On Ordering And Chaos

Here, by the way, is the flip-side to my previous post:

If every part of our life has the potential to be an expression of and participation in God’s mission to create the sort of environment in which life is not overwhelmed but can flourish, it is also true that every part of our life has the potential to participate in and contribute to the chaos that threatens to overwhelm life.

This includes things we call church, and things we call mission.

Just because we call something our missional activity does not mean that it reflects God’s mission.  If the ways in which we construct our understanding of church and of mission – indeed, of life – result in greater chaos rather than the order that enables greater flourishing, then we have got something fundamentally wrong.

More than anything, God creates space for different-but-connected communities to inhabit (the waters, the sky, the land).  Each thing has its place, in which it can flourish, in which it can discover its fullest expression.

Where our understanding of church or of mission looks like one-pattern-fits-all, or like all-must-fit-everywhere, we work against God’s mission.

Teeming life can look chaotic at times – though closer observation reveals wonderful, intricate patterns – and life is always an ebb and flow between the chaos we are emerging from and the glorious liberty into which we are emerging; but, if over time our engagement with church and mission contributes more to the overwhelming of life than to the releasing of life, we need to reimagine.