The Movement Markers of Jesus

Sack lunches and fun field trips filled the Tuesday and Thursday afternoons of middle schoolers attending Vacation Bible School each June at the Church where I grew up. A favorite field trip was hiking and exploring the nearby mountain caves. Before the prevalence of smartphones with GPS tracking and digital topographical maps, we used trail markers to find our way to the caves. The caves were the goal of the field trip. Armed with a list of trail markers, water bottles, and disposable cameras (yes, this was before everyone carried a camera), the middle schoolers, divided into hiking groups, embarked in search of the caves.

In life, most trail markers are very reliable. The trail marker launching the cave expedition was a big rock. No one is going to move the 3-ton boulder to mark the trailhead. One by one, each of the groups disappeared, passing the boulder and entering the tree line. The groups quickly learned that not every trail marker is an unmovable rock. Some of the trail markers for this journey relied on trees or the intersection of trails. Three days prior to the sunny June afternoon VBS field trip, a storm ravaged the mountain’s trees and trails. Some trees looked different; the storm knocked some down, and the storm’s downpour had washed away some of the trails. So, maybe you guessed, but some of the groups lost their way. Only a few groups of middle schoolers made it to the caves. One group ended up on the opposite side of the mountain!

Without markers, we can get lost. Sure, we might spend a warm, sunny June afternoon hiking in a beautiful forest, but we might still be lost. The Pew Research Center’s new Religious Landscape Study presents a hopeful report on the slowing of the decline of Christianity in the United States. But they warn that the Church continues to lose influence among younger generations. While Tolkien may have coined the famous saying “Not all who wander are lost,” could a fresh understanding of the trail markers for the Church help revive the Church’s engagement in God’s redemptive mission?

While (most likely) camping with his disciples, Jesus reveals the trail markers for his Church theologically, describing a community set apart by divine knowledge, mutual community, and mission. Robert Cole identifies the same trail markers for the Church, labeling them divine truth, nurturing relationships, and apostolic mission. There indeed is more that goes into the ingredients of a local church. Yet, these trail markers are necessary for a church’s biblical identity, purpose, and ability to engage in church multiplication. Missio Ecclesia is an evidence-based model developed through a sociological study of Western evangelical churches, identifying three trail markers needed for the Church as a movement: connection with God and His mission, community and missional encouragement, and missional living. The theology, church studies, and sociology trail markers point to the same trail.

These trail markers, describing the Church as a movement, become what I call movement markers. Connection with God and mission, a community that encourages one another toward mobilization, and living on mission comprise the essential movement markers of the Christian Church. Since everyone has DNA (see my previous post), the illustration of DNA highlights that every Church has these movement markers, even if they are repressed. Yet, DNA is overly complex, with about three billion base pairs in the human genome. The movement markers that Jesus instilled into the Church are simple and can provide a path for church leadership, Christian engagement, and church revitalization. The Church is a unique movement that changes people and changes the world. Leaning into these movement markers might help the Church spend less time wandering and more time intentionally engaged with God on His redemptive mission.

In what ways do you see your church (or organization) wandering?

How does your church (or organization) remain intentionally on the correct trail?

From Chapter 3 of Revive: Leading Change—Igniting Movement by Jim Strecker