Expected Challenges
Those developing Infuse are well aware that such an endeavor will not be without it’s challenges. Several steps must be taken to continually consider the potential pitfalls along the way.
The Infuse team will meet monthly with the young adult advisory team to seek wisdom concerning current trends and concerns. Furthermore, Infuse leaders will need to follow up with participants and their churches to ensure that the vital tie between participant and church is being maintained. Beyond that, the team recognizes four specific areas of challenge. The first is engagement with the “fuzzy line” tool of discernment. The idea of the “fuzzy line” is meant to leave room for ideas that are not yet centered on the glory of God and shaped by the gospel to grow in that direction. Choosing which leaders and initiatives have such potential will require serious discernment.
This is an excellent example of an area in which the local church will need to be engaged and helpful in this process. An early assumption is that many interested leaders will have local churches that are willing to sign off on their participation, but which are actually not well aware of the spiritual maturity of the person they endorse. The team sees this as a challenge coupled with an opportunity to invite the participants church to engage more deeply with the member they endorse, in order to effectively advise Infuse as to their spiritual readiness to purse such a calling. The challenge here, will be the work involved in tracking down church leaders and the commitment Infuse will have to make in order to follow through well with these processes.
A second challenge will be the defining of orthodoxy and theological elasticity that Infuse will have to jointly hold to, in order to offer this service in partnership with a variety of churches.
In theory, the goal of Infuse is to work alongside any Christian church, even though infuse is being founded by leaders that come from a Reformed theological perspective. There will though, need to be definitions of orthodoxy that Infuse adopts and boundaries that are created. Infuse will also need to function with a certain ministry culture, shaped by its founders theological convictions. This may cause some Christians to feel unwelcome. For example, Infuse will not be engaging the idea of predictive prophecy over it’s participants within it’s meeting times, even if a participant comes from a church that would practice such a thing. In order to do this, Infuse leaders will need to clearly define the rules of engagement necessary in order to include people from various strains of the Christian church, and clarify that their involvement within their local church leaves room for them to operate in ways that may not be a fit for all participants.
A third challenge is somewhat related to the first. This is that the church connection is only as good as the particular church’s commitment to the process. This problem arises in the case that the participant is responsible and desires to be discipled and overseen well by their local church, but the church is the party that does not follow up on its God-given role in their own members life. This situation may raise questions concerning the fitness of that church to disciple this individual, but clear boundaries must be understood and clear process must be followed to ensure that Infuse does not become an entity that is experienced as “stealing sheep” away from local churches. Also, the work of encouraging the church to fulfill its role may lead to the discovery of deep dysfunction within a local church, and it may be difficult for Infuse leaders to discern how such a discovery ought to be handled.
A fourth challenge will be Infuse’s ability to follow through with its own core commitments and stated values, especially those of equipping churches and remaining committed to the principle that these participants are actually agents sent and discipled by their local church. The path of least resistance will be for Infuse leaders to mainly focus on their time with participants and to pay little attention to their experience in their local church. Regular check-ins will need to be developed and utilized in order to assure that this concern remains at the forefront and that local churches remain engaged as much as Infuse leaders and the participants are able to control. Ideally, Infuse would also maintain regular communication with a representative of the participants church as well.
Leaders who have non-traditional missional ideas and methods have always existed. These leaders, such as Merten de Keyser (William Tyndale’s printer), have enabled the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ in profound ways and the Church must see the value of their contributions and invest in such leaders and their spiritual development. To avoid doing so will be to the Church’s peril. Recent movements in missional churches have produced a large number of leaders interested in such endeavors, but the fall of many entrepreneurial church leaders has shown us that these mission driven and leader focused types of ministries are missing something. Because of this, many are turning to more ancient forms of Christianity for comfort, security, and added structure.
The gift of the more ancient forms of Christianity, is that they are typically rooted in more thorough and time tested confessions of faith and ecclesiastical structures. The trouble with these structures, is that they may not be ready, in their current state, to affirm, support and resource missional leaders with incredible ministry potential. There may be a need for these types of churches to receive support that does not undermine their simple structures.
History exhibits to us that it is critical that sent missional members remain vitally attached to the local church, and that their affirmation and sending ought to come from their local church as well. While this is true, it is also true that a missing element in many, if not most, churches is a strong community of likeminded people for missional leaders to grow within and draw encouragement from. We believe there is a place for a parallel agency to exist, it if were careful not to disconnect the missional leader from the church and if it were helpful to the church in its attempt to affirm, support, and resource such leaders effectively.
The hope is that the Infuse model might move in the right direction and, at the least, prove to be a helpful and instructive attempt at retaining the connection between missional leaders and healthy and involved churches. If it is able to avoid the pitfalls before it, Infuse may be able to aid and resource the Church, to some degree, to actually attract, identify, retain, and disciple leaders that may one day prove to be the modern day Merten de Keysers the church needs to bolster and amplify the message of the Word and the gospel to the world.
