Published: June 10, 2008
A church that is not missional is not really a church. A church exists by mission as the sun exists by burning. When the sun loses its burn it ceases to be the sun. When a church loses its mission, it ceases to be a church.
Missional is an adjective describing all of the activities of the church body as they are brought under the mission of God (missio dei) to proclaim the good news of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. Being on mission very easily becomes one activity in church among many others vying for attention. Over time churches allow meetings, programs, traditions and other good things to cumulatively move the church from missional mode to maintenance mode. A church must continuously see itself as missionaries and all of its energies must be missionary.
A missional church understands it has been sent into an irreligious world to proclaim the Gospel of Redemption that is made possible by the Son's sacrifice for our sins and the Father's love for us. Every believer is sent on this mission by God just as Jesus was sent on this mission (John 17:14-16, 18; 20:21). To respond to this calling is to be missional. To neglect it is to disregard the mission of God and to cease being the kind of church that is following Jesus.
Definition of the Missional Church
A missional church is a theologically-formed, Gospel-centered, Spirit-led fellowship who seeks to faithfully incarnate the purposes of Christ. The mission of the church is found in the mission of God who is calling the church to passionately participate in God's redemptive mission in the world (Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8) - a world that has radically changed in North American in the last 50 years.
Called to be Missional
The church in every generation is called to bring the good news of the kingdom into a spiritual encounter with the aspirations and challenges of that culture where it resides. Believers are on a mission from God.
To engage today's world with the good news requires the formation of a gospel community - the church of Jesus Christ - to be a visible representation, witness and instrument of the sovereign outreaching hand of God in our culture.
In many churches this may require a new vision, new ways of thinking, and new patterns of behavior (Matt. 9:16-17). This means pre-believers are encouraged to be included in the context of all of the church functions as they make small steps toward Christ (Luke 19:10).
Since Christianity is a minority voice in this post-Christian culture, the church must adopt an approach to ministry learned from the foreign missionaries who communicate and relate in understandable ways to the godless inhabitants in their respective cultures (1 Cor. 9:22).
The culture around us sees the church as weak and irrelevant. As Christians we have all been sent by God to go into our own city and communities as missionaries. We are to be culturally entrenched and personally involved. We must incarnate Christ's life in our culture in order to impact this culture that is pagan in every way.
John 20:21, "Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you."
Scott Thomas is the director of The Acts 29 Network, a network established to help churches plant other churches. For more information about The Acts 29 Network, log onto http://www.acts29network.org.
Copyright © 2008 Scott Thomas and 316 Networks. All rights reserved.