There’s a new term circulating in church leadership circles describing a “style” of church. The term is “missional.” Much is being written and spoken about the missional church. How “missional” is defined will vary. My elementary definition of missional is the purposeful activity a church does in order to lead people to Jesus as it relates to their context, culture, and community. Yet, what is happening in churches, especially in the West, is they are failing to connect with their immediate context and culture, clinging to traditional forms and functions as they sink into irrelevancy.
Jesus was missional. We read the account of his life and see that he was attuned to the culture of his day. Jesus is often mistaken as someone who stood apart from his culture and just floated from town to town in a white dress with a lamb around his neck saying nice things.
On the contrary, Jesus and his ministry was a part and product of his world. He leveraged the customs, manners, language, politics, economics, and daily routines of his culture to proclaim his message of repentance and salvation. And he didn’t do this only from within the walls of a synagogue or the temple. He was a man about the people. Jesus’ mission took him to the people, which illustrates an important facet of the missional church. Missional churches see themselves not as a destination (a place to go) but as a cadre dispatched to those outside the church who don’t know Jesus (a people sent).
Missional is a new term to an old calling. At its inception, the church was called to be missional. Jesus’ last words to his church were to go into the world and make disciples, with the emphasis on “go.” At his ascension (Acts 1), the disciples stood around, mouths agape at what they just saw when angels appeared and told them to quit gawking and get moving because there’s work to be done. Missional is nothing new but it’s important because it’s raising awareness in Jesus’ church to return to her original calling.
As with any God-thing, Satan the Pervert, tries to corrupt it. A word of warning:
Being missionaries to a culture doesn’t always mean embracing the culture. Some churches are violating major biblical tenets in the name of missionalism and relevancy. For example, some churches describe themselves as post-Jesus because Jesus is irrelevant and offensive, so Jesus is reduced to an icon of faith along with any other god. Yikes! We cannot sacrifice Jesus and the Word on the altar of “cool and relevant.” The cross is offensive and the things of God are foolish to the world, yet, the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.Grace Bible Church Kapolei is in its seventh month as a church (our sending church is Grace Bible Church pastored by Norman Nakanishi). At almost every service, no matter what the theme or topic of the message, my closing benediction to the people is go be a missionary to someone else’s life. I don’t want GBCK just to be a church that was sent; I want our people to live and proclaim their faith in all facets of their lives.When all is said and done, missional is just a name, just a term. Ultimately, our mission to those without Jesus has never changed, but if it takes a term to bring us back to mission, then so be it.
1 Comment
February 25, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Nice one Mike. I think I should change the name of my blog to Missio Dei.
Paul