Missional Lives

An excerpt from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

"We didn't grow much, to be honest. We stayed at about thirty or so, all Christians who had moved to Imago [Imago Dei Community] from other churches. I know that numbers shouldn't matter very much, but to be honest I kind of wanted Imago to grow because I wanted my friends at my old church to know we were successful; but we didn't grow, we stayed at about thirty.

We'd meet on Sunday nights and then again on Wednesday nights for prayer. A lot less people showed up for prayer. There were only about ten of us, and it was pretty boring. It felt like an AA meeting gone bad. We'd sit around and talk about the crap in our lives, and then we'd pray for a little while, and then we would go home. One night Rick showed up sort of beaten-looking. He had been to some sort of pastors reception where a guy spoke about how the church has lost touch with people who didn't know about Jesus. Rick said he was really convicted about this and asked us if we thought we needed to repent and start loving people who were very different from us. We all told him yes, we did, but I don't think any of us knew what that meant. Rick said he thought it meant we should live missional lives, that we should intentionally befriend people who are different from us. I didn't like the sound of that, to be honest. I didn't want to befriend somebody just to trick them into going to my church. Rick said that was not what he was talking about. He said he was talking about loving people just because they exist -- homeless people and Gothic people and gays and fruit nuts. And then I liked the sound of it. I liked the idea of loving people just to love them, not to get them to come to church. If the subject of church came up, I could tell them about Imago, but until then, who cared. So we started praying every week that God would teach us to live missional lives, to notice people who needed to be loved.

Lots of people started coming to church after that. I don't know why, honestly, except that we all agreed we would love people and be nice to them and listen and make friends."