For so many missional has become another movement. Another way of identifying a style of ministry. It started as a radically different way of looking at the world. It was about taking the Gospel off of the campus and out into community…allowing the Gospel to once again flourish among naturally-occuring communities. It was born out of a passion to see the Gospel both authentically proclaimed and demonstrated among people in real-life situations. It was a term that a few used and most didn’t understand…how things have changed….
Now it’s hard to know what it means…books have been written about it….conferences held about it…now the term is used by many and sadly most still don’t understand it. For many it’s a way of identifying themselves…more of a lifestyle descriptive term. For many missional is about reaching younger people, using a Mac, making and enjoyed micro brew beer, reading John Piper, listening to ColdPlay and Crowder, holding church in a pub, bar, theater, coffee-shop, the narrative has replaced the declarative. For many this is the new “Seeker-sensitive”, the more modern “Purpose-driven”….another model to be copied. If we preach like Mark Driscoll and we do things like him then we’re missional…we can even cuss a little if we like.
Through it all I see one thing we’ve missed…the heart of being missional….the mission. As I read over so many of the younger, modern, emerging “missional” leaders I notice an absence of one thing…a heart for the mission. So many “missional” churches are barely active in a denomination…many hate the thought of working with a bureaucracy…and so they simply don’t engage in the mission. And in doing so they miss the essence of the title they give to themselves. Sure they are reformed, meet in pubs, sure they drink home-made beer, get tattoos, engage in the “narrative”, enter into the “conversation”….but really they’re simply pouring new wine into old wineskins…and the distinctive flavor is lost.
How do we make it more than a label? How do we keep our distinctive flavors, working around the bureacracy and yet still engage the world? How do we put the mission back into missional?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Personally I am growing tired of the word, but long to see missional lived out in the church. The mission part of it is not really a part. “Missional” is intended, I believe, to be the church that is so on mission that it is descriptive of the church. Sadly, this adjective should never have been needed to be contrived. “Church” should have been enough description to label the body of Christ that is about the things that Christ is about. Sadly, “missional” was needed. Just as sad, this adjectival word has, in many cases, been filtered through presuppositions prior to implementation. We now have “church” and “missional church” without much distinction and a need for a church that is on mission. Probably this will lead to a new phrase. Hopefully, it will not lead to a repeat performance.
When I first heard the term, I was one of those who didn’t know what it meant. I shied away from it simply because I don’t like “church terms”. Most of the blogs I was reading didn’t explain what it meant (still don’t) and I thought it simply meant that we were finally accepting the Biblical concept of the Priesthood of the Believer. However, I didn’t realize that it was just another program. Yet again, we’ve made it a checklist of things to do (like you mentioned in this post). Just like we did with Purpose-Driven Church, etc.
I don’t want to be a cynic, but the simple fact is that until every Christian realizes that it’s his/her job to bring their friends to Christ, not the pastor’s, then it won’t matter what we call it…because it won’t work.
Yes, Dan…that is it.
God said; “Be fruitful and multiply”.
To Adam and Eve and Noah and after: physically…
To the Disciples and all who are Christ’s: Spiritually and Truthfully…
We do get wrapped up in everything else but…