10 Diagnostic Questions on Being "Missional"

From the new book, Live Sent: You Are a Letter.  Trevin Wax provides the commentary after each point.

1. When you speak of church, what prepositions do you use?

Do you focus on church as a place or event more than a people who are sent?

2. When you think of missions, do you think of a mission trip to a distant city and a service project in your own community or do you think about daily life among your family, neighbors, and coworkers?

The answer should be both. Living sent means you are a missionary in your everyday encounters.

3. What is your common declaration about lost people around you? “Can you believe the way those people act?” OR “When can you come over for dinner?”

Hospitality is a key to living sent.

4. Is my tendency to disengage from culture and retreat into safer, more Christian environments? Or is it to engage culture even amidst discomfort and danger?

We must be among lost people in order to be an effective witness.

5. When you hear “make disciples,” do you think of a classroom or your relationships?

We should be equipped to disciple people in the daily routine of life, not just the classroom.

6. Do you spend a lot of time wondering whether you should quit your job to surrender to ministry? Or do you simply live to minister to anyone and everyone where you are currently?

Pastoral ministry is vitally important, but too many Christians are unaware that they too are involved in ministry to the people around them.

7. When you think of a friend who needs help, do you think, “I need to get him to see the pastor” OR “I wonder what I can do to help”?

Pastors are to equip God’s people to do the work of the ministry, not be the only ones who minister and witness to the lost.

8. When you think of heaven, do you think “kingdom come” or “kingdom is here”?

As people who believe the kingdom is both now and not yet, we ought to live as people who are the “presence of the future.”

9. Do you think godliness is measured with a mirror or within community?

Introspection (the mirror) is not the only way we become holy before the world. Jesus said people would see our fruit through our love for and life with other believers. “An intimate, shared life with God is most clearly demonstrated in intimate, shared life with one another.”

10. Do you have a lost friend who would actually introduce you as his or her friend?

If we are to live sent the way the sent One intended, then we must have genuine friendship with the lost too.