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.
Dave Harvey is an expert church planter and an astute observer of trends in church leadership. At the Spring 2007 Leadership Conference of Sovereign Grace Ministries Harvey assessed the strengths and weakness of the missional movement in an address titled Watch Your Mission: To Be or Not to Be Missional.
One observation Harvey offers is that sometimes missional practitioners muddy the Cross-centered focus of the Church.
Here is a sketch outline of Harvey’s message:
What are the Strengths of Missional Churches?
- Missional Churches Have a Commendable Passion for Evangelism.
- Missional Churches Have a Laudable Commitment to Engaging Culture.
- Missional Churches Have a Profitable Impulse for Reexamining Church Tradition.
- Missional Churches Possess an Admirable Devotion to Social Impact.
What are the Weaknesses of [Some] Missional Churches?
- Missional Churches Tend to Be Mission-Centered Rather Than Gospel-Centered.
- Missional Churches Tend to Have a Reductionistic Ecclesiology.
- Missional Churches Tend to Confuse Culture Engagement with Cultural Immersion.
- Missional Churches Tend to Downplay the Institutional and Organizational Nature of the Church.
- Missional Churches Tend to Have an Insufficient Understanding of Apostolic Ministry.
As one who desires to be both Gospel-centered and Misisonal, I take Harvey’s cautions seriously. I think he has a valid point. I would say that while being Missional does not inherently make one guilty of this, I would have to concede that many who are Missional are guilty of this.
I suspect this results from an imbalance with the Prophet, Priest, and King tri-perspective. Too much emphasis is placed on the role and influence of the King. This seems only to be natural since, afterall, one of the important principles recovered by the missional movement is that our mission matters; our mission is as much an expression of who we are as is our theology.
So what is the solution? Uncompromising Tri-Perspectivalism.
Read Harvey’s full outline here; Download the mp3 for FREE and listen to the audio here.
Note: Thanks to Tony Reinke of Miscellanies for the links.
From Tim Chester:
The church is not a building you enter. Nor is it a meeting your attend. It is not what you do on a Sunday. To be a Christian is to be part of God’s people and to express that in your life through belonging to a local Christian community.
Our Belonging
We belong to one another (Romans 12:5). If a car belongs to me then I am responsible for it and I decide how it should be used. If a person belongs to me them I am responsible for them and I am involved in their decisions.
Our Home
Peter says Christians are ‘foreigners’ = ‘without home’ in the world (1 Peter 2:11). But we are being built into an alternative ‘home’ (1 Peter 2:5).
Our Family
Families eat together, play together, cry together, laugh together, raise child together provide for one another. Families argue and fight, but they do not stop being families and they don’t join other families because they have different tastes in music or reading. With family you can take off your shoes and put your feet on the sofa. They provide identity and a place of belonging.
Family is one of the most common New Testament images for the church. So try re-reading the paragraph above, substituting the word ‘church’ for ‘family’…
Our Community
The New Testament word for community is used to describe sharing lives (1 Thessalonians 2:8), sharing property (Acts 4:32), sharing in the gospel (Philippians 1:5; Philemon 6) and sharing in Christ’s suffering and glory (2 Corinthians 1:6-7; 1 Peter 4:13). Helping poor Christians is an act of ‘community’ (Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 9:13). Christians are people who share their lives with one another.
Our Joy
How would you answer this question: ‘For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes?’ Paul says to the church in Thessalonica, ‘Is it not you?’ (1 Thessalonians 2:19)
Implication: ‘We’ not ‘I’
We need to say not ‘I am planning to …’ or ‘this is my ministry’, but ‘we are planning to …’ and ‘this is our ministry’. We need to say not ‘you need to … or ‘the church doesn’t meet my needs’, but ‘we need to …’ and ‘why don’t we do this’.
In this video Tim Keller offers some insights about ministry in areas that still largely hold to traditional conservative values.
This is helpful to me because the place where I live and serve is still largely characterized this way.
While I embrace a missional mindset, how our church lives that out in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia will look very different from how Keller lives it out in Manhattan and others live it out in places like San Francisco or Seattle.
Most churches have a subtle, perhaps even unspoken, objective. It is driven by the question:
“How can we be the best church in our community?”
How a church answers that question determines the approach to membership, staffing, budget, etc.
In a book I am now reading, Externally Focused Quest, authors Eric Swanson & Rick Rusaw ask an entirely different, more poignant, question:
“How can we be the best church for our community?’
The difference between the two questions dramatically influences the way we approach ministry, approach our community, and relate to other churches. Those driven by this question are inclined to be highly attractional, may tend to view neighbors as being placed by God so that they can be harvested for the growth and benefit of the church. And while many people would be gracious enough to realize that there are enough people to go around, and that no one church can monopolize all the people in an area, this question inherently promotes a sense of competion between churches.
Perhaps even more significant, the differences between these two questions radically reveals our view of God and what we believe to be God’s purpose for the church. The church that wants to know how they can be the best for the community understands that God is on a mission and invites us – even demnds for us – to engage in it. It is a church that recognizes God has placed His church in the community primarily to benefit the city and it’s people (see Jeremiah 29.7 & Proverbs 11.10), and consequently to draw people to himself. While some may ask this question and still posess an unhealthy competitiveness, the question itself does not inherently demand competiton. To be the best for the community means to play the roles needed in the community. There is room for more than one church to play various roles.
This past Sunday I offered a brief exposition of John 17.6-21 & John 20.21, explaining what it means to be “sent” into our community and world in the same way God the Father sent Jesus into our world. These texts demand that we understand, as John Stott says: “Our God is a missionary God.” They also demand that we continually ask ourselves:
While in no way exhaustive, I offered 5 simple observations for us to put into practice:
Unbeknownst to me when I posted earlier today, two of my long-time friends interviewed Jim Belcher, author of Deep Church, earlier this year for their podcast: Ordinary Means.
In this interview Jim introduces and discusses his book with two guys, Matt Bohling & Shaun Nolan, who unhesitatingly identify themselves with the Traditional Church.
Great discussion…
To listen click: Deep Church.
At the suggestion of a friend, I recently read Jim Belcher’s Deep Church. I was not disappointed. This is thoughtful and thought-provoking book.
The subtitle really captures the theme of this book: A Third Way.
With all the discussions about “how” to do church, and the polemic approaches of the Traditionalists and the Emerging/Emergent, some of us find ourselves caught somewhere in the middle. I see strengths and weakness in both movements.
Belcher offers understanding of both worlds. With his understanding he offers honest reflections. Belchers experience and research are helpful for bringing clarity about the issues of the debate and the players doing the debating. I especially appreciated his dilineation of the “protests” being offered by the Emergning/Emergents against the practices of traditional church:
Honestly, I share these collective frustrations – though I cannot endorse the Emergent solutions.
More than just offering perspective, Belcher offers his thought process as he wrestles with the strengths and weaknesses of both the Emerging/Emergent and Traditionalist arguments. He does not seem to be trying to convince anyone to embrace his positions, only sharing the insights of his personal and spiritual leadership journey. I found this helpful. It was almost as if I had someone to talk with about these issues as I contemplate my own positions, questions, and inclinations.
Most important, at no point does Belcher compromise by seeking the “middle way”. Instead, listening to both sides of the debate, he searches and wrestles with Scripture to find “A Third Way”.
The Bereans would be proud.
A group of pastors invited the mayor of their city to discuss his dream for the city, along with the issues that were hindering that dream from becoming a reality. The mayor came with a list of pervasive issues that the pastors in this group were eager to address: at-risk kids, elderly shut-ins, dilapidated housing, and hunger.
But before addressing these issues the mayor said to the gathered pastors:
“After thinking about all of these things, it occurred to me that what our city really needs are good neighbors….The majority of the issues our community is facing would be eliminated or drastically reduced if we could just become a community of people who are great neighbors.”
To this statement one pastor responded:
“Here we are asking the mayor what areas of the city are most in need, and he basically tells us that it would be great if we could just get our people to obey the second half of the Great Commandment.”
In his book The Present Future, Reggie McNeal reveals the contrasts in the different ways leaders can think about the church and its ministry. McNeal reveals the different paradigms that pastors can have as they fulfill their ministry in the church. Being missional is first a shift in thinking about the nature of the church. Once a missional understanding is adopted, the way we do church begins to change.
In the above video, Tim Keller also offers some insights about the missional church. Keller explains why this label – Missional – is not just new slang for being Evangelistic.
For those who want to explore a little more, let me suggest reading Timothy Corwin’s blog post Being Missional: Is There Really a Difference? Tim is pastor of The Rock Church of Saint Louis, and has written several thoughtful pieces about the missional church.
A missional church is rooted in the purpose of God, and understands that God is on a mission to reclaim a People for himself and restore a Creation to it’s orignal beauty. This is known as missio dei – Mission of God.
A missional church recognizes that our culture in North America is no longer an expression of Christendom.
Christendom was a period in history when Christianity was the prevailing religion. During this time Christian thought, directed by the Bible, provided the lense through which people evaluated the world.
We can no longer assume that:
Consequently:
- Learning to understand before trying to be understood.
- Presuming our neighbors have no previous understanding of God and the Gospel – or at best they have a fragmented and distorted understading.
- Look for Redemptive Analogies – stories from within the culture that reflect the truths of God and the Gospel.
- Loving a People who may reject us, and even hate and harm us.
The church must:
In summary: A Missional Church pours itself out on the community, seeking cultural transformation more than its own prosperity.
GRACE & PEACE 
