What is a Missional Church? paper

i found this a few days ago, and i figured i'd post it....a pretty basic paper defining the missional church. hope its of some benefit to you.

Statistics show that the church in America is in serious decline these days. Although still looked at by the world as a “Christian nation,” the American people are drifting further and further away from the faith that this country was founded upon. In fact, President Obama said to reporters in Turkey earlier this month that America is no longer a Christian nation. “I’ve said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is, although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation.”[1]

In 1954, 71% of Americans identified themselves as Protestant Christians. Today, only 55% say that they are Christian.[2] More shocking is that, as of 2003, actual attendance of evangelical churches in the United States accounts for 9% of the population.[3] The church in the West is struggling and becoming irrelevant to a society that does not see any use for Christianity. Thousands of churches close their doors every year, and instead of multiplying, many churches are turning into museums.

Faced with the secularization of society and the shutting of church doors, what should the church’s next move be? How can things turn around for Christianity in the West today? Is there any hope? Alan Hirsch, a leading missiologist and church planter says, “What is becoming increasingly clear is that if we are going to meaningfully reach this majority of people, we are not going to be able to do it by simply doing more of the same.”[4] The philosophy and ministry of the church in the West is proving to be ineffective in reaching people today. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle writes:

Leaders…[began to see] that many contemporary evangelical churches had slipped into an attritional ministry philosophy focused almost solely on bringing people into church buildings and events. Such churches lacked a missional philosophy focused on sending Christians out of the church into the world to evangelize and disciple people. Subsequently, the Western church had, sadly, become overly attached to and defined by buildings, programs, staff, services, and institutions that only strategize ways to do “attractional” ministry.[5]

What is needed is a change in philosophy – from attritional to missional. In order for the church in the West to survive and flourish, churches need to become missional. In this paper, we will cover three concepts. First, what does it mean to have a “missional” church? Secondly, we will give the reasons why every church should be a missional church. And, lastly, we will cover the practices of a missional church.

Darrell Bock said it well in his commentary on Acts: “The church exists, in major part, to extend the apostolic witness to Jesus everywhere. In fact, the church does not have a mission; it is to be missional and is a mission.”[6] In order for the church to be effective once again in the West, we must recover our identity as missionaries.

Defining Missional

Lesslie Newbigin is the father of the missional movement. After returning to England from a lifetime of missions work in India, he came back to Western culture and was shocked to observe its radical secularization and departure from Christianity. Seeing this problem, Newbigin began to articulate the view that we need to see the Western world as a mission field and that we need to adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture – just as we would in overseas missions.[7] From this, the idea of the missional church was born.

Darrell Guder coined the term “missional” in some of his research work. He said, “We chose the term because it was not defined, and we wanted to find a way to convey with an adjective the fundamentally missionary nature of the church.”[8] So, key to the idea of the missional church is the concept of a missionary. Ask anyone in evangelicalism what comes to their mind when they hear the word “missionary,” and immediately images of white men and women sent to tribal people groups abroad will pop into their head. Instead of limiting the idea of missionary to contexts overseas, the missional church sees its all of its members as missionaries to their own context, their own city. Therefore, members of a missional church ask the question, “What would a missionary do to reach my co-workers, my neighbors, and my peers with the gospel?” When we begin to look at ourselves as missionaries sent to proclaim a message rather than members an organization, things begin to change.

Alan Hirsch defines a missional church as “a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world.”[9] Just as each member of a missional church sees itself as a missionary, a missional church orients itself around mission. So often we see the church as “the house of God” and a place where we come to worship. Everything in church seems to be oriented around buildings, services, and events. A missional church, however, sees the mission of God as the organizing principle for ministry. Therefore, everything that the church does should be passed through the filter of mission.

What is the Mission of the Missional Church?

If the missional church orients all of its practices around mission, then what is that mission? Our mission is the very mission of God, the Missio Dei. As seen in the Scriptures, God’s mission has been from the beginning of time the restoration and healing of the world. Only through Jesus Christ can this restoration be achieved. God’s mission climaxed with Christ, who was sent into the world. Jesus, the greatest missionary, left the context of heaven and came into earth, speaking our language, wearing our clothes, and eating our food. He did this to preach the good news of the kingdom of God – the gospel – to a lost people. In the same way, we as Christians (little Christs) are to be like Christ and be a sent people, bringing the gospel to lost people. The missional church has its roots in the mission of God to humanity.

Mark Driscoll says, “the mission of the church is nothing less than bringing the entire world to Christian faith and maturity.”[10] This is seen in the Great Commission that Jesus gives just before his ascension. He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”[11] Jesus gives the command to his disciples to make disciples by going into the world and preaching the gospel. The missional church embraces this commission by God and organizes all of its practices around it.

Therefore, the church itself is not an end. It isn’t God’s mission to plant or grow churches. God’s mission is to redeem lost people and restore them to right relationship with Him. The church is a vehicle for this – a means of making disciples, fulfilling God’s mission for this world.

The Biblical Basis for the Missional Church

Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution, describes his experience growing up in evangelicalism. “A lot of us were hearing ‘don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t sleep around’ and naturally started asking, ‘Okay, well, that was pretty much my life, so what do I do now?’ Where were the do’s? And nobody seemed to have much to offer us…[it] just didn’t seem like the fullness of Christian discipleship.”[12]

It seems like there are a lot of “don’ts” in the Bible, but what are we to do as Christians? Answer: participate in the mission of God!

There is no one single passage that instructs churches to be “missional.” However, mission is seen as an integral piece of God’s character. Ed Stetzer says, “God is a missionary God in this culture and in every culture. His nature does not change with location.”[13]As mentioned above, Jesus is our example, and he was the greatest missionary that ever lived. In John 20:21 he passes that identity onto us as his followers. Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." Inherent in our identity as Christians is the idea of being sent. We are to be like Christ, sent into the world to preach the good news. “There is no participation in Christ without participation in His mission to the world. That by which the Church receives its existence is that by which it is also given its world mission.”[14] The biblical basis for the missional church is inherent in the gospel itself.

Alan Hirsch identifies a helpful formula for the basis for missional churches. The formula is this: our Christology determines our missiology, and our missiology determines our ecclesiology. He writes, “Christian mission always starts by Jesus and is defined by him.”[15] We see the basis for missional churches in the founder of Christianity. When we view Jesus in the Bible, this affects how we approach mission. And how we look at missions affects how we organize our church. “Start with the Church and the mission will probably get lost. Start with mission and it is likely that the church will be found.”[16]

So, the missional church is biblical because it is inherently linked to the identity of Jesus Christ. As his followers, we must imitate his practices and let his Bride function in line with his will.

The Need for Missional Churches

Mark Driscoll writes, “To understand the missional church one must first understand the cultural shift from a thousand years of Christendom and the way that culture is created in the post-Christian world.”[17] Since the reign of Constantine in AD 300, Western culture has operated within Christendom. During this time, nearly all people that lived were both influenced by and familiar with Christianity. This made preaching the gospel much easier because one did not have to leave his or her own culture in order to communicate the message of Jesus. However, this all but eliminated the missionary impulse so critical to the Missio Dei. Mission was associated with geography rather than daily life. Stetzer says, “The Church of Western European Christendom was a church without mission.”[18]

Now, Christendom is mostly dead in all of Europe and most of the United States. Instead of having a common worldview and understanding things like sin, righteousness, and Jesus, the world has become fragmented. People no longer identify themselves with “grand stories” or ideologies. Instead, they form small pockets of affinities. This is what sociologists are calling the “tribalization of Western culture.”[19]

The problem the church is facing today is staggering. Our methods for doing church are still based on Christendom. Hirsch says, “The problem we face is that while as a sociopolitical-cultural force Christendom is dead, and we now live in what has been aptly called the post-Christendom era, the church still operates in exactly the same mode.”[20] What mode is this? It is an attractional method. This was perfectly effective when everyone thought the same, acted the same, and lived the same. However, with the tribalization of culture, the attractional method is not working nearly as effective. Thus comes the need for a missional church. Since people are not coming to church, we as the church must bring the church to them. Just as Jesus came into our culture as the Incarnation – God in flesh – so we also must adopt an incarnational approach as the church.

How do we have a missional church?

There is no one easy answer for how to become a missional church. More than anything it is a shift in thinking that transforms the way the church operates. This shift in thinking starts with Jesus.

As said previously, in order to become a missional church, we must first look to Jesus. This will affect the way we view mission, and the mission will affect the way our church looks. Ed Stetzer and David Putman lay out several key shifts that must take place in order to have a missional church. They say we must make the transition:

· from programs to processes,

· from demographics to discernment,

· from models to missions,

· from attritional to incarnational,

· from uniformity to diversity,

· from professional to passionate,

· from seating to sending,

· from decisions to disciples,

· from additional to exponential, and

· from monuments to movements.[21]

Instead of being isolated in its own Christian subculture, the missional church realizes its identity, goes into culture, and contextualizes the gospel to the people that they come in contact with. They are intentionally engaging culture and bringing the gospel into society rather than waiting for society to come to them.

Charles Spurgeon said, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” Inherent in the identity of the church is the mission of God, and nonmissional churches are neglecting their identity and misrepresenting the church. The American church must become missional in today’s post-Christian society. We must return to the DNA that defines the church and rediscover the missional impulse that God has written on our hearts. Tim Keller said it best: “Evangelical churches…will have to learn how to become ‘missional.’ If it does not do that it will decline or die. We don’t simply need evangelistic churches, but rather ‘missional’ churches.”[22]

Bibliography

Bock, Darrell L. Acts. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.

Claiborne, Shane. The Irresistible Revolution. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

Driscoll, Mark and Gerry Breshears. Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008.

Edwards, David. “Obama to Turkey: We are not a Christian or Jewish or Muslim nation.” http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_to_Turkey_We_are_not_0406.html. (accessed April 14, 2009).

Garrison, David. Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World. Bangalore: WIGTake Resources, 2004.

Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006.

Keller, Tim. “The Missional Church,” June 2001. http://www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/missional.pdf

Newport, Frank. “This Easter, Smaller Percentage of Americans Are Christian.” http://www.gallup.com/poll/117409/Easter-Smaller-Percentage-Americans-Christian.aspx (accessed April 14, 2009).

Stetzer, Ed. Planting Missional Churches: Planting a Church That’s Biblically Sound and Reaching People in Culture. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006.

Ed Stetzer, “Meanings of Missional – Part 1” http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2007/08/meanings-of-missional-part-1-1.html (accessed April 14, 2009).

Stetzer, Ed and David Putnam. Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006.

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[1] David Edwards, “Obama to Turkey: We are not a Christian or Jewish or Muslim nation,” http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_to_Turkey_We_are_not_0406.html.

[2] Frank Newport, “This Easter, Smaller Percentage of Americans Are Christian,” http://www.gallup.com/poll/117409/Easter-Smaller-Percentage-Americans-Christian.aspx.

[3] Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 35.

[4] Hirsch, 37.

[5] Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008), 217-218.

[6] Darrell Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 66.

[7] Hirsch, 81.

[8] Ed Stetzer, “Meanings of Missional – Part 1” http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2007/08/meanings-of-missional-part-1-1.html

[9] Ibid., 82.

[10] Driscoll and Breshears, 217.

[11] Matthew 28:18-20

[12] Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 38.

[13] Ed Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches: Planting a Church That’s Biblically Sound and Reaching People in Culture, (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), 27.

[14] Ibid., 28.

[15] Hirsch, 142.

[16] Ibid., 143.

[17] Driscoll and Breshears, 220.

[18] Stetzer, 28.

[19] Hirsch, 61.

[20] Hirsch, 61.

[21] Ed Stetzer and David Putnam, Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community, (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), 48.

[22] Tim Keller, “The Missional Church,” June 2001, http://www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/missional.pdf