I was so jaded toward this word “missional” just a year ago. I was so pissed off because it was in the title of half the books that everyone was telling me I needed to read. It seemed trendy and cheap and devoid of meaning. The seminary I chose to attend put it in the title of every class I had to take (or so it seemed). But for the sake of a few humble men who exemplified everything I wanted to be, I forged ahead to this school, and I tried hard to keep an open mind.
I’ve learned a few things since that time. First, I learned that missiology had been around for decades. I learned that “Missional” wasn’t so much a trend as it was an entire shift in thinking. It had its own hermeneutic, its own theologians, and it had been hijacked by institutions and authors who picked up on its marketing value.
I learned that many of its proponents were modern day reformed theologians who embraced a redemptive historical approach to understanding the bible with extended cultural application. Slowly but surely, I began to embrace this school of thought, and with it came a few other words I’ve come to like:
Ecumenical:
In the Foreword to the book “Your church is too small” J.I. Packer (that’s right people, J.I. PACKER!) said this:
“My friend John Armstrong is a church leader who has traveled the distance from the separatist, sectarian fixity of fundamentalism to embrace the kingdom-centered vision of the church and the call issued by a number of Bible-based theologians and missioligists during the past half century.
What vision is this? It is the one that views the visible church as a single worldwide, Spirit-sustained community within which ongoing doctrinal and denominational divisions, though important, are secondary rather than primary. In this vision the primary is the missional-ecumenical vocation and trajectory crystallized for us by our Lord Jesus Christ in his teaching and prayer and illustrated in a normative way by the Acts narrative and much of the reasoning of the apostolic letters.”
To summarize, the missional church recognizes the need for the body of Christ to be united. I believe that this process is taking place by the erosion of the exclusive, self important movements that are in sharp decline. I believe that my generation is the one that will really get this going (well, those of us who haven’t gone to institutions that boast of their superiority and condemn things they do not understand).
Incarnational:
Very simple… God made his dwelling among us. He still does. Do the same… make your dwelling among the poor, the broken, and enter into their experience at the sacrifice of yourself.
Narrative Theology:
I heard Scott McKnight say in a lecture that most evangelical Protestants bibles only contain two chapters: Genesis 3, and Romans 3. We start with the problem, and jump right to the solution in our presentation of the gospel. Narrative theology looks at the whole of the biblical narrative, starting in Genesis 1 with man being created as an Icon (which means image, don’t get your theological panties in a twist!). The narrative of the bible is an entire movement toward reconciliation. I hate to burst your bubble Protestants, but it’s bigger than your soul and your location after death.
And if you feel like I’m singling out Protestantism as a severely individualistic movement, I am. I recently read a commentary on “A Communist Manifesto”. The author, a world renowned historian from Cambridge, kept coming back to the fact that Communism in its more modern construction has historically been developed by Protestantism and Judaism. The atheist embraced the ethics of the communist party, but rejected with disdain the individualism of Protestantism (and began to see religion as one of the primary oppressors of the people). So the next time you’re trying to figure out how the church in the Global West became so “me focused”, know that this critique/observation has been well documented for at the very least two centuries.
In essence, I gave a definition of what “missional” means in my post “Church as we know it.” Missional as I understand it, carries with it a lot of convictions: Ecumenical, Incarnational, Narrative theology. But since I’ve complicated matters greatly here you have it folks, the missional church… simple.
