Rediscovering Ourselves as Exiles

Recently I have been challenged by Michael Frost and his book Exiles. At times I feel like he takes some unfair shots at the Western church and the U.S.. However, I like reading him because I believe he has a good heart and an important message for believers.

Frost is especially valuable to church planters. He calls us to think and live like "exiles." He equates the Western church today to the Israelistes during the Babylonian exile. He draws some very powerful insights that we need to wrestle with today.

It is very important for church planters (and all church leaders) to think of our ecclesiology in terms of a journey, not a destination. We must see ourselves as "pilgrims" passing through this world, not homemakers. If we do not view ourselves as pilgrims (or exiles), we will assimilate into culture and will have little or no transformational impact on the world. Unfortunately, I believe this is the state of the church in much of the Western world.

As we create new churches, we must emphasize this! We will never be missional unless we see ourselves as pilgrims, aliens, and/or exiles. We will not be the "salt" and "light" that Jesus spoke of in Mt 5. To create a missional community it requires us to have this mindset. Are we training our missional core groups to see themselves as pilgrims, aliens, and exiles?

Many of the Israelites became so accustomed to life in Babylon that they refused to return to Jerusalem even when much later there was an opportunity to do so. In many ways, the experience that faced the Jewish exiles mirrors the church's experience today. We are now exiles from Christendom and we are grieving its loss and struggling with being marginalized in society.

So how do we live? How do we disciple our people? How do we think and act? It calls for abandonment to Jesus and to His way of life! It calls for us to live like Daniel did. This is absolutely essential if we are going to truly make missional disciples.