Redefining everything

Rodney Calfee‘s church is in the middle of a “great big mess” as it goes through a transition he calls replanting. While the past few months have required members of the church body ask foundational questions and heal, the situation may not be as gruesome as it sounds.

“In the midst of (this), God is creating a deeply missional community bound together in some of the deepest relational ties we have ever experienced,” Rodney said. “God’s sovereign grace has etched within us a deep, unquenchable desire to ‘live sent’–to rob a term from Jason Dukes–for the glory of God in our neighborhoods, city and the nations. It has driven us to redefine everything, give up our building, and begin pouring our resources into our neighborhoods and into those who are literally taking the Gospel to the nations.”

This year Rodney’s church (under its former name) in urban Birmingham, Ala., hit its 10-year mark. The group of believers had become heavily involved in reaching the homeless and hurting of the inner city. They had developed reentry programs and offered up part of their church facilities to be used as dorm space for men and women trying to make sense of life after prison. At the same time the believers desired to minister to those living in two government-funded projects within a few blocks of their building.

“We talked the missional talk,” Rodney said. “We were really talking like we were a missionally-connected community.”

However, with all of their efforts of spiritual plowing and planting, the fruit remained elusive.

Rodney and other leaders began to notice many broken people in their wake. They heard from members who struggled with wanting to do ministry in their own neighborhoods, but were not being equipped to do so.

In the midst of this, Rodney went on a Jet Set Tour to Taiwan.

“It completely changed my perspective on what mission really was,” he said.

Rodney’s goal for the trip was to gain knowledge on studying culture in order to impact the people living in the projects near his church. Instead, he attained a new perspective on mission.

“I learned I had to think of myself as a missionary,” he said. “So much was reshaped; so much was changed for me on that trip.”

Since then Rodney’s church has transitioned from being centrally located in downtown Birmingham to meeting in members’ homes throughout the week, with everyone gathering in one individual’s basement on Sundays. Here Rodney is walking the group through different aspects of theology as it studies how God created it to function as a church. While the body as a whole continues to wrestle with what it believes, Rodney said members know one thing is certain–they are to tell others about Jesus.

“We are empowering people to do ministry in their neighborhoods, work places and schools, which has translated into an eagerness in missions across the board,” he said. “We are taking the Great Commission seriously, and are going to send people to make the Gospel clear to the nations.”

This young church replant–now 8 months old–commissioned a family who recently left to serve in North Africa. It also, for the first time, is fully funding a church member who is leaving next week to be a missionary based in Australia for two years. As the group develops its new budget, it plans to set aside money for another family that has the goal of moving to India in the near future.

In celebration of Pentecost this year, church leaders commissioned the entire body of believers as missionaries to go into their places of work and life, “that all the nations would hear,” Rodney said.

Individuals within the body are taking “the responsibility of the Gospel personally for the first time and they are seeing results as they become missionaries in their own neighborhoods, workplaces (and) schools.” Rodney said one church member’s perspective on the search for where to do his post-doctorate work has changed from being about a school’s program quality and his career to focusing on what he believes is God’s desire for him to be a missionary and take the Gospel to his scientifically-minded peers at a specific university.

This same man randomly felt burdened to pray for his neighbor, with whom he previously had talked only briefly. Soon the believer learned his neighbor’s wife had left with their children. One evening following this incident the believer was working in his lawn and covered with dirt when his neighbor came home, approached him and began a conversation that led to the believer sharing the Gospel and praying with him.

“He was actually going on mission in his front yard,” Rodney said.

Later that evening the believer discovered another church member works with the neighbor and had, too, prayed with the man earlier that day.

A woman new to following Jesus within the church also got to share her faith from her lawn. She and her husband had befriended a couple who lives in their community, and desired to share the Gospel with them. “Religious” conversations seemed short-lived, however, until one of the neighbors approached the believer working in her yard with pointed questions.

This gave the woman–whom Rodney said is normally timid–the opportunity to communicate about Jesus.

“She surprised herself … (but) was able to talk very clearly about the Gospel in ways she never had before,” Rodney said.

“If there’s one thing we’re supposed to do, it’s to go into all the world…. It’s got to be the core of who we are, or we’re just not being the church,” he said. “If the church is not doing it, it’s not being done. We’ve got to be talking about the Gospel, we got to be talking about Jesus….”

Among lessons Rodney said he’s learned through his church’s transition is the need for connection with other Christ-following congregations of all styles and ages. He said his church went through a lot of what it did because it chose to put down other establishments that were not approaching ministry in the same fashion, while the members of his body thought they “had it right and … were doing it better.

“We lost a lot of contacts with great churches and pastors who could mentor us, so when we went through our transition, we went through it alone because we had stepped away from all other relationships.”

As Rodney becomes more involved in the “missional church conversation,” he finds it crucial to not focus on style and as a result, exclude older, more traditional congregations, but to be sure making disciples of all nations is the core of the body of Christ.

“It’s almost as if the missional church movement doesn’t play well with others,” he said. “You have to be careful in missional conversation that we don’t begin shutting doors that need to be open and making divisions within the body.”

Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work with her husband in a few years.