Missional Church
4 Possible Paradigm Shifts for the 21st Century Church
I am not sure in what context or venue he said this, but billionaire financier Warren Buffett is credited with having noted:
“In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”
Whatever the initial context, there is much wisdom in this insight that can be applied to any endeavor that is no longer functioning. This includes the Church – especially the mission of the church.
To deny that the Church as a whole has a declining influence would be naive. While this lack of potency is not the case overall, as Christianity is exploding in many parts of the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it is almost unarguably true of the Church in the West, including the USA. The declining percentage of those attending weekly worship, and empty rooms that used to be filled with people gathered for prayer meetings, reflect Buffet’s imagery of “leaking boats”. No question change is needed.
Yet what is subject to change? Should everything be up for grabs? There is no lack of suggestions and examples of what people are changing in the name of reigniting the church. And many have increased the attendance of their respective congregational gatherings using a variety of techniques. But is mere pragmatism really the answer? If it “works” is it of God? Is having more butts in the pew (or whatever kind of seat) equal to making more disciples? After all, some of the techniques employed by “cutting edge” congregations are raising some eyebrows – not to mention raising some ire.
I do not recall which of his writings I read it in, (I think it was Building a Bridge to the 18th Century,) but Neil Postman pointed out that not all inventions are actually to our advancement. Postman says that for something to be an advancement it must meet an actual need. While Postman was speaking of technology, the same principle applies to institutions, including the Church. (I know some will object to identifying the Church as an institution, insisting that the Church is “organic”. But in one sense it is. It was “instituted” by God… Marriage is also an institution “instituted” by God. But that does not mean my marriage is stoic and stodgy and inorganic. Marriage and Church are both “organic” and “institutions” at the same time – or, when at their best, organic institutions.)
OK. Back on track…
While some novel ideas are showing clear evidence of drawing crowds, one question must be asked: “At what expense?” In other words, what might we be sacrificing, what would we forfeit, for the sake of increasing numbers?
It is vital that we remember Psalm 127.1:
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
When I consider Postman’s concern along with this truth, I cannot help but thinking that while some innovations unquestionably advance attendance, those not in accord with God’s blue-print do so at the expense of not actually being the Church. I do not know what such a congregation is, but God says all their creative efforts are in vain. To be church we MUST be built by God, and upon God’s design.
Now, I do not want to be suspect of being an ecclesiastical Luddite. I am not against creativity, innovation, or change. I agree with Buffett that energy expended constantly patching leaks would be better spent on changing to a new vessel. But Buffett’s illustration does not imply changing modes entirely. He does not say, for instance, that if your boat leaks then buy a car. He suggests we renew our mode.
For the Church this means that we reaffirm what it means to be a Church. We must do this in every detail: doctrine, church government, misson. We do not just employ trendy organizational practices, and then teach the Bible, and call it a church. We embody everything God says a church is – and has always been. And then we take a look at where the leaks are coming from, and what is causing them. Then, and only then, do we consider possible innovations in our methods.
In short, I believe we must consider innovations, but that we must only employ those that are consistent with all that it means to be Christ’s Church, of which Jesus is the Head.
In line with this premise, Felipe Assis has made a few paradigm shift suggestions for the future of the church that I find intriguing and promising, and worthy of consideration:
1. Incarnation over innovation
2. Environments over processes
3. Movement over expansion
4. Flat over hierarchical
Assis develops these premises at Redeemer City to City. To read his assessments and explanations click: Part 1, Part 2
Contextual Asessment Starter Questions
One of the greater frustrations I have experienced in the church I serve has not come from the people within the church as much as it has from well intended (I presume) outsiders and fringe folks who espouse a missional approach. This is surprising because I want to embrace a missional approach. But much of the advice I repeatedly get is to make implementation without regard for the context of the culture in which our church is set, and without regard to the understanding of the people that have long been within the church.
The models that these well-intended Christians admire (and the models these folks have often reminded me are far different from what I have to-date effectively implemented) look a lot like those models I read about from cutting edge missional churches in Seattle, Dallas, and Metro Atlanta. They are excellent examples of missional thinking put in practice. And it is exciting to read about what God is doing in those cities. But I don’t live in any of those places. Nor, obviously, does anyone who regularly attends our church. Nor do any of our neighbors that God has put us here to love.
So, in short, the reality is that much of the well intended criticism I receive is by those who desperately want to be missional, but whose advice is not really so much “missional” as it is the imposing of particular personal preferences on a people through practices and structures. The irony is that their advice is just as much driven by their own personal preference as are the practices of the “Traditional Church” these folks rail against.
One of the primary marks of missional is to actually exegete the culture where you live and worship. It requires an understanding of the real values, the faith shapers and influencers, and the idols that may offer peculiar obstacles to the gospel specific to ones own area.
The question is, then, how to determine what those factors may be in a particular community or region.
When Helping Hurts
With the re-emergence of ministries of mercy by Evangelicals have also come definite challenges. I am delighted that this trend of compassion continues on the upswing. But I am also aware of both the theological and practical dilemmas that inevitably face anyone who is engaged in such outreach.
The video above in an interview with two highly qualified mercy ministry experts, Brian Fikkert and Steven Corbett. I don’t know much about Corbett, but it was my privilege to get to know Brian when he was establishing the Chalmers Center. (Brian’s son was also on my daughters first soccer team. ) And Brian, along with a few of his colleagues, were instrumental in helping the church I then served to develop our ministry among the poor in Walker County Georgia.
In the video Fikkert and Corbett discuss the premiss behind their excellent, must-read, book: When Helping Hurts. They address practical and philosophical dimensions of such issues as cultivationg dependency, etc.
Can Mission Become an Idol?
“There is a first-rate commitment to a second-rate mission.” That is what Roger, a leader in global church planting, said as he looked at the rock climbers ascending a cliff in the Alps. Many of us called into ministry feel the same way. Rather than giving our lives to climbing a rock, building a business, or amassing a fortune, we are committed to what really matters; a first-rate mission – advancing the Gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ.
But what if we’re wrong?
Roger spent decades serving Christ by planting churches on four continents. But after reflecting on his labors for the kingdom of God, his confession surprised many of us. “I’ve given most of my energy to a second-rate mission as well,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. Church planting is important. But someday that mission will end. My first calling is to live with God. That must be my first commitment.”
What Roger articulated was a temptation that many of us in ministry face. To put it simply, many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God. Before exploring how this shift occurs in church leaders, let me take a step or two backwards and explain how I have seen this tendency within the Christian college students I’ve worked with in recent years.
Is impact everything?
The students I meet with often worry about what awaits them after graduation. This is a reasonable concern for any young adult, but for many of them the worry extends far beyond finding a job with benefits. They fixate, and some obsess, about “making a difference in the world.” They fear living lives of insignificance. They worry about not achieving the right things, or not enough of the right things. Behind all of this is the belief that their value is determined by what they achieve. I’ve learned that when a student asks me, “What should I do with my life?” what he or she really wants to know is, “How can I prove that I am valuable?”
When we come believe that our faith is primarily about what we can do for God in the world, it is like throwing gasoline on our fear of insignificance. The resulting fire may be presented to others as a godly ambition, a holy desire to see God’s mission advance–the kind of drive evident in the Apostle Paul’s life. But when these flames are fueled by fear they reveal none of the peace, joy, or love displayed by Paul and rooted in the Spirit. Instead the relentless drive to prove our worth can quickly become destructive.
Sometimes the people who fear insignificance the most are driven to accomplish the greatest things. As a result they are highly praised within Christian communities for their good works. This temporarily soothes their fear until the next goal can be achieved. But there is a dark side to this drivenness. Gordon MacDonald calls it “missionalism.” It is “the belief that the worth of one’s life is determined by the achievement of a grand objective.”
Gospel Clarity for Missional Calling
The article below by World Harvest Mission‘s Josiah Bancroft is a tremendously insightful and clear explanation of the relationship of the gospel to culture. Not only is this an important understanding for the mission field overseas, but Josiah explains why it is essential even within the local church in North America.
The video above is an interview with Josiah by Collin Hansen of The Gospel Coalition.
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How do you keep the gospel clear and focused on missional calling when so many competing forces, influences, and voices speak into your life, ministry, and church? I am learning that gospel clarity is tied in large part to how we understand our cross-cultural mission in very practical ways.
For example, I was picking up a large short-term team outside of Dublin to introduce them to our Irish partners and co-workers. When the jet-lagged U.S. visitors stumbled from the bus, one of the passengers asked to pray and gathered us around her. She thanked God for safe travel, for the opportunity to serve, and then prayed for “all our boys in harms way” and asked God to protect our troops from our enemies.
As soon as she said a tearful and happy amen and walked away, my Irish friends inundated me with questions: Who were “our boys”? Was the church supporting a national war? How were those “our” enemies that the U.S. troops were killing? Of course Ireland was neutral in the war, so their questions were reasonable and predictable. After all, they were Christians, not Americans.
Navigating culture and mission with gospel clarity doesn’t just happen, so how—practically—can we keep clear about the gospel while pursuing our cross-cultural missional calling? We all interpret the world as cultural beings. That’s how God has made us. And yet many American believers have struggled with the basic idea that they are part of a culture or a sub-culture. That is now changing.
With the rapid changes in U.S. culture during recent years, our churches are beginning to see U.S. culture more clearly. Our culture has changed so much and so quickly that the church sometimes struggles to engage. We are hard pressed to maintain the mental and spiritual clarity that can respond powerfully to a such pervasive cultural forces. So what can help us with our struggle? I’d like to make a few suggestions.
1. We Need Clear Kingdom Identity and Allegiance
As missional people we belong to the kingdom of God and live in the United States as strangers and aliens. Keeping my kingdom identity clear as a believer keeps me from identifying completely with this present age. God has given each of us a role in our culture, so we should embrace our lives and do well here. But this present time and place isn’t everything, and this age doesn’t fully define a believer. So while I work to bring all things under the rule of Christ in my life and mission, I do it as an outsider. Where I forget this missional identity, I can confuse my interests and culture with the kingdom of God. Then I lose my gospel clarity and muddle the message with my culture.
Practical Help: Keep the horizon of God’s larger global mission clearly in view even in local ministry work, so that all your concerns are kept in the right perspective for new kingdom people. Without this missional global horizon, local ministry easily appears so large to us that it obscures everything else.
2. We All Answered the Universal Call to Cross-cultural Missional Life
Since we are each part of God’s mission to reach the world, and because we live as strangers and aliens, therefore all of our ministry and mission is necessarily cross-cultural. All church planting is a cross-cultural exercise. All evangelism reaches across cultural boundaries, even in our own families and neighborhoods. The struggles between generations are in part cross-cultural conflicts, because the world has shifted so quickly and radically. Every attempt to reach out or serve in the church must recognize and communicate to our own culture with cross-cultural understanding and sensitivity. All ministry here is cross-cultural.
Practical Help: We need a steady flow of outsiders and missionaries who bring in tales of the kingdom moving and struggles to take the gospel into difficult places. What worked in Congo? What is God doing in Russia? How is the God moving in the Czech Republic? Hearing how culture works and is navigated practically in other places gives us new perspectives on what things belong to the kingdom and what belongs to the culture.
3. We Enter Other Cultures
As a missional people we are responsible to cross the cultural barriers with the gospel rather than wait and require those outside to come and understand. Actually that’s one of the big differences that came with the church in the first century. Everyone doesn’t have to become Jewish to have access to God. Today in the church we must learn the new languages, not the nations . . . remember Pentecost? We adapt rather than require others to “eat kosher.” We go, rather than having everyone come to us. When I bear the weight of reaching out to others, here or in foreign countries, I best imitate Christ who became like us in love and won us with great sacrifice. When the gospel is small in my life, when my flesh and home culture press in, then I am unwilling to change or sacrifice for others to bring them the gospel. Missions pushes me to clarify my commitment to the gospel and to Christ.
Practical Help: Get a larger heart for the world by spending time with others who love their enemies. That love is what motivated Christ to do the work of incarnation. Roll up your sleeves and find a place to sacrifice time, work, and money for the expansion of the kingdom in places you will never see as well as in your hometown. Turn every group in the church outward with a cross-cultural eye to be true missional communities.
4. We Go
We know the gospel is how we enter the kingdom. The gospel promises are also how we live daily before God in repentance and faith. And the gospel is the central message of the church as we go into the world. This might seem obvious, but it is so easy to mix cultural pieces into our speaking about Christ that we need to be clear. Paul tells Titus in his church planting and leadership to emphasize—even insist on—and confidently affirm the gospel as the life and message of the church (Titus 3:8).
Practical Help: Get involved in short-term missions and create a global missional team to find those in your fellowship who need to go. Join with cross-cultural workers who have more experience so that you can learn from them. The New Testament way requires us to listen to these cross-cultural workers. Of course the greatest was Christ. But Paul also qualifies, and as a cross-cultural missionary he was wonderfully equipped to lead churches and planting in various places without confusing his culture or Roman culture with the call of the kingdom. I would love for our churches to find his gospel clarity and passion renewing us all for global missions and partnership in new ways.
Perhaps there is another way to say all of this simply. The gospel always leads us believers to a global vision and a heart willing to sacrifice for a lost world. That’s what it means to follow our Savior. And learning to keep our vision clear, listening to others engaged in that same struggle, and feeding your heart with the gospel promises and the kingdom calling from Scripture are all essential to keep our missional calling centered on the gospel.
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Both the article and the video first appeared on The Gospel Coalition blog.
Numbering Those on the Ranch
With the following illustration, Alan Hirsch offers a different way of gauging a church’s effectiveness:
In some farming communities, the farmers might build fences around their properties to keep their livestock in and the livestock of neighbor farms out. This is a bounded set. But in rural communities where farms or ranches cover an enormous geographic area, fencing a property is out of the question. In our home of Australia, ranches (called Stations) are so vast that fences are superfluous. Under these conditions a farmer has to sink a bore and create a well, a precious water supply in the Outback. It is assumed that livestock, though they will stray, will never roam too far from the well, lest they die. That is centered set. As long as there is a clean supply of water the livestock will remain close by.
The essential difference is between measuring Influence instead of simply membership and/or attendance. The bounded-set, as Hirsch calls it, draws a clear line between those on the inside (i.e. members and regular attenders) and those outside. The centered-set, on the other hand, measures how many people are in some relation to the ministry of the church and gauges the various relative distances from the center values.
Though I do not see these grids as being mutually exclusive, as if one must choose one or the other, I do find Hirsch to have provided a helpful distinction.
In our church, for instance, we have some precious members who do not regularly participate in any of the Life of the Church. They come occasionally to any number of things, including infrequently to the Sunday morning worship service. To assume we are having an active influence in their spiritual growth would be, at best, presumptuous. On the other hand, there are people who are not members of our church, nor even attenders, but who are being actively influenced through ministries of counseling, discipleship, mercy, etc. While these folks are not part of the quantifiable membership, they are nevertheless beneficiaries of the mission of the church. In many ways some of these folks are closer to our center-set than are some of the irregular members.
So again, as I think about it, I see both of these grids as being beneficial. In fact, I would hope to see growth on both gauges. We long to see our influence expand, and realize that many whom we influence will never become part of our congregation. Some are members of other churches, and therefore should stay there and bless the people in those churches. But we also should be laboring, and praying, for those who are not part of a particular congregation to become connected to some expression of of the visible church – hopefully many with ours.
So, I don’t see that we need to make a choice between these two ways of measuring our congregations. I think we ought to use both. But, I guess, since relatively few are aware of Hirsch’s Ranch, we would be wise to spend our energies to cultivate and cast the importance of the centered-set.
Transforming the Church
Lessons from The Externally Focused Church
Although everyone outside the Church is a potential ministry focus, the Externally Focused Church moves intentionally toward two groups:
- Those on the margins
- The City
– from Externally Focused Church
These are important points to remember when designing an outreach strategy for the local church. The first, people on the margins of society, probably needs no explanation. The second, while in some ways obvious, may be helpful to explain, at least a little.
The focus on the city does not necessarily mean our focus must be on the mega metropolitan areas throughout the country and around the world. While no doubt those places are important, when you think of “city” think simply of “places where people gather”. Externally Focused Churches work to benefit the common good more than create places to which Christians withdraw from others. (Jeremiah 29.7)
Total Church
I have recently been listening to Tim Chester and Steve Timmis speak about Total Church. I appreciate their emphasis that two key principles should shape church life: gospel and community.
As Tim Chester writes:
Christians are called to a dual fidelity: fidelity to the core content of the gospel and fidelity to the primary context of a believing community.
Wondering about what I would consider an important, really an essential, third spoke, Mission, Chester elaborates:
Whether we are thinking about evangelism, social involvement, pastoral care, apologetics, discipleship or teaching, the content is consistently the Christian gospel and the context is consistently the Christian community. What we do is always defined by the gospel and the context is always our belonging in the church. Our identity as Christians is defined by the gospel and the community.
Timmis and Chester suggest “Being gospel-centered actually involves two things” So really we have three principles at work. Christian practice must be:
1.Gospel-centered
- gospel-centered in the sense of being Word-centered
- gospel-centered in the sense of being mission-centered (or what I would call being gospel-driven)
2. Community-centered (or what I would call a gospel-formed community)
Here’s how it fleshes out. Contrasting the common polemic nature within much of Christianity, Chester says:
In practice conservative evangelicals often place a proper emphasis on the gospel or on the word. Meanwhile others, like those who belong to the so-called emerging church, may emphasize the importance of community. The emerging church is a loose movement of people who are exploring new forms of church. Each group suspects the others are weak where they are strong. Conservatives worry that the emerging church is soft on truth, too influenced by postmodernism. The emerging church accuses traditional churches of being too institutional, too program-oriented, often loveless and sometimes harsh.
So let us nail our colors to the mast. We agree with the conservatives that the emerging church is too often soft on truth. But we do not think the answer is to be suspicious of community. Indeed we think that often conservatives do not ‘do truth’ well because they neglect community. Because people are not sharing their lives, truth is not applied and lived out.
We also agree with the emerging church movement that often conservative evangelicals are bad at community. The emerging church is a broad category and an ‘emerging’ one at that with no agreed theology or methodology. It means generalizations about emerging church are far from straight-forward. But many within the movement seem to downplay the central importance of objective, divinely-revealed, absolute truth. This may not be a hard conviction, but it is a trajectory. Others argue that more visual media (images, symbols, alternative worship) should compliment or replace an emphasis on the word. We do not think this is the answer. Indeed we think emerging church can sometimes be bad at community because it neglects the truth. It is not governed by truth as it should be, so its community is too whimsical or too indulgent. It is often me and my mates talking about God – church for the Friends generation – middle-class twenty and thirty-somethings church. Only the truth of the gospel reaches across barriers of age, race and class.
If this all sounds a little too radical, to me it sounds a lot like what Francis Schaeffer trumpeted a generation ago. Check out Schaeffer’s Two Contents, Two Realities. What Chester and Timmis advocate seems to be two of the principles Schaeffer emphasized: Sound Doctrine and the Beauty of Human Relationships. Listen to what they say:
We often meet people reacting against an experience of conservative churches which has been institutional, inauthentic and rigidly programmed. For them the emerging church appears to be the only other option. We also meet people within more traditional churches who recognise the need for change, but fear the relativism they see in the emerging church. For them existing models seem to be the only option. We believe there is an alternative.
We want to argue that we need to be enthusiastic about truth and mission and we need to be enthusiastic about relationships and community.
And finally Timmis & Chester offer a warning notice:
[WARNING:] Rigorously applying these principles has the potential to lead to some fundamental and thoroughgoing changes in the way we do church. The theology that matters is not the theology we profess, but the theology we practice.
As John Stott says:
“…our static, inflexible, self-centered structures are ‘heretical structures’ because they embody a heretical doctrine of the church. If our structure has become an end in itself, not a means of saving the world it is a heretical structure.”
Moving Toward Missional
Some questions I have wrestled with over time:
Can someone live missionally without a conscious embracing of missionalism?
- I suspect “No”.
- It is possible to engage in activities, but without a conscious approach there is no “mission”.
- Such a life is more frenetic, aimless, and haphazard.
- Mission requires intentionally carrying out a preconceived plan and/or purpose.
Can a church move toward missional without everyone necessarily understanding and embracing a missional mindset?
- I think “Yes”.
- Studies of transitions from traditional to missional by the Gospel & Our Culture Network do not offer a positive picture. It is not an easy road. Many long held notions must be reconsidered.
- Still, I think a congregation can move toward becoming missional as long as the Leadership is intentionally missional and is directing the church.
- First it may require simply moving toward being Outwardly-Focused. An outwardly-focused church will carry many of the same marks as being an evangelistic church. In some respects an outwardly-focused church merely does what churches that want to think of themselves as evangelistic talk about doing or assume they do (when in fact, they do not).
- An Outwardly-Focused Church moves from being ingrown, but may not necessarily require every member, or even most of the membership, to be intentionally missional. It does not require the mindset change, only faithful activity.
- But as more people are encouraged to engage the community and are released to serve in various capacities, as leaders show how learning to understand the values and mindsets of the peoples in the community is simply a tangible expression of “loving you neighbor”, more and more people will move toward a missional mindset.
Missional Shift
In his book The Present Future, Reggie McNeal reveals and contrasts different ways leaders can think about the church and its ministry. McNeal reflects upon the different paradigms that pastors can have as they lead and conduct ministry in the church.
Being missional is a shift in thinking about the nature of the church. Once a missional understanding is adopted, the way we do church begins to change.
A missional church stresses:
- community transformation over growing the church
- turning members into missionaries over turning members into ministers
- and recovering Christian mission over doing church better.
Out-stretching the Outreach Dilemma
I have been spending some time thinking about how to revamp and ignite the outreach ministry of our church. One of the frequent dilemmas for a church that desires to become more externally focused, more missional, is the balancing of service and PR. There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising, but sometimes a sincere outreach can be perceived as a mere marketing strategy. When this happens it sends a distorted message to both those outside the church and those who go out from the church.
John Stott, in his book Christian Mission in the Modern World, offers the following insights about this dilemma:
To sum up, we are sent to the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve. And in this we have (or we should have) no ulterior motive. True, the gospel lacks visibility if we merely preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situations and communities. Yet the reason for our acceptance of social responsibility is not primarily in order to give the gospel either a visibility or a credibility it would otherwise lack, but rather simple uncomplicated compassion. Love has no need to justify itself. It merely expresses itself in service wherever it sees need.
No Need to Reinvent the Church
Let me just say it straight, up front: I see no need to reinvent the church. What I do see is the need for God’s People to act more faithfully as Christ’s Church.
I like what Kevin DeYoung has to say in the Introduction to his book, The Good News We Almost Forgot:
No doubt the church in the West has many new things to learn. But for the most part, everything we need to learn is what we’ve already forgotten. The chief theological task now facing the Western church is not to reinvent or to be relevant but to remember. We must remember the old, old, story. We must remember the faith once delivered to the saints. We must remember the truths that spark reformation, revival, and regeneration.
So, again, despite the assertions of the Emergents and Seekers and cutting-edge tweekers, I see no need to reinvent the church. God is still at work, just as he has been at work through the ages.
We would, however, be wise to remember what the Reformers of the 16th Century pointed out:
The Church is constantly in need of reforming itself to become more conformed to Scripture.
To do this we need to be aware of:
- What God says in Scripture His Church is to be
- What God has done through history to build His Church
But while I do not believe we need to reinvent the church, I do believe we must always contextualize the ministry of our congregations to be relevant to the cultures where we live; and to be relevant to any cultures in which we may minister.
Consider what missiologist Lesslie Newbigin observed:
If the gospel is to be understood… if it is to be received as something which communicates the Truth about the real human situation, if it is as we say “to make sense”, it has to be communicated in the language of those to whom it is addressed and it has to be clothed in symbols which are meaningful to them. Those to whom it is addressed must be able to say: “Yes, I see.”
The desire for Relevance does not necessarily change or minimize the Truths of our Faith. Instead it is an attempt to express and communicate the historic Biblical Truths in ways that are meaningful and applicable to contemporary and changing contexts.
In other words, we want to embrace and embody the historic Christian faith in ways that are relevant to the culture(s) in which we live & minister.
Just as a missionary going to a foreign country would be expected to adopt the language, dress, and appropriate customs & mannerisms of that culture, so we ought to be sensitive to our culture (and various sub-cultures). We use our freedom in Christ to adjust & adopt appropriate forms that will enable us to speak clearly to the people of the glory of Christ, and of the eternal truth of the gospel.
But while we must be contextual, we must be contextual without negating or neglecting the foundations laid by our forefathers in the Faith.
This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ – Jeremiah 6.16
Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers. – Proverbs 22.28
Here are some practical principles:
- I affirm God has worked through His church throughout history, and that the church is God’s primary mission agency. Much wisdom has been gained through the ages, and we are wise to learn from those who have come before us.
- Therefore we must be committed to doing ministry & theology, with intentional continuity with the Historic Christian Faith, under the authority of God’s Word.
- At the same time, we must seek to be sensitive to our culture and contextualize our ministry accordingly. We must also be careful not to fall into the traps of syncretism or cultural accommodation, or any other practice that compromises the gospel of Jesus Christ.
- Relevance also means that we should be sensitive to specific (sometimes unique) issues facing our contemporary culture(s), and the context in which we live and serve, and to speak prophetically to those issues in accordance with faithful Biblical theology.
In short, we are informed by the past, and we should be connected to our heritage, but we must be a living community of learners, willing to adapt and change in order to be both more faithful to Christ and more effective for the sake of His Kingdom.
And rather than reinventing, and becoming like the Emergents, we can adopt convergence. Convergence means that we take the best practices and resources of the past and integrate them with contemporary expressions in the context of our community.
This is, in large part, what it means to be Missional. And being missional does not require reinventing, just a little recovering and a little sensitivity and a lot of application.
Every Church Missional
Every church is called to be a “missional church”. The fact that we have turned the word mission into an adjective testifies to the American church’s frayed ecclesiology. A non-missional church is not a church in the first place, but in a culture largely devoid of theological vocabulary, this language has become necessary to remind us that the church exists not for ourselves, but for the world.
GRACE & PEACE 