Posted 529 days ago
Missio Dei: The Idealism of a Messy Three-Year-Old
By Mark Van Steenwyk
A few years ago, my wife and I, along with a handful of friends, started a church on the West Bank of Minneapolis, a diverse neighborhood of immigrants, refugees, punks, artists, homeless people, students, activists and professionals all within about one square mile. We describe ourselves as a community that is “following Jesus’ way of peace, hospitality, simplicity, and prayer.” People wonder if we are a church. We are—but not a conventional church. I like to think that Missio Dei is to most churches what a tangerine is to an orange: smaller, but more intense.
Most of the folks at Missio Dei got involved because they want a lived-in Christianity that resembles (at least a little) the way Jesus operated in the Gospels. When Jesus began his movement, he called his followers to embody a radical way of peace: a way of loving enemies, a way of embracing the outsider, a way of forgiveness and transformation and reconciliation. Sadly, throughout its 2,000-year history, the Church has often drifted from its original mission and, instead, twisted Christianity into a way of reinforcing the status quo: a way of control, a way of self-righteousness.
And so, we are committed to exploring what it looks like to take Jesus’ words and deeds seriously for our day and in our neighborhood. What Missio Dei lacks in size (there are about 20 of us), we make up in potency (again, like the humble little tangerine). While we have a Sunday gathering, it is only one part of what we do. We operate a community hospitality house (with 6 or 7 residents), have a community meal at least once a week, invite people in the neighborhood to join us for an outdoor community meal, coordinate an urban garden, and (try to) pray together each night from our self-published book of morning and evening prayers.
All of this is fueled, in part, by idealism. Idealism is a nice thing to have, provided it stays inside your head. It is when you try to live out your idealism that it stops being nice and, instead, becomes something messy. A little over three years ago, Missio Dei was born. And like most three-year-olds, we have stumbled into, and produced, a lot of mess. With three years of messy idealism behind us, I am sure of one thing: I prefer a messily embodied ideal over a clean disembodied ideal.
Before we started Missio Dei, one of the clean ideals to which I earnestly clung was that of being “hospitable.” Hospitality, in the truest sense of the word, is not simply inviting your family and friends over for dinner. Hospitality is offering food and/or shelter to strangers. In 21st -Century US-America, this sort of hospitality seems radical. However, passages like Matthew 25:31-46, the Sheep and the Goats, demonstrate that this “radical” practice should be normative for Christians. And indeed it was for early Christians. But, over time, the practice of hospitality became increasingly uncommon among Christians in the West.
When we started Missio Dei, we wanted to put hospitality back into the center of our faith. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what that would actually look like. I like to think that I was not naïve, but I was. At first, it was nice and easy. We got into the habit of having community hospitality meals twice a week. Mostly, I would make big pots of soup—it’s easy to feed a big group of people with soup. Slowly, but surely, unfamiliar people started to join us for our meals. And then, sometimes, we would let friends-of-friends stay with us in our house.
We had everything well under control—until we met Michael. Michael is a homeless man I met on Cedar Avenue. Our relationship started with him asking me for $5. Somehow, in that first encounter, the conversation turned to Jesus. Michael reached into his bag and pulled out a wire-bound notebook filled with poems he had written to his mother—and to Jesus. Over the months that followed, a friendship formed. Eventually, we helped him get into a treatment center so he could get some control over his drug and alcohol addictions.
One day, Michael called from the treatment center. He had been kicked out of the program because he threatened another resident. He got a ride from the center to our house. Anxiously, he asked if he could come stay with us for a while, at least until he could get into another program.
Hospitality is a warm ideal. Extending hospitality to an actual person is a messy reality. At the time, there was a baby living in the house. And Michael has a criminal background. I knew I could not speak on behalf of the whole community, so I asked him to give us a couple hours to talk it over.
That evening, our cozy household had a painful conversation. Unfortunately, we were not able to reach a consensus. That meant that Michael could not stay. I went downstairs and told him that he could not stay, and I was heartbroken. I felt like I was turning away Jesus.
That night, he fell off the wagon. Under the influence, he caused some trouble and got picked up on a drunken disorderly charge. Because he was on parole from a prior conviction, he was sent to jail for fourteen months. That night was one of the worst nights of my life. I remember screaming every swearword I know into my pillow as my wife gently, lovingly, stroked the back of my head. It was my first real experience of failed idealism.
A lot has happened in the fourteen months that Michael has been in prison. We have stayed in touch. He has thought about what he wants his life to be like when he gets out. Refusing to give up on our idealism, we have continued to grow in our ability to be hospitable. In less than a week, Michael gets out of jail…and into our community house.
We know it will be messy. We know it will be awkward. And we sometimes wonder if it will be safe. My wife and I are expecting our first child on, interestingly enough, April Fool’s Day. Rather than diminishing our idealism, the anticipation of a child reinforces it. We want our child (whom we are naming Jonas) to grow up learning what it means to follow Jesus. We hope (and pray) that Jonas will learn much better with “Uncle Michael” as one of his teachers.
Bio – Mark Van Steenwyk is the editor of Jesus Manifesto. He is a Mennonite pastor (Missio Dei in Minneapolis), writer, speaker, and grassroots educator. He and his wife Amy have been married since 1997. They are expecting their first child in April.
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