Missional Living Upsets the Culture of Disparity and Injustice Among the Least of These

It would be difficult to pinpoint any specific moment that I began to see poverty and neglect lathered on many Cleveland neighborhoods where I frequented as a child, teen, and young adult. There is no certain day that I can recall beginning to hear injustice crying out. I do, however, remember the day that as a full grown adult in my early 30’s I googled the words “racial disparity in America.” In less than 4 seconds, I was bombarded with data charts, graphs, and reports of every kind revealing humongous gaps in income, health, wealth, education and more that almost knocked me to the floor. For the first time, what I was beginning to notice on my daily commute into downtown Cleveland was coming to light and being described in clear language. For those who exist today as I did years ago and have never explored the actual data, an interactive chartbook from the Economic Policy Institute and a recent report from the White House on racial discrimination can provide research-based exposure to the realities of systemic injustice that smacked me in the face on that day. 

Seeing poverty and hearing the cries of injustice, all while being an African American woman who was learning more about the disparate plight of many who look like me – my aunties, uncles, cousins, colleagues, and friends who are at the bottom of the charts for health, wealth, and wholeness in America – made my heart shatter. I gasped for breath as this revelation flooded my mind with questions. I became aware.

Being a fairly mature Christ follower at the time, my main questions centered around why I had been so oblivious to such things as urban blight, the history of redlining, severe education gaps within local schools, the cycle of poverty that stifles generations of people, and the depth of racial segregation (in particular amongst Christians) that still flourishes in America. As a result, I became somewhat disillusioned with the church. I witnessed a lack of God’s people being aware, present, and active on mission, living as restorers and rebuilders in the midst of injustices, working to see people and communities released from bondage and oppression of every kind.  

Decades later, I still find myself wondering, what is the role of Christ-followers to address blatant injustices impacting the livelihoods of people who many of us are privileged to avoid, move away from, or simply consider as non-existent? According to our lead discipler, Jesus himself, there should be a significant focus of our life on earth whereby we care for the “least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46), who are in fact our neighbors (Luke 10:29-37). Living our lives on mission to disrupt the systemic disparities of our day requires the Church to live our lives making sacrificial, counter-cultural choices that exemplify the love of God, baffling the watching world.

What is the role of Christ-followers to address blatant injustices impacting the livelihoods of people who many of us are privileged to avoid, move away from, or simply consider as non-existent? (1/2) Share on X

Living our lives on mission to disrupt the systemic disparities of our day requires the Church to live our lives making sacrificial, counter-cultural choices that exemplify the love of God, baffling the watching world. (2/2) Share on X

As I write boldly about this sacrificial missional life, inviting others to prayerfully consider and examine their personal commitments, I recognize the long journey that I have been on to come to embrace and endeavor to live into this school of thought. God’s faithful cultivation of the soil of my heart has been a long and steady toil. One of my earliest and most formative encounters with God, and one that I now know established the seed of a deep root system towards living on mission, happened over 20 years ago on the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) campus of Kentucky State University during my freshman year. The way I recall the experience involves me being “tapped” on the shoulder and asked by God himself if I believed that his presence resides within me. It hadn’t been long before this moment that I had made the personal decision in my young adulthood to forsake all and truly follow Jesus, so I honestly cannot say with confidence that I had a strong grip on what it meant for Christ to reside within me. However unclear, I felt compelled to respond with a “Yes!” From there, the Lord responded, “If I reside within you, the people on this campus should see my light coming from your life.”

This conversation with God and the resulting conviction was my invitation to what I now would call an intentional life on mission, or missional living. While I am no longer on a college campus, the resident Christ still stirs within me to move beyond being a sideline observer on the “campus” of my city and its neighborhoods. I trust that I am not alone in being unsettled by the attack on the shalom of the least of these. I am confident that more Christ followers are sensing the call and have a willing heart to be on mission as shining lights in our world. The admonition and encouragement of Isaiah 60:1-3 resonates with many of us: 

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” (NIV)

The invitation to “arise and shine” that the prophet Isaiah gives to God’s people requires a heart posture and daily life that was remarkable enough to draw others. This call is to be a light that others on our “campuses” can see by living on mission.

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While I am no longer on a college campus, the resident Christ still stirs within me to move beyond being a sideline observer on the 'campus' of my city. I am unsettled by the attack on the shalom of the least of these. Share on X

Defining Missional Living

What does it mean to live missionally?

Missional living is the intentional effort to practice Christ-centered living in our everyday lives, in particular regarding the major life decisions that we make in life as believers – where we live, work, play, and to whom or what we tether our affections.

What does it look like to live as a missionary in our everyday lives?

Practical examples of missional living can include regularly investing our time, talent, and affections into the things that are close to the heart of God – the least of these, vulnerable and neglected places and populations, and fighting against injustice.

Missional living is counter-cultural and requires an authentic submission to God along with a life that says YES to being sent. Living on mission does not limit the “sent life” to only a few special super saints with a radical calling and commitment to a life of service in a far away remote island nation. Instead, a heart posture of missional living actively seeks to advance the heart of Christ and the Kingdom of God through restoration, reconciliation, and ultimately personal encounters with God that lead to transformed places and lives.

Church congregations and Christ-followers today are often enamored with the idea of foreign mission trips and relief-based, ‘drop-in style’ inner-city mission projects. While these efforts are deeply appreciated and can serve to be helpful on one level, we must be careful not to romanticize such activities in ways that result in only checking boxes to satisfy our sense of Christian duty. Such ‘once-off’ drop-ins, depending on how they are structured, frequently happen at the expense of the joy, fulfillment, and challenge of constructing daily lifestyles that embrace missional living in a more holistic manner. This relief-based approach fails to confront the normalized disparity, injustice, and lack of concern relevant to neglected and marginalized communities for a whole host of reasons, beginning with the lack of resilient presence first and foremost.

A heart posture of missional living actively seeks to advance the heart of Christ and the Kingdom of God, through restoration, reconciliation, and ultimately personal encounters with God that lead to transformed places and lives. Share on X

John Fuder confronts this misguided missional approach in his gem of a book, A Heart for the City, challenging us to ponder the reality that, “As evangelicals we cannot continue to reach out more effectively to our brother and sister across the world than to our neighbor across the street.” A Heart for the City is a great resource that believers living on mission can return to repeatedly for experientially based insights and wisdom around responding to God’s heart and call to missional living that impacts under-resourced communities. 

Reflecting on Fuder’s words more deeply, I ask myself yet another uncomfortable question:

Is it possible that neighborhoods that have suffered significant decline due to white flight through redlining, and subsequent black flight towards affordable housing opportunities for upwardly mobile African-American families, actually be the very communities Christ-followers should seek to reside within and serve today?

Perhaps some of these neglected communities once flooded with immigrating European hopefuls or black families migrating from the south are places where we can live our lives missionally in this day. We can build homes, settle down, and plant gardens for food (See Jeremiah 29:4-14), ultimately committing to lives on mission that seek the prosperity of these place, resulting in a greater grasp of finding our own welfare (See Jeremiah 29:7).

The Spirit’s whisper to my soul that day on the KSU campus began at a deeply personal level, but has grown over the decades to several questions that I find myself asking the Body of Christ at large.

Do we believe that the Spirit of the Living God with resurrection life power resides within us individually and corporately (Romans 8:11)?

If so, shouldn’t our underserved, neglected, and under-resourced communities  experience the light of Christ emanating from our lives?

This light should not only spill out of the doors of our church buildings, but should be seen through our embodied presence and accompanying good works within these communities. These good works should feature ‘pragmatic resurrection:’ things like building and restoring dilapidated homes, planting vegetable gardens, visiting the incarcerated, providing opportunities for education and dignified work for all, and being present in ways that reflect the incarnate Christ embodying prophetic imagination for the least of these.

Engaging in this work as the church is multiplying in its effect. As we seek increased opportunities to be a part of a greater community transformation within marginalized neighborhoods where we are called to serve, we are transformed in kind.

Church, let’s “arise and shine!”

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Missional living is the intentional effort to practice Christ-centered living in our everyday lives, in particular regarding the major life decisions that we make in life – where we live, work, play, and tether our affections. Share on X

*Editorial Note:  Vatreisha’s awakening to the systemic injustices her own family, friends, and neighbors experienced, and the subsequent trajectory of grounded, missional engagement that she has pursued within local community development spaces, is the fifth article in a summer series that we will publish over the next few weeks, introducing our 2024 Writing Fellows Cohort in their own voices. ~CK