third places and become regular part of the ones already there.
3.) Encourage faculty and students, if they live in a walkable area, to make a practice of getting out and walking around your neighborhood, apartment complex, or campus. Instead of driving to class, the mailbox or convenience store, walk. Be deliberate in your walk. Say hello to people you don’t know. Strike up conversations. Attract attention by walking the dog, carrying along a 6-pack to share, bringing the kids. Make friends. Save some gas, the planet and some people.
4.) Try to direct imagination for inhabiting those community or campus places in two’s or three’s or more. Two or three Christ-followers together become an undeniable force for the kingdom under the Lordship of Christ.
5.) Stoke the imagination of your people for seeking “one person of peace” (Luke 10) among the lost of dorms, apartments, athletic teams, Greek houses, or their neighborhoods. Look for that one who, though never having heard the gospel, is dispositionally ready (been readied by God) to receive. Allow that one person of “reputation and influence” to be the door to the rest of their community.
6.) Direct the imagination towards the way Christ always enters the human situation in humility. Encourage faculty and students to not being the “one with the answer,” but “one searching for the answers that always point you towards Christ.” Help them approach others humbly and in need. Instead of offering them a meal, find ways to participate in a meal with them. If you’re in need, ask others for help.
7.) Direct the imagination of faculty and students toward exegeting their departments, dorms, neighborhoods. Exegeting a place requires inhabiting that place, seeing it as a place for redemption, discovering where the hurting are and the unjust structures are. See the possibilities for ministering the gospel to those who are in need of Christ and through the gospel (over time) seeing that very culture transformed.
8.) In this regard, fire up the imagination toward “appreciative inquiry.” We often approach our “places” negatively. What’s wrong? What needs are there? etc. etc. We can be both more missional and more winsome by directing our community’s imagination to noticing where God is working among us and around us, to recognize it, praise God for it and participate in it through the gifts we have been given. Serve.
9.) Help faculty and students to see the Spirit birthing his kingdom among us as we respond faithfully day by day. Help them keep their eyes on Jesus. Leslie Newbigin warned us that, “the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decision about the mobilizing and allocating of “resources” [rather] the significant advances have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge.”
10.) Eat with pre-Christian friends. We all eat three meals a day. Why not make a habit of sharing one of those meals with a non-Christian or with a family of non-Christians? Go to lunch with a co-worker, not by yourself. Invite the neighbors over for family dinner. If it’s too much work to cook a big dinner, just order pizza and put the focus on conversation. When you go out for a meal, invite a non-Christian friend. Or take your family to family-style restaurants where you can sit at the table with strangers and strike up conversations. Have cookouts and invite Christians and pre-Christians. Flee the Christian subculture.
11.) Kindle the imagination for servant paradigms of leadership. Help faculty and students reject the heroic paradigms of leadership, in favor of teams in which members live out their giftedness and seek first to serve. In the Scriptures, such apostolic teams seem to be the norm. Missional thinkers like Alan Hirsch have demonstrated that certain leadership types (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist) are conspicuously absent in our communities (where Shepherd, Teacher are the norm). We can help fire imaginations by revisiting these models in Ephesians 4.
12.) Kindle the imagination around hobbies. Help faculty and students pick a hobby that they can share. Help them get out and do something they can enjoy with others. I love to fly-fish and often have the opportunity to invite seeking friends. Try city league sports or local rowing and cycling teams. We can share hobby by teaching lessons. Help faculty and student be prayerful. Be intentional. Be winsome. Have fun. Be themselves.
13.) Kindle a missional intentionality by encouraging faculty and students to volunteer for non-profits. We recently spent the morning with Habitat for Humanity, meeting and working with others from our community, as well as helping a family of seven from Sudan. There are lots of ways to engage the surrounding community….look for ways to kindle the campus’ imagination for bringing the resources of the university to the surrounding area. Take the lead in such efforts.
14.) Help faculty and students imagine how they can better “love the city.” Help them participate in city events–by going to fundraisers, festivals, cleanups, summer shows, and concerts. As they participate missionally, the converse with others, study their city and its make-up. Help them reflect on what they see and hear. Pray together for the city. Love the city. Participate with the city.
God, Imagination, Jesus, Kingdom | 0 Comments
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