The Meaning of “Missional”

There is the purpose driven church, the charismatic or non-charismatic church, the liturgical or non-liturgical church, the seeker friendly church service or traditional church service. We have lots of terms like this kicking around: what is the value of talking now about the “missional church”?

For the next number of years, the term “missional” will only become more frequent in our vocabulary. Our own denomination has a “Missional Director“, one of the three adjectives used to describe the new M.Div program (designed to train pastors) at our denomination’s theological college (Carey) is “missional” and the stated goal of our denominational leaders is to move our denomination in “missional” directions. The missional conversation also transcends denominational boundaries and can be found everywhere. It seems we are going to hear a lot more about things being or becoming missional so we need to understand why this new term is being used so much.

What is behind this term, “missional”?

First, it is no accident that the word “mission” is embedded within this new term but there is a reason why the word “mission” was not employed. If I told you that in the middle of May we would be having a “missions weekend” at the church, what would you expect to happen? Most of us would expect that there would be some missionaries in attendance telling us about their work, probably overseas, but possibly somewhere in places of special need in North America. The “missional” conversation wants to change the way we think about missions which is why a slightly different word was used. Note: Missional thinking is not against missionaries and conferences where missionaries speak about their work.

Here is one of the big changes in the way we think about missions suggested by the missional conversation:

1. Many churches treat mission as one activity of the church amongst others. So we have a CE Committee to look after Christian Education, we have a Building and Grounds Committee to care for the building and grounds, we have a Finance Committee to look after the church’s money and we have a Missions Committee to keep us informed about missionaries and to promote mission attitudes. From this perspective, mission is something we do along with a number of other things.

Missional thinking says that mission is not something we do as much as it is something we are to embody.
The missional conversation is trying to move missions (redefined) from being one activity amongst others of the church to being at the core of our identity. This is why the word “mission” is so important to the missional discussion and why the term “missional” was chosen.

What it means to engage in missions is being reevaluated but make no mistake about it, the missional conversation is extremely interested in mission. It wants however, to take its cues for defining what mission is all about, from the ministry of Jesus, not just the traditions and practices of churches in North America over the last number of decades. As was noted last week, the ministry of Jesus was centered around announcing the kingdom of God and so we need to think about missions as announcing the kingdom of God. Here is a key point in the missional conversation: the CE Committee, the Finance Committee, The B&G Committee should be no less concerned with announcing the kingdom of God than the Missions Committee, not after their committee work is done but in how they function as a committee and what they are trying to accomplish as a committee. When all parts of the church see their role as participating in the mission of Jesus, then we are moving in the direction of embodying the mission of God. We will identify ourselves as a ‘sent people’ (sent on the same mission that Jesus was on) and we will think more about what it means to announce the kingdom of God by the way we organize ourselves and the manner of our lifestyle as people of the kingdom. We will incarnate (embody, display) the ministry of Jesus in who we are as a church and who we are as followers of Jesus.

You are welcome to join the conversation by responding in the comments.

Given this perspective, what should the mandate for the ELB missions committee be?