Anyway, running down this concept on the web, I find that it is used frequently by the emergent/emerging folks. Do you have to be "emerging" in order to be "missional"? Well, I hope not. Anway, my searching has led med to a few nice nuggets of insight. At the Amazon page for the book, StormFront: The Good News of God, which looks very interesting, by the way, I found this synopsis in one of the reviews:
The authors claim that many North American Christians act as if the gospel were a small ocean breeze, rather than a raging storm. The North American gospel, they argue, primarily centers on how God can meet my needs and how God can fulfill my desires. It has little sense of God's greater purposes in this world. They contend a Biblical understanding of the gospel looks a lot different. The gospel concerns God's activity to redeem the whole creation. The gospel isn't about me getting what I want. The gospel invites us to enter, receive, and participate in God's Reign, initiated by Jesus' life, death and resurrection. This gospel should radically reorient our lives.That's heady stuff. The reviewer, btw, is by David Eagle.
Further investigation brought me to a website called Friends of Missional, where I found this definition of the Missional Church, authored by Rick Meigs:
Jesus told us to go into all the world and be his ambassadors, but many churches today have inadvertently changed the "go and be" command to a "come and see" appeal. We have grown attached to buildings, programs, staff and a wide variety of goods and services designed to attract and entertain people.Finally, I discovered an online publication called Missional Journal. Each issue is simply a 3-page pdf, usually written, I think, by Dave Dunbar. I'm going to snag a quote from Volume 1, Issue 11, for my third and final "missional" quotation. Dave is talking about what he calls "Christian narcissism" (wish I'd coined that phrase), which he defines as "the disposition to understand salvation as a purely private transaction between God and the sinner." He goes on:
Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the "come to us" invitations with a "go to them" life. A life where "the way of Jesus" informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.
From this perspective the gospel serves to underwrite the personal drive for self-fulfillment. Christian narcissism lacks a biblical understanding of the church as a community of believers committed to the Lord and to one another. Instead, Christian narcissists focus on meeting their own individual needs and evaluate the local congregation by its perceived success in advancing their own spiritual agenda. This obviously turns the congregation primarily into a dispenser of goods and services for spiritual consumers--what I call the "Wal-Martization" of the church.And finally, Francis Chan On a Mission:
12 comments:
This part of the second quote stuck with me:
"The gospel invites us to enter, receive, and participate in God's Reign, initiated by Jesus' life, death and resurrection. This gospel should radically reorient our lives."
As Brian Regan would say, "How true that is?!"
We use the phrase "missional" a fair amount with our family of Jesus followers but more than anything we try to reinforce what living on God's mission looks like. That's a lot harder. A. Lot. Harder.
Cause anyone throw up a banner, print out T-shirts, and change a vision statement with the word "missional." We have no idea, really, what we're doing except bringing people with and sending people out to be God's missionaries wherever they are, go, will go.
Good quotes man.
Hasn't the church of Jesus Christ been doing the 'missional' thing for the psst 2000 years?
I believe so. Can we do better? Of course. Do we need a new word to define what Christians have been doin? No. It's just the latest attempt to 're-invent' Christianity.
This all well and good. But when you begin to dig deeper, you often find that many, if not most "missionals," among them a huge group of "emergents," have lost the message they are trying to "mission." The missional church is now going in the direction of allowing Hindus, for example, to continue to practice their Hindu religion AND be "Jesus followers" too. Welcome to the NEW missionary doctrine.
I see your point and completely agree, Lois, but I think that sometimes these new labels gain currency simply because they act as a kind of corrective in a time when such correction seems needed. In an era of individualistic Me-and-God Christianity, when "church" is the place we go to get our spiritual needs met, the emphasis on the word "missional" usefully draws our attention to something that seems in danger of being--not exactly lost--but at least eclipsed in America.
In the same way, for example, the "charismatic movement" didn't really introduce something new to Christianity, but re-emphasized (and perhaps to some extent re-interpreted) something that had been going on since the first Pentecost at least. That was a "re-emphasis" that was definitely needed then, and perhaps this emphasis on "missional" comes at just the right time for American Christianity.
Diane, I have seen hints of this in my brief investigation. I'm hoping the word "missional" can be saved from being completely co-opted by those groups. As I mentioned above, it seems like a useful emphasis to me, and I'm not ready to dismiss all who so label themselves. Perhaps upon further investigation I'll change my mind . . . thanks as always for stopping by.
Bob, you're right to not dismiss all who label themselves "missional". That's very seldom a wise thing to do.
There are plenty of truly biblical, gospel-defending and gospel-proclaiming churches that would describe themselves as "missional". I'd like to think that Windham Baptist is one 'em!
We've found it helpful to re-focus the responsibility of every Christian to be living on God's mission, instead of just foreign/global missionaries. I honestly don't personally know any of the "missionals" that Diane mentioned, but my friend Jonathan Dodson does through his work with Acts 29. So he's written a paper to correct one misapplication of the "missional" church.
It seems one can be so hopped up on "being the church" in your local community that "being missional" can lead to forgetting the global side of missions.
His paper's here: http://www.acts29network.org/article/how-missional-is-your-church-keeping-the-global-in-missional.
May each of us be faithful to proclaim the whole counsel of God.
Bob, thanks for the shout out.
I have to push back on a couple of the comments. First, NO the church has not always been doing the "missional" thing. I think you could argue this point for the first 300 years of the church, but it is pretty clear that since the 4th century the church has spent an enormous amount of its resources on maintenance of the institution, many times to the total exclusion of impacting those outside of the church.
Now there are most certainly wonderful exceptions, but many churches today are more focused on taking care of their own than they are on those outside the church. I work firsthand with many existing churches and I am contently amazed at how little people really think about their communities and cities.
If you disagree just ask yourself how many programs/activities your church has for its members and then ask the same question for those that are not part of the church. I think the church for too long has only recognized the church as the “called people of God” and not the “called and SENT people of God.”
Which leads to a second point, that is that being mission-minded is not the same thing as being missional. When a church sends and supports missionaries, they are being mission-minded (which of course in not a bad thing), not missional. It is the difference between “sending” and “being sent.” When the whole church recognizes that each member individually and the body collectively is to be sent into the neighborhoods, cities and world as missionaries, to represent the gospel of Jesus in word and deed, then they are being “missional.” This I would argue is not how most people in the church think of their Christian life.
Lastly, while there are “emergents” who like and use the term “missional” there is no necessary connection between the two. Moreover, there are different categories/classifications within the emerging movement. I would suggest Ed Stetzer’s three view of the emerging movement and Scot McKnight’s 5 streams of the emerging movement from Christianity Today. Both articles you should be able to goggle to find.
Sorry, one more thing. For further discussion on what it means to be missional, I would highly recommend Darrell Guder’s “Missional Church.”
Thanks, Brad. BTW, I in no way meant to discount anyone and everyone who calls themselves emergent/emerging. Sorry if it seemed that way.
As for your larger point, while I don't know that I'd agree that the church has lost its missional aspect ever since the 4th century, and that it's only now being re-discovered--perhaps you're not making quite such a blanket statement. Still, I sense your fervor on this subject and appreciate it. I'll look up the Stetzer and McKnight articles.
Josh, good comments as usual. Yes, I simply want to use what seems to me to be a useful term for a particular way of understanding every Christian's calling, rather than come in under anyone's group umbrella. I'm happy to look up Jonathan's article as well.
Bob
No I didn't think you were discounting "anyone and everyone who calls themselves emergent." My point was simply that "emergent" and "missional" do not have to be connected. The Stetzer/McKnight recomendation was just a suggestion that I have found helpful.
Also, I would not say that the church was "missional" until Constantine and is just now finding its way back, in a sense. But I do think somethings changed then that we haven't fuller recovered from. But I would also say that I don't and wouldn't push that too far. That doesn't really add to the discussion.
What I do think we need to recognize is that typically, the church in America does not understand or grapple with the missionary nature of God and His church to the point that it should. I do believe in the last decade there has been a very helpful and needed renewal movement (if we can call it that) toward a missional/missionary ecclesiology.
Thanks for the dialogue. Many blessings to you brother!
On a lighter note, I'm not sure if you can trust Brisco since he's a Yankees fan! Go Sox!!
OK, NOW I get it!
Yes I must confess of being a life long Yankee fan. But after moving to Kansas City I have to say that I have become a bit of a Royals fan as well - especially after seeing the Yanks getting beat by KC the last two nights.
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