{"id":709,"date":"2008-12-17T13:53:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T20:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=709"},"modified":"2008-12-17T13:53:36","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T20:53:36","slug":"missional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2008\/12\/17\/missional\/","title":{"rendered":"Missional?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is from the newsletter of Dave Dunbar<\/a>, President of Biblical Seminary<\/a>.\u00a0 I think it’s great.<\/p>\n

Following Jesus into the World<\/p>\n

A recent issue of Leadership magazine carries a brief article by Alan Hirsch that cuts through some of the fog surrounding the term “missional.” He first clarifies what missional does not mean. It is not synonymous with emerging, or evangelistic, or seeker-sensitive. It is not simply another way to talk about church growth or social justice programs.[1]
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\nThe need for such clarification, fully a decade after the publication of the landmark book Missional Church, is symptomatic of at least two problems.
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\nFirst is the linguistic fact that the meaning of words is fluid over time.\u00a0 As more people incorporate a word into their vocabulary, its meaning changes depending on the context.\u00a0 Think back to what happened to the words “born again” after the election of Jimmy Carter. This is happening with “missional”–more people are hearing it and using it, and this creates some ambiguity.\u00a0 While it is encouraging that more folks are getting comfortable with the word and using it positively, I share Hirsch’s concern with the loss of precision.
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\nThe second problem troubles me more. I fear that those of us in the missional movement have not communicated clearly and concretely.\u00a0 In other words, we must take some ownership for the confusion that exists.\u00a0 My purpose here is to take another run at a simple definition.
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\nAt the end of a recent conversation on this very topic, one of the trustees of Biblical Seminary observed, “Isn’t this whole missional thing really just about following Jesus into the world?”\u00a0 Now summarizing a decade of scholarly and popular discussion with one sentence could seem dismissive or belittling of what some of us feel is an incredibly important set of issues.\u00a0 However, the comment was not made with any negative intent and, as I have reflected on it, I’ve become convinced that it may be a very valuable handle for grasping the missional concern.
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\nFollowing Jesus into the World<\/p>\n

These words provide a concrete image of the church’s call to mission.\u00a0 The disciple is to be like the teacher.\u00a0 As the Father sent the Son into the world, the resurrected Jesus now sends his followers (John 20:21).\u00a0 The death and resurrection of Jesus is the life-transforming and world-transforming event that empowers the disciples to go, and insures that their going will not be in vain.\u00a0 Like their master, the disciples go forth with word and deed–they announce the good news and they do good works (the works of the kingdom).
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\nNow if you are on board with this, you may be tempted to say, “What’s new about that?\u00a0 This is what I’ve always thought!”\u00a0 Or perhaps, “This is what our church has always done!”\u00a0 Yes, well . . . maybe, but not so fast.\u00a0 The fact is that most of the churches I know are not missional in the sense I have just described.\u00a0 So perhaps your church is different . . . perhaps!
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\nLet me point out some differences between this vision of the church’s mission and what I most frequently observe.
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\n1.\u00a0 The missional vision is outward-facing rather than inward-facing.\u00a0 My experience of church has been of groups that were largely inwardly focused.\u00a0 The primary concern and expenditure of energy was for the internal community of believers.\u00a0 We gave our attention to questions like:\u00a0 How can we improve the worship experience?\u00a0 How can we better care for the congregation?\u00a0 How can we increase the number of people in small groups?\u00a0 How can we provide discipleship for our children and young people?\u00a0 How can we increase attendance and grow the membership?
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\nI am not suggesting that most churches have no concern for non-Christians or strangers–many do.\u00a0 But even where such concern exists, it often appears as an after-thought or as something important that we will get to after we take care of what is really important–edifying the congregation and performing church in a particular place.\u00a0 Is this one of the reasons most churches see very little conversion growth?<\/p>\n

By contrast, the missional congregation follows Jesus outside of the church.\u00a0 It walks with him through the community.\u00a0 It visits with people who no longer feel comfortable coming to church, either because they feel unwelcome, unacceptable, or unsure.\u00a0 The missional congregation recognizes that some of its most important ministry will take place outside the church.\u00a0 It asks, “How is the Holy Spirit moving in our community and how might we be “workers together” with God?”
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\n2.\u00a0 The missional vision is confident rather than fearful.\u00a0 Following Jesus into the world means we travel with the One who has authority over wind and waves and evil spirits, who heals the sick, feeds the hungry, speaks forgiveness to sinners, and raises the dead.\u00a0
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\nBut much of Western Christianity today is fearful.\u00a0 Our churches have become places of retreat, bastions of intellectual and spiritual timidity.\u00a0 Sundays are times to convince ourselves that what we believe is true even though it seems to have little bearing on the other six days of life in the big bad world.
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\nI am not suggesting that retreat is always wrong or that the world is not a dangerous place.\u00a0 It’s just that hunkering down in a foxhole is not a good tactic if we are serious about following Jesus.\u00a0 He best understood the dangers for himself and for us.\u00a0 “I am sending you out like lambs among wolves!” (Luke 10:3).\u00a0 The church that follows Jesus into the world will chose confident vulnerability over fortressed security.
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\n3.\u00a0 The missional vision is incarnational.\u00a0 I have written about this in earlier articles, but it bears repeating.\u00a0 Following Jesus means that we are disciples of the God who became flesh and walked among us, who combined words and deeds in announcing the good news that God’s Kingdom was at hand.\u00a0 The Kingdom is the coming reign of God who is now setting the world to rights (to borrow N.T. Wright’s fine phrase).\u00a0 All is to be restored, and the ministry of Jesus is the sign and foretaste of what the new creation will ultimately be.
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\nThe churches I have experienced focused primarily on words.\u00a0 We stressed the importance of teaching and preaching the gospel clearly–most of it within the church and for the church.\u00a0 Good works were encouraged as a response to the gospel and as a way of saying “thank you” to God for his mercy.\u00a0
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\nWhat this perspective lacks is an incarnational understanding of discipleship.\u00a0 The power of the Lord’s ministry is that he not only proclaimed the kingdom, he enacted it. And this is what the missional church has understood: the gospel not only needs to be announced, it needs to be performed.\u00a0 Where?\u00a0 In church?\u00a0 Well, yes, that’s important (though most of our congregations aren’t doing too well on this, right?).
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\nIf we are serious about following Jesus into the world, isn’t it equally important for us to “perform the gospel” in the world?\u00a0 When Paul tells the Ephesian Christians that “we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10) he is not speaking about private spirituality but about the signs of the new creation that God has prepared for us to enact as witnesses to the gospel.<\/p>\n

What specific good works are in view?\u00a0 A local congregation can only answer this question by prayerfully following Jesus into the “world” (i.e. their local neighborhood).\u00a0 Such a congregation might ask the question, “How would this community be different if the Kingdom arrived in power today?”\u00a0 The answer would offer a helpful clue to the kind of good works God has prepared for them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So there you have it.\u00a0 A simple idea but, like many simple ideas, profound.\u00a0 The missional church movement is an attempt by Western Christians to reclaim our identity as disciples–people learning to be like Jesus and ready to follow him into our world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is from the newsletter of Dave Dunbar, President of Biblical Seminary.\u00a0 I think it’s great. Following Jesus into the World A recent issue of Leadership magazine carries a brief article by Alan Hirsch that cuts through some of the fog surrounding the term “missional.” He first clarifies what missional does not mean. It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecclesiology","category-spirituality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-br","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}