The
David Allis September 2006
This article is a compilation of ideas from others & myself.
In this article, the term "church" refers
to the people of God, who are joined together as His body, with Christ as the
head. It doesn't refer to a building, denomination, physical location or weekly
meeting. So when you read "church," think of a community that you are
part of, not that meeting or building you go to on Sunday.
There
are many churches that call themselves missional. To be missional implies at least two
theological and ecclesiological changes for most churches. On the one hand, missional
hints at moving from church as a “club” for Christians, to church as Christ’s
body, sent by God to reconcile the world to Himself.
On the other hand, missional
means moving from missions as an activity in which a few Christians are sent to
foreign countries to convert unbelievers, to mission
as God’s most basic purpose, intended for all believers. Some churches verbally state a commitment to these, however I am convinced that if these changes are
genuinely made, they should radically affect the whole ethos, purpose, values
& structure of the church. The important questions changes from something
like “how do we be an effective church,
helping our people & reaching the community?” to “God has placed us here as an incarnational
team of missionaries, so how do we obey Him?”
In an article by David Horrox
titled, "The '
Dan Kimball in "The Emerging Church" (Zondervan, 2003) describes the missional
church "as a body of people sent
on a mission who gather
in community for worship, encouragement, and teaching from the Word that
supplements what they are feeding themselves throughout the week."
Characteristics of missional
churches
Minfred Minatrea
studied a number of missional churches. He defined missional churches as “Reproducing
communities of authentic disciples, being equipped as missionaries sent by God,
to live and proclaim his kingdom in their world.” He noted nine practices
that they have in common (with an explanatory phrases added in parentheses):
1. Having a high threshold for membership
(high expectations for believers)
2. Being real, not real religious (being transparent, authentic, with one foot
in “the world.”)
3. Teaching to obey rather than to know (a practical faith)
4. Rewriting worship every week (Creative, participatory Sunday morning
services)
5. Living apostolically (each believer as a missionary)
6. Expecting to change the world (aggressively engaged in transforming
communities)
7. Ordering actions according to purpose. (Ruthless
aligning of resources with mission)
8. Measuring growth by capacity to release rather than retain. (Not megachurches but multiplying churches)
9. Placing kingdom concerns first (in contrast to denomination first. Thus,
cooperation with other churches)
In his book The
Present Future, Reggie McNeal describes the missional
church in terms of six “new realities” and related questions:
|
New
Reality |
Wrong
Question |
Tough
Question |
|
The collapse of the church culture |
How do we do church better? |
How do we reconvert from “churchianity” to Christianity? |
|
The shift from church growth to kingdom
growth. |
How do we grow this church? |
How do we transform our community? |
|
A new reformation: Releasing God’s people. |
How do we turn members into ministers? |
How do we turn members into missionaries? |
|
The return to spiritual formation. |
How do we develop church members? |
How do we develop followers of Jesus? |
|
The shift from planning to preparation. |
How do we plan for the future? |
How do we prepare for the future? |
|
The rise of apostolic leadership. |
How do we develop leaders for church work? |
How do we develop leaders for the Christian
movement? |
What is a Missional
Church
The
following points are some of the aspects that might make up a missional church/community.
Empowering Individuals as
Missionaries
·
Individuals
are exploring and rediscovering what it means to be Jesus' sent people as their
identity and vocation.
·
Individuals
are willing and ready to be Christ's people in their own situation and place.
·
Individuals
know they must be a cross-cultural missionary (contextual) people in their own
community.
·
Individuals
are engaged with the culture (in the world) without being absorbed by the
culture (not of the world). They become intentionally indigenous.
·
Individuals
seek to put the good of their neighbor over their own
Focussed on the local community
·
A
missional church is externally focused.
·
A
missional church is incarnationally
not institutionally driven.
·
A
missional church is about discipleship not church
membership.
·
A
missional church is patterned after God's missionary
purpose in the world.
·
A
missional church seeks to establish Kingdom outposts
to retake territory under the control of the enemy.
·
A
missional church will seek to plant all types of missional communities to expand the
·
A
missional church faithfully proclaims the Gospel
through word and deed; how we embody the gospel in our community and service is
as important as what we say.
·
A
missional church will give integrity, morality, good
character and conduct, compassion, love and a resurrection life filled with
hope preeminence to give credence to their reasoned verbal witness.
·
A
missionary church seeks to reawaken a movement ethos as together we engage our
cultural context.
·
A
missional church highlights character, virtue, and
compassionate deeds as the most effective witness to God's Kingdom.
·
A
missional church connects to Jesus through mission
not doctrinal precision.
·
A
missional church adopts an organizational structure
and internal forms based on mission not ecclesiastical traditions.
·
A
missional church seeks to partner with the community
to "seek the shalom" of the community.
An Alternative & God-honouring Community
·
A missional church see themselves as a community or
family on a mission together. There are no "Lone Ranger" Christians
in a missional church.
·
A missional church see themselves as representatives of
Jesus and will do nothing to dishonor his name.
·
A
missional church is totally reliant on God in all it
does, aiming to move beyond superficial faith to a life of supernatural living.
·
A
missional church should be desperately dependent on
prayer.
·
A
missional church is a healing community where people
carry each other's burdens and help restore gently.
·
A
missional church practices hospitality by welcoming
the stranger into the midst of the community.
Gathering to Empower for
·
A
missional church gathered will be for the purpose of
worship, encouragement, supplemental teaching, training, and to seek God's
presence and to be realigned with his God's missionary purpose.
·
A
missional church is orthodox in its view of the
Gospel and Scripture, but culturally relevant in its methods and practice so
that it can engage the world view of the hearers.
·
A
missional church will feed deeply on the scriptures
throughout the week so they are always ready to speak up and tell anyone who
asks why they're living the way they are.
·
A
missional church will be a community where all
members are involved in learning to be disciples of Jesus. Growth in
discipleship is an expectation.
·
A
missional church will help people discover, develop &
use their spiritual gifts.
·
A
missional church understands that God is already
present in the culture where it finds itself. Therefore, a missional
church doesn't view its purpose as bringing God into the culture or taking
individuals out of the culture to a sacred space.
·
A
missional church sees itself as organic and not in
static institutional forms.
·
A
missional church pursues relationships across
generational, ethnic, economic and cultural lines of distinctions.
What Missional Church is
Not
·
A
missional church is not a dispenser of religious
goods and services or a place where people come for their weekly spiritual fix.
·
A
missional church is not a place where mature
Christians come to be fed and have their needs met.
·
A
missional church is not a place where professionals
are hired to do the work of the church.
·
A
missional church is not a place where the
professionals teach their children and youth about God.
·
A
missional church is not a church with a "good
missions program." The people are the missions program and includes going
to "
·
A
missional church is not missional
just because it is
contemporary, young, hip, postmodern-sensitive, seeker-sensitive or even
traditional.
·
A
missional church is not about big programs and
organizations to accomplish God's missionary purpose. This does not imply no
program or organization, but that they will not drive mission. They will be
used in support of people on mission.
What
JR Woodward
at Dream Awakener has a
perspective on success that really helps my understanding of missional. His post "A
Working Definition of Success" provides a working definition of what missional might look like. Here it is:
·
Not
simply how many people come to our church services, but how many people our
church serves.
·
Not
simply how many people attend our ministry, but how many people have we
equipped for ministry.
·
Not
simply how many people minister inside the church, but how many minister
outside the church.
·
Not
simply helping people become more whole themselves, but helping people bring
more wholeness to their world. (i.e. justice, healing, relief)
·
Not
simply how many ministries we start, but how many ministries we help.
·
Not
simply how many unbelievers we bring into the community of faith, but how many
‘believers' we help experience healthy community.
·
Not
simply working through our past hurts, but working alongside the Spirit toward
wholeness.
·
Not
simply counting the resources that God gives us to steward, but counting how
many good stewards are we developing for the sake of the world.
·
Not
simply how we are connecting with our culture but how we are engaging our
culture.
·
Not
simply how much peace we bring to individuals, but how much peace we bring to
our world.
·
Not
simply how effective we are with our mission, but how faithful we are to our
God.
·
Not
simply how unified our local church is, but how unified is "the
church" in our neighborhood, city and world?
·
Not
simply how much we immerse ourselves in the text, but how faithfully we live in
the story of God.
·
Not
simply being concerned about how our country is doing, but being concern for
the welfare of other countries.
·
Not
simply how many people we bring into the kingdom, but how much of the kingdom
we bring to the earth.
Not Just Another Program – But a Shift in Thinking
In the era of “movements”
within the Body of Christ, missional is often looked
upon as just another phase or program. But we error when we do so for missional is more than just another movement, it is a full
expression of who the ecclesia of Christ is and what it is called to be and do.
It does build on the ideas and expression learned from past methods and
strategies, particularly the church growth and church health movements, but at
its core missional is a shift in thinking.
This shift in thinking is
expressed by Ed Stetzer and David Putman in their
recent book (”Breaking
the Missional Code,” Broadman
& Holman, 2006) like this:
Here is another chart Stetzer and Putman use to illustrate the concept.
|
Church Growth |
Church Health |
Missional Church |
|
Members as Inviters |
Members as ministers |
Members as Missionaries |
|
Conversion/Baptism |
Discipleship |
Missional
Living |
|
Strategic planning |
Development Programs |
People Empowerment |
|
Staff_Led |
Team Leadership |
Personal |
|
Reaching Prospects |
Reaching Community |
Transforming Community |
|
Gathering |
Training |
Releasing |
|
Addition |
Internal Group
Multiplication |
Church Planting
Multiplication |
|
Uniformity |
Diversity |
Mosaic |
|
Anthropocentric (People centred) |
Ecclesiocentric
(Church centred) |
Theocentric
(God centred) |
|
Great Commission |
Great Commandment |
Missio
Dei (The |
REFERENCES
http://www.friendofmissional.org/
Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally
in a Post-Christian Culture. (July 2006)
Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and
Darrell Guder (Editor), Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in
Ed Stetzer, Planting
Missional Churches. (2006)
Ed Stetzer and David Putman, Breaking the Missional
Code. (2006) **
Reggie McNeal, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church.
(2003)
Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit.
(2000)
Milfred Minatrea, Shaped By God's Heart: The Passion and Practices of
Missional Churches. (2004)
Lois Barrett (Editor), Treasure in
Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness.
(2004)
George R. Hunsberger (Editor), Craig Van Gelder (Editor), The
Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging
Alan Roxburgh, Fred Romanuk,
The Missional
Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World. (2006)