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The Misfit Mission

How to Change the World with Surprises, Interruptions, and All the Wrong People

Abingdon Press

God's Wrong Way: God Chooses Us First

When it comes to looking for a way forward, we almost always look to experts for advice. We read bestsellers, attend leadership conferences, visit with life coaches, or invest our money in endless personality tests and strength finders.

What would happen if we looked for help elsewhere?

What if we looked to scripture instead?

What if we didn't focus first on the well-known or venerated but instead immersed ourselves in the volumes of scripture filled with stories about the immeasurable and unpredictable God of the universe?

If you turn through the pages of scripture, you'll uncover one of the most formative, encouraging, and perhaps surprising lessons on leadership ever. In John 14:12, Jesus says,

I assure you that whoever believes in me will do the works that I do. They will do even greater works than these because I am going to the Father.

No matter how imperfect or fallible we might feel from time to time, God has created us with a capacity to do the things that God does and, in fact, greater things. This is extraordinary.

Do you feel as though you are doing the things that God does?

Are you doing greater things?

Do you believe you can?

In John 14, Jesus assures us of our capacity to change the world, and then he encourages us to go to work believing this to be true.

In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul wrote to his community from a dark, dank, unsanitary prison. As he addressed his church in Ephesus, he offered them (and us) a similar lesson on leadership. Paul wrote of God's immeasurable and unpredictable power, saying,

Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within us. (Eph 3:20)

In confinement, Paul reminded his congregation that no matter how dark, dank, or unsanitary things become, even if you find yourself in prison, by God's grace we have the power to change the world. It doesn't matter how stuck, how inadequate, or how hopeless you feel; by the power of God's grace we are able to accomplish the extraordinary (far beyond all that you could ask or imagine).

Do you feel stuck?

Are you without hope?

Are you sitting at a crossroads?

Do you believe that you are able to accomplish far beyond all that we could ask or imagine?

Paul encourages us from prison, sitting shackled in darkness, to believe this.

At a time when the whole Roman world would have written Paul off, the Apostle Paul pressed on. Paul had the strength to encourage others always, saying,

Even when you are imprisoned like me, shackled by chains, God is able to use you, work through you, maybe even in spite of you to accomplish the extraordinary. Through Christ all things possible.

This is God's call and scriptural promise to us. We are capable of surpassing expectations. We are capable of surprising the status quo. We are created and gifted with a capacity to do the things that God does, even greater things. We are filled with the grace of Jesus Christ that allows us to accomplish far beyond all that we could ask or imagine.

Scripture reaffirms this time and time again. All throughout the Bible you'll find story after story of God calling ordinary people to do extraordinary things, and they actually do them. In the process they become God's Misfits in Mission.

In Exodus, God called Moses (a murderer) to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. God's Misfit. In Jeremiah, God called Jeremiah (a boy) to pluck up and tear down, to plant and overthrow. God's Misfit. In the Gospels, the angel of the Lord informed Mary (a young, unwed virgin) that she was going to conceive and bear a child who will be the Messiah, the Lord. God's Misfit. In each of these accounts, God called unlikely candidates, and upon doing so, God reminded and assured them saying, "You didn't choose me, but I chose you" (John 15:16). And then they responded by living fully into the future without fear, trusting in the validity of God's call or invitation.

After reading through the pages of scripture, one thing becomes abundantly clear. It doesn't matter who you are or where you've been because at the heart of God's story is the simple fact that God chooses us first.

God invites us. God stirs a passion within our ill-equipped and misfit hearts, and then God equips us with the surprising ability to build Christian community or change the world. This is God's Misfit Mission. This is what God does. God calls the unexpected in the presence of the perceivably predictable to do extraordinary things.

In the Beginning of RezDowntown

In July 2009, my wife and I had been in the ministry for about three years. We were serving two separate churches in Michigan and things were going predictably smooth, and then we found ourselves standing on the precipice of a pretty big and nonsensical opportunity, which in hindsight would become our own Misfit Mission. We received a call to consider making a change of pastoral appointment and were asked whether we would be interested in starting a church in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

This opportunity didn't fit our experience, qualifications, family history, or current skill set. To say that starting a church in Kansas City was far out of our comfort zones would have been an understatement. People from Detroit don't leave home. That wasn't an option for us. Besides being born and raised in the Motor City, Wendy and I had never set foot in Kansas City, and yet as we prayed, we remembered that this is exactly the kind of thing that God does. Whenever God is going to do something extraordinary, God is going to call the wrong people in the wrong places to do the wrong things. God is a God of the holy surprises and epic reversals. This was God calling, the same way God had called both Wendy and me years earlier. I left a career in finance for a life in church. Wendy passed on a future in medicine for a career in ministry. So, once we got past the initial shock of this Kansas City call through prayer and reflection, we began to believe that this was actually God's invitation to become a part of a new and crazy adventure, our very own Misfit Mission.

It took about three months of personal deliberation and denominational delay before we boxed up our stuff, packed the moving van, and transported our entire lives to Kansas City. We arrived on the hottest day of the year: 109 degrees. And let me tell you that we were melting. As we sat outside resting between trips with boxes, we dripped with both sweat and doubt. I suppose you could have called it buyer's remorse, or holy reluctance. In any event, there we sat knowing full well that God called us, we had responded to God's invitation, and there was no going back now. It was terrifying. Like Paul, I like to imagine that we pressed on in fear and trembling.

Within the first week of moving, we quickly realized some limiting factors. One factor was we didn't have any history in our new city. We didn't know anything about Kansas City or the states of Kansas or Missouri for that matter. We had originally assumed Kansas City was located in Kansas, only to quickly discover that Kansas City is actually located in Missouri. Did you know that?

Another limiting factor was we didn't have any friends. We had no acquaintances to mention. We moved to Kansas City without a network, without knowing the names of anyone, anything, or any street. Needless to say, the only thing we had to hold onto was God's call and each other. We knew God was calling us to do this work, but we didn't feel like we fit the job at hand. We were literally mis-fits in Missouri. But this is God's recipe, God's Misfit Way.

Whenever God is going to accomplish the extraordinary, God will almost always call the wrong people to do the work. God doesn't opt for the qualified. God doesn't choose the proven. God doesn't call the expected and experienced. God calls misfits. God equips the called, the unlikely candidates, the holy surprises, and the unexpected persons of this world. God chooses us first, regardless of our fitness.

Two fundamental truths about God's Misfit Mission are that

1. God doesn't call the equipped. God equips the called.

2. The people whom God calls are almost always the wrong people for the job.

This was all Wendy and I had to go with upon moving downtown. We were God's misfit candidates called into the mission of building Christian community and transforming the world around us. All we could do was trust that God would make good on God's promise, namely, that we would be equipped with the ability to accomplish the unimaginable task at hand. This was the beginning of our Misfit Mission, and this is the beginning of any Misfit Mission. It is terrifying, uncomfortable, and almost always unexpected. God chooses us first, which is good news, but it should also make you little sick to your stomach.

What is God calling you to do?

What vision for your life, your community, or your church makes you feel both excited and terrified at the same time?

Five years have passed since our move to KC on that hot, fateful day. In that time, Resurrection Downtown has grown from a collection of nine individuals into a community of over one thousand weekly worshippers. As a community, we have endured sanctuaries with one hundred degree heat, malfunctioning bathrooms, limited parking options, and bad sightlines. We have hosted infants' and children's ministries on the floors of free medical clinics mere moments after sweeping up syringes, pills, and medical refuse in scary basements. When we finally did purchase our first space, we chose to purchase and renovate a converted bar/concert venue located next to strip clubs and tattoo parlors. We currently share a parking lot with a pet-delivery business, and we host community dinners in back alleys quite regularly.

Nothing about what we have done or experienced in the past five years has ever made sense to outside observers. You won't find mention of our church in The Expert's Guide to New Church Starts, and yet we've experienced exponential growth. But no matter how much growth we have experienced (and hopefully will continue to experience), one common theme has run throughout it all: everything began with God's solitary call. God called two reluctant misfits to move from Detroit to Kansas City.

This is God's Misfit Way. God connects the disconnected. God does whatever it takes to find a way forward to accomplish amazing things. And in order to do so, God almost always uses nonsensical people (misfits).

This same pattern can be seen in the archetypal stories of heroes like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Jonah, Job, Rahab, and David, to name a few. The solitary call of misfit individuals leads to community transformation in ways that far surpass anything we could ask or imagine. We witness the same thing throughout the Gospels as well, in Jesus's mission and ministry through the people he met, healed, led, and redeemed. We see God's Misfit Mission lived out through the Acts of the Apostles, at Pentecost, and through Paul's Epistles to the earliest faith communities, all called to transform the world as God's Misfits in Mission. One can even see God's misfit pattern through the life of Christ. Jesus was the biggest misfit of all.

Jesus was unexpected, unlikely, unsuspecting, and the most undesirable way forward in terms of whom the people imagined the Messiah would be. Jesus was the wrong kind of savior; a Misfit King, to say the least. The scribes and Pharisees longed for a strong and mighty arm, a powerful ruler or a notorious leader with obvious capabilities to overthrow and violently overthrow the Romans. They wanted someone who could throw off the Roman yoke. Instead of meeting their expectations, God surprised them by sending a helpless baby wrapped in swaddling cloths.

Jesus didn't fit in any better when he got older either. In his twenties and thirties, Jesus wasn't anything special. He wasn't the person who most people would have imagined when they dreamt of a world without the Romans or the religious rulers of their day. He was simply the son of carpenter.

Jesus came into the world at the wrong time (under the cover of night).

Jesus came into the world in the wrong way (in a feeding trough).

Jesus came into the world with the wrong people (a carpenter and his fourteen-year-old fiancée).

Jesus came into the world with the wrong words (bless those who persecute you and love your enemies [Matt 5:44]).

Jesus was the unlikely, the unexpected, and the undesired. Jesus was a misfit, ill-equipped to redeem, reconcile, and restore the world. And yet Jesus was absolutely and unarguably right. This is God's surprising pathway toward life abundant. In God's Misfit Mission, the wrong ones, people like Jesus, are almost always the right people to lead us forward into a future filled with hope. This is the beginning of every great adventure and the pathway toward the life that really is life.

On our first Sunday in Kansas City, before Resurrection Downtown had formed, I had the privilege of attending a worship service at another church. When I arrived at the church, I planned to fly beneath the radar and worship inconspicuously. I wanted to avoid the first-time visitor experience altogether. However, I wanted to know what worship was like at other area churches, so after the worship service concluded I couldn't help but gravitate toward the free coffee. While there, someone engaged me in conversation. During that conversation I managed to share how I had just moved downtown, and without blinking, my conversation partner left to grab a friend of his, whom he assured me I had to meet.

Anxious and afraid, I clutched my coffee and wondered, "Who does he think that I need to meet?"

Within moments my conversation partner had returned with a woman who looked to be in her forties. He said, "I want you to meet my friend Bobbi Jo. She was a prostitute and lives in your neighborhood. She runs a house full of women in the northeast part of town."

I tried to take in what he was saying without looking shocked, but I was totally confused. Nevertheless, I reached out my hand and said, "Bobbi Jo, I'm pleased to meet you. My name is Scott!"

After the initial shock of his introduction wore off, I had the privilege of learning Bobbi Jo's story. First, she clarified that she used to be a prostitute a long time ago and that she now runs a house (actually a series of houses) for people in recovery ... and then she shared her whole story with me.

Bobbi Jo had her first drink at the age of twelve. She drank because her dad was never home and her mom, who was at home, neglected her because of a greater love — prescription pills. She shared how she once accepted an invitation from a couple of older boys, who gave her a taste of beer. That taste quickly turned into alcoholism that then, like her mother, moved into prescription pills. Those pills turned into dealing and then dependency to the point of prostitution.

In her book Beautifully Broken, Bobbi Jo writes,

Sometimes my real introduction gets boiled down to a bunch of horrific facts about my life: 24 broken bones, 16 rapes I can remember not counting the times I spent as a prostitute or imprisoned as a sex slave, 2 abortions, 1 stint of homelessness, sleeping on an asphalt parking lot under a semi-trailer.

During the worst season of her addiction, something happened to Bobbi Jo. Her dad passed away and that prompted Bobbi Jo to fall to her knees in prayer, confession, and worship. A few months later, her mother lost a battle with cancer, which meant that Bobbi Jo was now the unlikely recipient of an inheritance. Upon receiving this great gift, Bobbi Jo feared that she might slip back into her addiction, given her renewed source of financial security. However, in the wake of her mother's death and in light of her financial gain, she fell to her knees a second time and begged for God's guidance. That's when she heard God's call.

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Excerpted from The Misfit Mission by Scott Chrostek. Copyright © 2016 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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