Missions

A college president recently opened a can of worms in speaking of changing music on a “missional level.” I’m not sure what he meant by that, but “missional” is not going away. It is not easily toppled as some critics have imagined. I have read articles and heard sermons on “missional” which left me puzzled and convinced that many opponents have never been involved with a heterogeneous church or engaged in extensive cross-cultural ministry.

Much time is spent in libraries doing research to find something to use against something disliked. This is especially true when one starts from the perspective that “missional” is bad and needs to be exposed and avoided. The critics then cite sources and employ the worst representatives and distortions to prove their point. For some, “missional” sounds too new age or emergent or associated with the compromise of the social gospel. Surely there is something in “missional” for everyone to dislike, and aberrations can easily be found.

What I hope to accomplish in this brief article is a simple reflection on the validity of churches and Christians adopting a missional stance regarding those who are outside the church and who are in desperate need of an encounter with followers of Jesus Christ. Many churches are mission-minded. They love missions. They support missionaries. They even allow missionaries to plant churches that reflect the culture and community in which missionaries live. Yet often they themselves remain locked in a cultural time-warp, fight battles that were won or lost long ago, debate issues that matter little or matter only to them and their regional or relational sub-culture, and ignore the enormous changes in our society and the challenges we face in reaching people for Christ with the gospel. Disagree if you must with missional churches, but do something to get out of the religious ghetto where you have lost contact with the world and get out of your office occasionally to be on mission rather than on management.

“Missional” is a common buzzword in ecclesiology today. You don’t have to read very much to realize that there is a lot packed into this word. But not all agree on what should be packed into it, or more precisely, how it should be played out in the church. “Missional” involves varying views of the Kingdom of God and varying views of how the church is related to the kingdom. It has to do with how God is at work in the world, what God is doing and how people should be involved in that work.

There is a tendency among some to judge the value of a word or idea by looking at who predominantly uses the word or idea. Some are hesitant to use the word because of who else uses it. In this case, “missional” is a word frequently used among the “emerging” type of churches and ministries. It is frequently connected with a lack of orthodoxy and a heavy emphasis on social justice. It is also frequently connected to what is known as “incarnational ministry,” the idea that believers are to “incarnate” the gospel just as Jesus did when He came to earth. This, too, makes some wary of the word.

The idea of missional

Yet I think that the idea is pretty simple and useful, even if we don’t like the word “missional,” and even if we do not agree with the doctrinal aberrancies and the social emphases of some who use it.

The idea of missional is based on the idea that God is a missionary God. This incorporates a number of elements that center on the fact that God is active in the world through both His incarnation and His people. Missional thinker Alan Hirsch says “By his very nature God is a ‘sent one’ who takes the initiative to redeem his creation.”¹ Gibbs and Bolger say “God is a God who redeems, a God who seeks and saves…. [T]here is only one mission—God’s mission.”²

Mission embraces an even larger point. It is not simply that God sends, but that God is at work (on mission) accomplishing His purpose which is to bring glory to Himself through the redemption of sinners, the building of His kingdom, and the restoration of creation. In His mission, God has taken the initiative to come to man to reconcile Him, and now God calls man to join Him on His mission.

Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s word for the redemption of God’s creation.³

To be missional means to participate with God in God’s mission.