What My Dog Is Teaching Me About Being Missional

This is my dog, Beau. He's a great dog. Handsome. Loving. Obedient (for the most part). Fantastic with kids. He's been everything my family wanted in a dog. He's gone running with me. He's cuddled with our kids in the floor. He's a huge attraction when we take him to the park with us. We've loved him and he's been a blast to have as part of our family.

But over the past couple of months, my wife and I have come to the decision that he's just too much. With four kids now and all the other responsibilities of life, we just don't have the time to spend with him like he needs. It'd also be good for him to have a doggy brother or sister, but we aren't up for that. And he's a big dog who needs room to run and roam. Living in the suburbs, we don't have that. He stays on a run in our backyard. So for all of those reasons, we've decided to give him away.

Through kind of a quirky series of events, we've been connected with a wonderful lady out in Colorado Springs who wants to take Beau. He'll be moving there in a couple of weeks. This lady is single and loves dogs. She already has one (who ironically has his own column in the lady's magazine), so Beau will have a friend. She walks her dog every day and takes him to the dog park, too. I know she is going to take great care of Beau. I am excited for him.

Still, there has been this sort of strange feeling about the whole transaction in the back of my mind. I haven't felt completely comfortable about the whole thing. Last night it dawned on me what it is: I have a hard time imagining what Beau's life will look like in Colorado.

Where will he sleep? Where will he run? At what time of day will he eat? What if he and his new canine sibling don't get along? Will he adjust to the thinner mountain air? Will he be safe? Will he miss my family? There is a little patio couch in our yard he likes to lie on. Where will he lay down at his new house? These are all questions that will be answered in time, I know, through Facebook communication and pictures that we will get to see. But they are, nonetheless, questions that make me nervous about giving Beau away.

Missional expert Ralph Winter once issued a challenge to the Church in the U.S.:

Are we in America, for example, prepared for the fact that most non-Christians yet to be won to Christ (even in our country) will not fit readily into the kinds of churches we now have? The bulk of American churches in the North are middle-class, and the blue-collar worker won’t go near them. Evangelistic crusades may attract thousands to big auditoriums and win people in their homes through television, but a large proportion of the newly converted, unless already familiar with the church, may drift away simply because there is no church where they will feel at home. Present-day American Christians can wait forever in their cozy, middle-class pews for the world to come to Christ and join them. But unless they adopt E-2 methods and both go out after these people and help them found their own churches, evangelism in America will face, and is already facing, steadily diminishing returns. You may say that there are still plenty of people who don’t go to church who are of the same cultural background as those in church. This is true. But there are many, many more people of differing cultural backgrounds who, even if they were to become fervent Christians, would not feel comfortable in existing churches. (Read the full address here)

I get excited at Winter's suggestion. Churches of all shapes and sizes. The gospel reaching new cultures right in our own backyard. New believers free to express themselves in ways not foreign to them. The possibilities thrill me. But yet, the idea makes me squirm a bit. I have to admit, just like my feelings about Beau's new life, I have a hard time imagining what the gospel life will look like in other cultures. Churches that look and feel different? When and where will they get together? What will they do?  What songs will they sing? How will they worship? In what ways will they express their faith?  

Inherently, I know that the gospel works in all cultures. It's a beautiful gospel. I know it will succeed. Flourish, even. Thrive. But what will it look like? What will it change in a person? What will the church look and act like at the skate park where we do outreach? What about the junior college? The goth crowd? Single parents? Recovering addicts? What will an indigenous church look like in these cultures? And more importantly, does my lack of vision ever make me uneasy about giving the gospel away to them?

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