Missional Living in Suburbia

The first breakout that I attended at the Missional Theology conversation was titled, "Missional Living in Suburbia."  It was taught by the co-pastors from The Well, an emergent church located in Feasterville, PA, Todd Hiestand and Gary Alloway.  (You can find a link to Todd's blog on the right.)  I chose this breakout because I currently find myself in the suburban context at a church who is trying to figure out what missional means.  I had hoped that Todd and Gary would offer some great insight that would illuminate my thinking and help me be a catalyst in helping to shape my current context.  While I did not walk away from their breakout a changed person, I did rather enjoy hearing the story of their church and what they have both discovered so far.

Here are a couple of things they said that got me thinking.

"Missional living begins with knowing where you are and having pride in it."  This almost seems like a no brainer but upon hearing them explain this concept I find it to be very true.  They both talked about their current context of Feasterville, PA.  I have never been to Feasterville so I will just have to take them both at what they said about it.  They both claimed that there is nothing special about Feasterville.  In fact when people talk about Feasterville they usually talk about being from the Philly area or the Trenton area.  A shift for them was figuring out what distinguished Feasterville from the surrounding area and celebrating it.

"Be careful not to structure your missional activities to places solely away from your context."  Evidently they used to be really involved in various ministries in Philly which led to a disconnect there in Feasterville.  This action in Philly, while noble and worthwhile, fed into the notion that mission work was done away from where we live.  They combated this by partnering with many organizations in their context and making sure that there was a heavy focus of mission work in the same place where they lived.

"The challenge lies in figuring out the culture.  It's hard and there are no shortcuts."  I found this to be true in my own context.  Before moving to the Philly area I would have claimed that I grew up in a suburban culture.  The truth is that I grew up in a small town outside of a larger city.  My town had a culture, based around high school football, and it was easy to spot.  But upon moving to the Philly area, I encountered this strange anomaly called a township.  For those of you who do not know what a township is, and I am one of them as well, it is essentially a land mass that is organized for tax and ridiculous governing purposes.  Townships do not have anything like a town square, courthouse, etc to set up its center.  There is usually some sort of building where the supervisors work from but that's about it.  So this area in which I am a minister has nothing much to unite it.  I have actually found out that not too long ago those who populated this area used to be considered hicks.  (Albeit not like the hicks that I know!)  If you were to look at the landscape now it is totally different.  This is a very affluent area where most people are somewhat transient depending on what the drug companies are doing at the time.  Because of that we are at a loss for truly understanding our current culture.

"Mission is not our work, it's our participation with God and what God is already doing."  What a great reminder.  We do not have to reinvent the wheel and try to do something that's never been done before.  Our first priority is to find out where God is at work and join it.  In some cases that may lead to new ministries but not in every case.

All in all Todd and Gary did a great job in their presentation.  I especially liked their transparency in ways that they have changed and had to adapt to new ways of thinking.  I believe God will honor their church and the choices they have made to become a missional church in suburbia.