Weekend Reads: The two branches of the church

The church consists of two branches. Call it the local church and the mobile church. Call it the diocese and the monastery. Call it the Antioch Church and the Apostle Paul’s traveling missionary band. But know that no matter what you call it, both branches are necessary for the church to fulfill its calling. Such is the thesis Sam Metcalf defends, embroiders, and illustrates throughout Beyond the Local Church: How Apostolic Movements Can Change the World (IVP Books, 2015).

The local church is a broad-membership organization, good at stability and maintenance. It is like a town. The mission agency is a narrow-membership organization, good at crossing boundaries and expanding the frontiers of the Kingdom of God. It’s more like a small business within a town. The town and the businesses need each other. Same with the local church and the mobile church. There is nothing “para” about the so-called parachurch, any more than Mother Teresa was a “para-Catholic.”

Metcalf leads a “mobile church” organization called Church Resource Ministries. He mentions repeatedly how pastors who think the local church can and should be its own missions agency oppose his thesis. But such opposition is nowhere to be found in Well Sent: Reimagining the Church’s Missionary-Sending Process, by Steve Beirn with George Murray (CLC Publications, 2015). In fact, Beirn is a missions pastor at a local church, while Murray led a missions agency for 17 years. Such a spirit of collaboration informs the whole work. Beirn and Murray just assume that missionaries should be sent by the local church, prayed for by the local church, and supervised on-field by a mission agency or mobile church. Indeed, Well Sent doesn’t so much “reimagine” the missions process as it provides guidelines for how to (a) get your local church interested in missions and (b) how to choose an agency your church can work with.

Beirn and Murray clearly distinguish mission agency and church as two separate entities. Is Metcalf correct in arguing that the local church and the mobile church are actually co-equal expressions of the body of Christ?

The historical data seem to fit his thesis. Catholic and Orthodox missions have generally been the work of monastic orders. Protestant missions literally didn’t happen until Protestants starting forming dedicated mission agencies at the end of the 1700s. The biblical examples of the schools of prophets and the missionary band of Paul also appear to fit Metcalf’s paradigm.

The theological data are less promising. Metcalf implies that membership in the mobile church is enough. In other words, if I’m part of a missions agency, I don’t need to worship with a local body on Sunday mornings. After all, if a mission agency is really a full-fledged expression of the visible church, then I’m already part of a church. But Paul and Jesus (two traveling missionaries) worshipped in their local congregation every Sabbath. If there was no local church, they started one and attended it for the duration of their stay.

Metcalf’s ministry paradigm seemingly lends itself to a fatal attitude: “I’m a super-Christian; what could the local church offer me?” Now, Metcalf explicitly affirms the mobile church’s need for the local church. But in that case, mission agency personnel need to be part of local churches too. The business (mission agency) can only thrive when fully embedded in the life of the town (local church). You can’t say, “I have a business; what would I need a town for?”

Yes, Metcalf, we need dedicated mission structures. But super-Christians to fill them are the last thing we need. That’s why Beirn and Murray’s model sounds a lot more promising.