Create the Atmosphere: Five Marks of a Missional Church

Star Trek and sci-fi fans know about terraforming, the process of taking an environment hostile to human life and reshaping it so it can host humans and other forms of life. Some dream of our first terraforming project on Mars, changing that planet into a home for human beings.

• Churches in renewal are joining a sort of terraforming project. We want to create a new atmosphere in the congregation that breathes God’s mission. A mission where God is redeeming the lost as his people and the world as his kingdom, where all that is broken is restored and the world is turned right side up.

Michael Rhodes, in his insightful book Reimagining Biblical Politics, challenges us to examine the life of our congregations in light of the Torah community in the Old Testament and the Jesus community in the New Testament. These communities show us how to create an atmosphere that breathes mission and demonstrates to the world what life in God’s new creation is like.

• Let’s begin this week by noting the five marks of a Torah community that can help us reshape the atmosphere of our churches.

Five marks of a torah community

1. Welcome the holy one

• A Torah community lives in the presence of God. In the Old Testament, people experienced this presence through the rituals of the tabernacle and temple and through feasts that celebrated God’s presence, connected people to him, and showed his fatherly care for them.
• How can your congregation cultivate a deeper awareness of God’s presence in worship and everyday life?

2. Build a just and generous neighborhood

• In the Torah community, everyone gets a “farm,” and people are restored at regular intervals, including the Sabbatical Year and Jubilee. Offerings are set aside for the community’s vulnerable, and a system of gleaning provides for people in need.
• How can your church become a neighborhood where generosity is practiced, the vulnerable are cared for, and justice shapes the way people treat one another?

3. Be good news for the earth and other creatures

• The land and livestock are part of the Sabbath proclamation. The creatures of the earth are seen as God’s creatures. He cares for them, is kind to them, and even protects the trees from needless destruction during war.
• How can your congregation reflect God’s care for creation through the ways you use and steward what he has entrusted to you?

4. Cultivate joy and gratitude

• The Torah community is deeply joyful and grateful. Each year, the people celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), sometimes called “the feast of our joy.” Gratitude, which is essential for the health of any community, was deeply rooted in their life together and especially reflected in the Psalms (see Psalm 100).
• How can your congregation make gratitude and celebration a more regular part of its life?

5.  Become a community of wisdom

• The Torah community dives intensely and gladly into learning prudence (see Proverbs). In learning prudence, they discover how to live wisely in God’s good but fallen, and now being redeemed, world.
• How can your church become a community where people gladly learn and practice God’s wisdom in every area of life.

When God’s Old Testament people lived according to the ways of the Torah, they created a new atmosphere in the world. Their life together demonstrated God’s wisdom to the nations around them (Deuteronomy 4:6–8).

• Our churches have a similar opportunity to become demonstration plots of God’s kingdom, telling and embodying God’s story to the world. Which of these five marks does your congregation most need to cultivate to create an atmosphere that breathes God’s mission and draws in those longing for life?