What Would it Mean to Remission Your Church?

Transformation Starts With You

Transformation of an established church requires transformation of the leader (usually before transformation can happen in the congregation). Simon Sinek wrote Leaders Eat Last as a testament to leaders who empower others instead of drawing attention and power to themselves. Remissioning leaders will indeed need to eat last, but they will also have to go first in demonstrating the sacrificial cost of transformation. Images in our head must be transformed. The emphasis must shift from stages and bright lights to slow conversations and coffee tables. 

The Spirit is inviting established churches into a new future. Yet it is tempting to focus on the problems they must tackle (organizational ruts, historical barriers, institutional mistrust, mission drift) and then start throwing quick fixes at the wall hoping to simply survive. Hoping something will finally stick. The reality is, the Spirit is waking up established churches to do much more than barely exist—the Spirit is helping them learn how to thrive and make disciples again. The invitation set before established churches is to recalibrate our existence around missional presence and the flourishing of our neighborhoods. To do this the church needs remissioners.

Remissioners are people called by the Spirit to embrace movemental ecclesiology and reproducible discipleship. Remissioners help churches to wake up from their theological, spiritual, and emotional slumber into a new day. Remissioners help established churches learn to lose their lives so they might find them again. But first, remissioners must be disciples themselves, losing their life to truly find it.

The Journey Upward

Leading an established church takes disciples through a familiar three-part movement. There is an upward, inward, and outward journey that helps us find communion with God, belonging with other Jesus-followers, and transformation with our neighbors for the good of our community.

The upward journey is the path where we grow in our communion with God. We learn from the Psalms how to pray in times of great flourishing and times of great pain. When the well feels dry or a season of winter is upon us, how do we continue to struggle and relate to God? When the well is full and the harvest is plentiful, how do we celebrate God’s goodness? How do we practice the presence of God in our lives? The remissioning journey can be difficult, and without regular communion with God, it will be difficult to sustain.

Remissioning will bring times of pain, betrayal, and heartache. How do we bring the pain of our lives to Jesus? When we suffer as leaders, friends, parents, and humans, how do we bring our suffering to Jesus? How do we create space for God to heal our hurt through his generous love?

The Journey Inward

The inward journey is about how we are formed in the context of Christian community. This part of the journey asks us to be honest with ourselves about our own imperfections as leaders, friends, pastors, and followers of Jesus in light of our relationships in the church. Who are the people who truly know us? Remissioning is a sending journey that is disinterested in creating Christian cul-de-sacs of relationships, and it can be tempting to hide in plain view and not live our faith with other Jesus-followers who can provide accountability, challenge, and deep invitation. To be a disciple is to imitate Jesus with other imitators and fellow sojourners on the path.

This inward journey is also marked by a growing self-awareness and commitment to community. There are places of brokenness in each of us. What things make us weak and present challenges in leading and serving others? Is it the need to be right? To be in control? To have a shiny image that masks our imperfections or vulnerabilities? Do we avoid conflict at all cost? Do we lose our own perspective when there are many perspectives in the room? How do we treat our enemies or people who challenge us in our faith community? Our inward journey with other Jesus-followers helps us practice a more mature hospitality when we live in community with our neighbors.

Often the wounds we bear below the surface stem from trauma, past family experiences, and painful church relationships, and sometimes those wounds lead us to wound others. The inward journey helps us discover both the ways we hurt others and the ways we have been hurt by others so we might move toward one another in forgiveness and reconciliation. How do we remain faithful to confess our brokenness and woundedness in our context?

The Journey Outward

The outward journey is how we join in the mission of God as our hopes and fears, joys and insecurities, order and chaos are revealed to us as we seek the flourishing of our world. As in every other aspect of remissioning, “God’s Spirit wants to take us on a journey of discovery and transformation” (Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, 77). What things within us make it a challenge to live out our faith in our local community? What things do we discover as we meet people who are suspicious of our faith?

Notice that the outward journey isn’t for or to our neighbors. This journey is with our neighbors. We often want to create separation or hierarchy rooted in unhelpful power dynamics, as though we were somehow above our neighbors. To be on a remissioning journey is to recognize that our experiences, relationships, and shared humanity with our neighbors is one of the primary ways God disrupts our vain plans of rescuing people.

It is essential that each of us go on these journeys of up, in, and out so we can point people to Jesus rather than ourselves.

Remissioning established churches requires the transformation of leaders who are willing to go on a journey of discovery, repentance, and resurrection in their relationship with God, Christian community, and neighbors. And the willingness to be transformed will help point ourselves, our fellow disciples, and our neighbors to the One whose love never runs out.

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