Forge Canada on Defining Missional
February 9, 2009
In today’s newsletter from Forge Canada, their lead article is about defining missional church. The bottom-line of the piece can be summed up in this quote, “For ‘missional church’ to mean anything, it can’t mean everything.”
How true. It seems like everybody is attempting to add the term missional to the current program they are attempting to promote or make cool sounding. As Forge Canada writes, “Leaders, churches and denominations have all used the term ‘missional’ to describe anything and everything from a woman’s fellowship to their latest evangelism program.”
Look at this diagram I found today on the internet. Tell me, what is a missional cyclopedia, missional console or, OMG, a missional zip code?!
So, do we give up on the term?
No way and Forge agrees. Like many of us they still see value in the term.
What we need, as fellow Missional Tribe instigator Brad Sargent once put it, is for “Purveyors of missional emptiness…to be sent to theological time-out until they have repented of their dilution of the term’s terms, meanings, and methods!”
Let us not give up on the term, but continue to be a humble and respectful corrective to misplaced notions.
Here is how Forge Canada defines missional church:
“The missional church vision is not a programmatic response to the crisis of relevance, purpose and identity that the church in the Western World is facing, but a recapturing of biblical views of the Church all too frequently abandoned, ignored, or obscured through long periods of church history. It is a renewed theological vision of the church in mission, which redefines the nature, the mission and the organization of the local church around Jesus’ proclamation of the good news of the Kingdom. Missional Churches seek to respond to God’s invitation to join Him in His mission in and for the world, as a sign, a servant and a foretaste of this Kingdom.”
Better than most, but still focuses exclusively on being on mission with God and misses critical aspects around the church gathered and Jesus followers living “the way of Jesus.” Missional is as much about “being” as it is about “doing.”
Posted in Missional
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February 10th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Sounds pretty good, and I hear Newbigin in the last bit. But is this really the heart of the issue, making it all about the church? Or is the missio Dei about the kingdom?
February 10th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Your point on being as opposed to “doing” is valid.
However I wonder if many of us have to start doing before it becomes part of us. Is that part of the redemption process in us?
For example, a small child wants to go from point a to point b for whatever reason. If he or she is just beginning to walk, it’s a lot more like doing. He or she is aware of every foot placement - has to think about it, constantly adjusting his or her balance, looking for places to grab onto… it’s a lot of work.
However as an adult it’s as natural as breathing. It takes no real effort at all.
Can missional life, concerning where the church is coming from be the same. Maybe at first it is “doing?” - then as we participate more and more, it becomes a part of us, then the mission flows out of us.
I think I’ve experienced that in my own life and I’m still grappling with the whole missional thing. But I am confident, if people will start out in obedience by “doing” eventually God will transform it into something more and the doing will be transformed into being.
I think this is where simple obedience -even if it seems un-natural leads to something greater.
I am not gifted as an evangelist. As a matter of fact I am an introvert. But I have found the more I have been involved in “doing” the less it becomes that.
Now, my first thoughts are not how can I preach to the community - but how can I connect to them be a part of them.
That transformation took a process though.
What do you think Rick?