Eastern District Conference Encourages Attendees to Be Missional Leaders

The Eastern District Executive Board, Eastern District Stewardship Commission, and Board of World Mission planned and sponsored the Eastern District Conference, “The Missional Leader,” held May 4 & 5, 2007 at East Hills Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Conference drew 160 people, both clergy and laity, from across the Eastern District and beyond with several in attendance from the Western District. The Friday night banquet, refreshments, Saturday breakfast and lunch were catered by Bob Wingrove and staff primarily comprised of fellow East Hills members. Being Moravians, we certainly celebrated the excellence of all that was served.

The keynote speaker for the three plenary sessions of the Conference was Alan Roxburgh. He is an author, pastor, conference speaker, seminary professor, and presently serves as a consultant with the Allelon Missional Leadership Network. Roxburgh lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife, and family. In this 550th year of the Worldwide Moravian Church, we were invited to reflect on and celebrate our ministry and rich history as a missional church, embracing our evangelical identity as we go into all the world to serve Christ and make disciples. Not only is this what Moravians did at one time in the past, but more importantly, it is what we are living now. As missional leaders, Roxburgh invited us to consider our present way of being the Church and how we equip our churches to reach a changing world.

Roxburgh shared at several levels as he made presentation and led times for small group conversation. There have been huge shifts in our culture. The 20th century life was fairly predictable, especially in the 50’s and 60’s when the Church saw its greatest growth and influence on every day life. The Church was made up of entire families who were loyal to their denomination and its traditions. They worked a 40 hour week for 40 years at the same job, at that time entering retirement with a pension and maintaining their ties with home, church, and community. They shared limited narratives. Beginning in the final decades of the last century and certainly today, we recognize that life is not as it was. Life is hardly predictable. Work is not guaranteed. Moving to new locations to find new work is very common. People no longer have the same allegiances to community and certainly not to the Church. A new reality is that many people have opted out of participation with the local church. In many communities, home churches are growing. Many denominations are responding with the 3 R’s: retake, reorganize, reform. When we don’t know what to do we work harder at what we already know how to do. We use all of our old ways of doing and being “the Church,” hoping it will help. We ask, “What went wrong? How can we fix it?” As Roxburgh noted at several points, we are quickly discovering that what we did well before will not work well now. The good news is that it hasn’t turned out wrong. The good news is that God is doing a new thing in the Church.

Something great is being planned. Success will not depend on programs we can develop. Success will come as we again enter into relationship and mission in ways that will allow the Church to again thrive. It begins with community, narrative, patience, and a willingness to “retake” what is and always has been such a vital part of our Moravian identity, that we are a missional church.

God is breaking new boundaries in the 21st century. Jesus taught us to go and make disciples, preach the gospel, extend peace, heal, announce the kingdom, and live the Great Commandment. As we consider this understanding of mission, many of us ask, “What is God up to?” Roxburgh assured that we will find out. We will discover and rediscover. It begins in community as we again become neighbors and as we listen to personal narrative. Being again a church in mission begins with asking the question, “What’s God doing in this community and what is God asking of me and this Church?” Roxburgh answers the questions he helped us to consider. To be “missional” means re-entering our neighborhoods with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and pitching our tent.

Sandy Petrella is a lay member of the Eastern District Stewardship Commission and a member of Schoenbrunn Community Moravian Church, New Philadelphia, Ohio.