Monthly Archive for February, 2007

48. Missional Church 5: Rescuing “Missional”

Published on February 5, 2007 in Missional Church.     0 Comments
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A Fatal Trend

When we were missionaries in Pakistan there was a time when “church planting” became the standard for our team – it was the tie to church planting that validated the ministries we were involved in.  However, the demand for a direct church planting connection resulted in an analysis and critique of the definition of “church planting” that stretched it to fit everyone’s particular ministry.  Rather than maintaining a clearly defined role within our mission along side of other important ministries, church planting became so broad in scope and fuzzy in meaning that it ceased to be a helpful measurable concept.  Once everyone is a church planter, the impact, purpose and role of a church planter loses its significance and unique purpose. In order to maintain its usefulness, the term either needs to be replaced with a more helpful term, or it needs to be redefined with careful boundaries, excluding those activities that can be defined with other terms.

The term “missional” is in danger of a similar fate. As a description of the primary orientation of a church to bring gospel transformation in the world, it is in danger of losing its usefulness and impact. It has become a popular buzzword to describe practically any church that has an outreach program. Because articles on the missional church often state that all churches must be missional in order to be legitimate expressions of the body of Christ, the meaning of the term has been broadened and stretched beyond its original intent. However, it is neither a given that a growing, healthy church is missional, in the original sense of the term, nor that being missional will necessarily result in a growing, healthy church as traditionally understood.

Missional Vs Communal

Missional Church“Church” can be described as the communal relationship between followers of Christ within which spiritual growth occurs.  This definition encompasses both communal oriented and missional orientated local congregations.  However, a missional church is different from a communal oriented church because it is the communal relationship between followers of Christ that stems from intentional Gospel transformation in the world.  Its primary reason for being is to demonstrate the relevance of the gospel within societal contexts (i.e., outside of the four walls of the church) and all other aspects of church life are shaped to fulfill that one purpose.

Communal ChurchA communal church, on the other hand, is the communal relationship between followers of Christ as an expression of the transforming power of the Gospel.  Even as Zion in the Old Testament was intended as an expression of God’s glory on earth drawing all nations to salvation and worship, so the communal oriented church seeks to be an expression of the kingdom through its programs and thus invite people into membership with them.

It is important to maintain this distinction in order to validate each approach within its appropriate context.

Undermining the Missional Concept

i. Confusion with Communal issues

The tendency to weaken the import of the missional term can be illustrated from Milfred Minatrea’s book Shaped by God’s Heart. The problem is not that he fails to describe missional accurately (1) but that he goes on to expand the “missional” definition so that it becomes synonymous with “healthy” and therefore includes inward focused yet positive actions of churches within the missional concept.  By contrasting “missional” (good) with “maintenance” (bad) churches, he does not leave any room for positive expressions of the body of Christ that do not have a missional focus as their primary orientation.

For example, Minatrea constantly uses the phrase “missional churches are…” followed by a description which can be true of many non-missional but active churches such as “the missional church understands that prayer empowers” (2). Minatrea’s motive is to provide a holistic description of the missional church, but many of the descriptions provided relate not to missional, but to communal issues.  While a holistic view of the missional church is needed, the confusion between communal and missional concepts detracts from the essence of the missional church in its primary, outward orientation to the world. 

ii. Leadership

Similarly, a “missional leader” for Minatrea is synonymous with a visionary leader who holds “a vision for what the church might become” (3), rather than emphasizing the unique role of leading people into a transforming engagement with the world. He writes further, “Ultimately, such missional leaders are shaping the culture of their community” (4).  If “community” referred to the society and context within which the church finds itself, this statement would be correct.  However, because he is actually referring to the believers within a particular congregation, this cannot, by definition, be the “ultimate” goal of the missional leader because it is inward.  The ultimate goal for the missional leader must be the same as the missional church: to bring about God’s reign in the world.  The means towards the ultimate missional goal is to shape the culture of the congregation.

iii. Worship

A further example of this confusion with a communal orientation is in the treatment of worship. He states, “Worship is designed to exalt God, not to entertain people” (5). In creating this straw man of churches that are interested in entertaining, he ignores the essence of the missional church’s stance that worship is a reflection of and response to God’s glory revealed through His missional activity in the world.  The churches in this passage reflect a more inward focused communal orientation which can be illustrated by the statement that “Missional communities invite those who do not yet know God to join experiences of worship, knowing their encounter with God’s Spirit might draw them closer to personal relationship with Him” (6).

iv. Equipping

Minatrea’s claim that “Successful equipping involves movement from information through contemplation to transformation” (7) also lacks a missional focus.  It assumes that equipping begins with information and leads to action, i.e., from the abstract to the concrete. This modernist approach to education reflects communal church values that begin with God’s people in God’s presence and invites other in.  In contrast the missional church begins with God’s people interacting with others in the world and lets the contemplation of God’s word address the issues that arise from those relationships.  Both approaches can lead to a “pastoral circle” (8) of moving between God’s word and culture, but only the latter approach intentionally initiates and ensures relevant interaction with the world.

v. “Missional Assessment” Check lists

The strength and value of the missional concept lies in an outward focus as the core purpose of the church.  All other aspects of the missional church are shaped to facilitate this one vision, that as the people of God we are chosen for others. Any attempt to measure the missional aspect of a church must focus on this outward orientation.  Unfortunately, the “missional assessment” check lists in Shaped by God’s Heart often fail in their professed purpose because there is no connection to a distinct missional concern.  For example, “members are equipped to practice spiritual disciplines” (9) is not a concern unique to missional churches.  A better analysis of missional focus would be “members are equipped with those spiritual disciplines which empower them to bring transformation within their particular context.”  Rather than “We have a high regard for God’s Word” a better analysis would be “members use their Bibles effectively and relevantly in making an impact in the community outside the church.”

vi. Community

In addressing the issue of community, Minatrea states “One means of achieving unity in a missional community is to state clearly what is expected of members” (10).  This communal focus loses the important missional orientation that insists on keeping an outward vision as the driving force behind the involvement of the members.  Unity in the missional church emerges through the passion to fulfill a goal in the world, rather than conformity to a covenant to “invite my friends … to church” and “pursue spiritual worth in a 360 Community through Bible Study [and] fellowship….” For the missional church it is not “clear expectations for members” (11) that fulfills this “missional practice,” but a commitment to gospel transformation in the world.

Centered vs Bounded

A fundamental structural difference between missional and communal oriented churches lies in the difference between “centered” and “bounded” sets (12).  Both Frost and Minatrea provide excellent examples of this distinction that will be explored in the following article.

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  • (1) For example see the good contrast between “missions-minded” and “missional” in Milfred Minatrea, Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 11.
  • (2) ibid., 151.
  • (3) ibid., 161.
  • (4) ibid., 168.
  • (5) ibid., 66.
  • (6) ibid., 66-67.
  • (7) ibid., 56.
  • (8) J. Holland and P. Henriot, Social analysis. Linking faith and justice (Revised and enlarged edition, Maryknoll: Orbis 1983).
  • (9) Minatrea, Shaped by God’s Heart, 64.
  • (10) ibid., 34.
  • (11) ibid., 30.
  • (12) Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church (Peabody: Henderson, 2006), 47.
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47. Missional Church 4: Missional Scholarship

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In The Shaping of Things to Come, St Thomas’s Crookes is given as an example of a church that is shaped around its participation in God’s mission to the world. The basic level of the church consists of cells whose aim is to relate relevantly and redemptively with a particular segment of society.  For example, one cell is involved in rock-climbing, another with the football crowd and a third with nightclubbers.  To support this missional effort, congregations consisting of a few cells meet together weekly for teaching, sharing resources and worship.  At a third level all congregations meet together occasionally for a time of celebration, worship and vision-casting1.

Current Misuse of “Missional”

“Missional” has become a popular term used to describe this kind ofMissional Church redemptive orientation towards the world. Churches like St. Thomas’s Crookes consider it their primary task to make the gospel relevant within a variety of settings outside of traditional church organization.  Communal ChurchThis concept contrasts the more communal oriented focus that endeavors to engage people within local expressions of church. Much has been written to help churches readjust their orientation and become missional. 

Unfortunately, the popularity of the term has resulted in two unhealthy extremes.  Some authors use the word as nearly synonymous with “healthy” and thus contrast missional with “maintenance” churches that have little evangelistic drive2.  This broadens the meaning to such an extent that it loses its original intent of highlighting an orientation towards gospel impact within the world.  At the other extreme, some authors are so passionate about the need for God’s people to be redemptively relevant in the world that more traditional, communal expressions of church are referred to pejoratively as “institutional,” “traditional” or “attractional”3. A quick review of important missiological scholarship can help us maintain a clear and distinct definition of the term “missional” so that we can avoid these two extremes.

Christ and Culture

In his seminal work, "Christ and Culture," Richard Niebuhr4 explores five possible motifs to understand the ways Christ and culture relate to each other. The first motif sees culture as a human construct that must be rejected as evil and therefore the Christian goal is to become separate from the world.  Churches with this view have an extractionist mentality with the goal of bringing people out of the world and into the church.

The second motif takes the opposite view and acknowledges a fundamental agreement between Christ and culture. This perspective sees culture as the object for the church: "man’s greatest task is to maintain his best culture"5. The weakness of this extreme view of culture is that it marginalizes God’s revealed truth. God’s word must be preserved as a prophetic message for transformation over and against culture.

The third motif is more inclusive of both culture and God’s revelation by not only seeing Christ in culture but also Christ above culture. That is, a spiritual Christianity can be expressed through cultural forms. This synthesis view of culture and Christ is strong when control over the context is maintained, but it is unable to adjust to outside pressures and is not transferable to new cultural settings. This approach is illustrated by the North American evangelical church subculture. It espouses values well in keeping with general social norms such as education and democracy and capitalism, and yet maintains a strong aversion towards changes, such as egalitarianism and postmodernism, that have occurred within the culture. The concern of such churches is not to engage culture, but to distance themselves out of a fear that they may lose control of basic Christian values and invite harmful cultural practices into the church. Yet at the same time, the response is not so much a radical rejection of culture as with the first motif, but rather an attempt to develop a Christianized subculture parallel to the secular society in areas of drama, music, sports and education. This motif also leads to an extractionist and inward focused mentality.

The fourth motif views the relationship of Christ and culture as an irresolvable paradox. This motif works from an assumption that there is a dualism of spiritual ideal and fallen human reality that cannot be reconciled or overcome. However, this view is ultimately not sustainable. Living with such tension pushes us on to grow and develop, but as humans, we do not like tension and seek to resolve it. Irresolvable tension is bound to lapse into complacency and a domestication of the gospel in order to ease the tension.

The fifth motif provides a solution to the weakness of the fourth motif by seeing Christ as the one who converts humanity within culture and society. This view looks at the world and trusts in the creating and transforming power of Christ to bring redemption. Thus the tension between good and evil is not equated to the tension between the ideal and culture, but a battle that occurs within culture. This battle is a result of the tension between the good resident within humankind because of the image of God (Gen 1:27), and the evil evident in the fall (Gen 3:7) by the turning away from God. These are the two paradoxical realities observed at both individual and communal levels. Therefore culture is best described as corrupted, that is, twisted, warped, misshapen or misdirected, rather than evil. Culture does not exist as an antithesis to good, but something created good but corrupted from its true purpose and thus requires redeeming. At the same time it must be recognized that culture is the medium through which humanity finds expression and thus it is only by redeeming humanity that culture can be saved.

Missiologists later developed the implications of the final motif to support the concept of the missional church.  Communal, inward oriented churches tend to adopt the first motif (culture as evil) or the third motif (developing a parallel Christianized subculture).

Missio Dei: God’s Mission

D.J. Bosch provided a theological basis for the missional concept through his work on missio Dei in Transforming Mission6. Missio Dei is a move to a theocentric view of missions rather than considering it equivalent to the expansion of the church.  That is, rather than considering church planting or church growth as the fulfillment of the Great Commission, the focus shifts to the recognition that God is working to bring transformation in the world.  Missions as a human endeavor then becomes a partnership in the greater story of God’s redemptive movement in the world.  This places the locus of God’s action in the world, rather than in the church.  A missional orientation seeks to be involved with God in the world rather than adopting an inward mentality that draws people from the world into local expressions of church life.

“Hermeneutic of the Gospel”

In The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin asks how the church can “truly represent the reign of God in the world in the way Jesus did” and responds with a poignant description of the missional church.  He states that church’s purpose is not fulfilled through simply responding to the “aspirations” of people in the world, nor is it by “portraying the Church in the style of a commercial firm using modern techniques of promotion to attract members.” Instead “the only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.”  This congregation “will be a community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in the concerns of neighborhood.  It will be the church for the specific place where it lives, not the church for those who wish to be members of it – or, rather, it will be for them insofar as they are willing to be for the wider community.” Moreover this church will be a “royal priesthood” within the world continuing the work of Jesus by “reconciling people to God.”  This priesthood occurs not within “the walls of the Church but in the daily business of the world”7.

“Missional Congregations”

Darrell L. Guder builds on Bosch and Newbigin to contrast a “producer-consumer” model of church with a church as “a body of people sent on a mission.” This mission is centered on the “reign of God as [the church’s] missional perspective.” It is not a project that the church is to work on, but a gift of God that is lived out by the church in the world.  Thus evangelism moves “from an act of recruiting or co-opting those outside the church, to an invitation of companionship.”  That is, the essential purpose of the church moves from a project or a formula for church growth to the development of transforming relationships within the wider community.  Along with the experience of the kingdom of God within the body of Christ, the church “represents to the world the divine reign’s character, claims, demands, and gracious gifts as its agent and instrument”8.

With this understanding serving as the basic definition of the missional concept we can move on in the next article to contrast some ways the missional church concept has been misrepresented.

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  • (1) Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church (Peabody: Henderson, 2006), 53.
  • (2) Milfred Minatrea, Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 5.
  • (3) Frost & Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, 16, 19.
  • (4) This section is a summary of a review of Richard H. Niebuhr’s book Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1951) by Mark Naylor in The Intercultural Communication of the Gospel (Unpublished, 2003), pp. 35-38.  Direct quotes from Niebuhr are footnoted.
  • (5) Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 102.
  • (6) D.J.  Bosch, Transforming Mission.  Paradigm shifts in theology of mission  (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), e.g., 519.
    (7) L. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), see pp. 226-230.
  • (8) Darrell L. Guder, Missional Church: A vision for the sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), see pp. 85-102.
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