Missional Discernment

A core practice of discipleship is discernment. In missional churches, part of the community’s work is discerning what God is doing around us, and how we are being drawn to participate in the missio dei.

“Discernment is the church’s way of life; it is its whole way of being in the world. I would go so far as to say that discerning and joining the missional life of God comprises the life of the church. There is no being of the church that precedes its doing. The church discovers its identity as it finds itself in mission—the mission of God.”

— Mark Love

That discernment happens on several different levels:

1. Individuals explore their own calling, learning to perceive God’s action so they can join it, or sometimes simply bear witness to what God is doing around them.
2. Brothers and sisters in the community help each other discern ways God may be calling each other into participation in the Spirit’s work.
3. The community discerns together how God may be calling them into action together.

Discernment begins with observing, both materially what is happening and the kinds of feelings accompany those events.

Reflection then leads to interpretation—often beginning with the simple word “perhaps”.

No matter which of the above levels of discernment were working on, we learn to say to each other—or ourselves—something like “perhaps God is calling us to get to know this person that keeps popping up in our social circles in different places, who seems to be trying to figure out their life with God.”

Or, “We feel our hearts going out to kids whenever our friends who are teachers tell us stories about their students. Maybe God is trying to get us to pay attention to their needs and develop some sort of partnership to serve them.”

Or, “I’ve noticed that when you talk about your coworkers, your heart seems to be breaking for their struggles with their families. Perhaps God is leading us to create some sort of space where we can help them develop some wisdom about family issues like parenting or marriage.”

A missional church naturally and intentionally has a lot of these kinds of conversations. It becomes part of the church’s DNA to consider those things out loud.