One thing I did leave out on my post is the individual believer as I was dealing more with groups. I have a follow-up post that deals more with this and flows from corporate (exaltational) to individual (incarnational) aspects of being in Christ.

This is such an important conversation as we seek by God’s grace to shape the church in the Western context.

One portion of the article that I think is applicable to your discussion here is when Goheen sites Newbigin’s perspective on the individual believer’s place in impacting the culture in contrast to GOCN’s emphasis on the communal aspect. While Newbigin (and Goheen) do not minimize the communal/corporate aspect the individual emphasis, I think, is vitally important.

Quoting from 3 of Newbigin’s books Goheen writes: “I do not believe that the role of the Church in a secular society is primarily exercised in the corporate action of the churches as organized bodies in the political or cultural fields . . . On the contrary, I believe that it is [exercised] through the action of Christian lay people playing their roles as citizens, workers, managers, legislators.”

Later then, Goheen writes: “There is a need to continue to struggle with communal patterns of ecclesial life that will enable the church corporately to be a preview of the kingdom. However, this should not be done at the expense of the mission of God’s people in their various and scattered callings. This continues to be the primary point of missionary engagement in Western culture.”

I think this hits the nail on the head. This is the balance or tension that most churches, at least in my circls, do not do well with. They fault on the gathered side of things rather than the scattered side. I like what I heard McManus say this week, it should be like breathing – inhaling and exhaling – in regards to gathering and scattering.

I think we need to train these groups to be praying specifically for the geographical area they meet in. To find ways to love the community and serve. The suburbs are filled with broken families, people enslaved to false idols of money, power, success, moral legalism and a host of other ills. It is challenging, but hopefully through prayer and the Holy Spirit we can move in ways that express the gospel that are relevant to the context we are in.

We have been and continue to be quite good at the normative/corporate and existential/intimate aspects and have recently and intentionally embraced the situational/group mode. It is challenging me as a leader of one these groups to identify and commit my people to this in a suburban context. I find nearly all missional books and articles emphasise the need for the situational/group mode in urban contexts and I celebrate these intiatives. But in my country – and I suspect still in large parts of American cities as well the vast majority of the people live in suburban and peri-urban environments.

Because of the withering disconnectedness of much of suburban life missional action takes on another face altogether. The challenge is to both get suburbanite middle-class white church-folk interested missionally and to actively engage their suburbanite middle-class white neighbours in the way our urban brothers and sisters across the globe do. They surely must be factored into the kingdom plans of out great and glorious King.

Your post has encouraged me greatly and opened my eyes again to place wherein I have been called to mission. Strangely, the suburbs can be a lonely place when the preponderance of missional focus is on the city. It is even more lonely when the ecclesiological frameworks espoused so broadly make mission in ‘burbs that much closer to impossible.

Thank you for your leadership.

Rod