NOTEBOOK
Winter/Spring 2008
Toward A Missional Church
As we think of TBC and our calling to missions, and if we consider the current emphasis within Christendom on doing acts of missions -- everything from fighting global warming to feeding the hungry, we might well ask within this prevailing context just what a missional church would look like?
At its base, a missional church comes into being because a local discipleship community recognizes that it is God Himself who is on mission in the world, and that he has, in grace, chosen to outwork this mission primarily (but not exclusively) through his local congregations.
There are several important implications from this idea:
This means the church is not the goal of missions...
The church is a witness to God’s mission...
And finally, all a church does is missions...
Another way to say this is to say that if the only missions a church does is its annual foreign missions offering promoted by the denomination, or if some sort of mission work is added to whatever else the church is doing, then this must be seen as a failure of mission!
For it must be remembered that God’s mission is nothing short of Jesus, as the Christ, who is God’s final and complete word of redemption for all of humanity. That is, in the mission of God, we witness to the fact that we ourselves have met and found completion through the power of the Christ, the risen one, and that the world will also find this same power available for new life and a new way to live if it will turn to this God who is on mission, this God who ever seeks those who have lost their way and who are willing to admit this as reality. And it must also be remembered that this Jesus, and him alone, is the calling of the church -- for we have been sent!
But, and here’s the kicker, how is a church to be missional without a thorough consideration of its surroundings (read: context). I mean, to assert that a church must “preach” the gospel, but then fail to not think through just what that gospel sounds like to the ears (and minds) hearing it preached, is selfishness, and spells the doom of the gospel!
So, the question here is simple and challenging: How does the gospel we have consistently preached sound to postmodern-postchristian people? If a church would ever be brave enough to think through this, they would find themselves deeply challenged.
Another way to think about this is to remind ourselves of the Sally Morgenthaler quote: “The culture is having a spiritual discussion, and the church is not invited.”
And why aren’t invited? We are not invited, partly, because we have lost our ability to listen, and partly because the culture no longer thinks we have anything to contribute to the discussion. So, here we are, the light of the world to proclaim, and we cannot find a hearing. What a tragedy! How far we have fallen!