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What does missional mean?

July 21st, 2009 by Administrator

A while ago I was in a blog conversation about the meaning of missional. I salute my friend Bill Kinnon for his insights into this issue, and his continuing to keep the conversation moving in directions that I think Jesus would applaud. I reprise my comments here for your consideration; some of the context I am referring to will be lost to you, but the general flow of thought is clear enough. I am responding to Bill’s insight, along with Darryl Dash’s, that the current crop of people talking about ‘missional’ are not really doing evangelism. They are re-defining the word to omit evangelism, particularly proclamation of the gospel.

December 20, 2008

Bill,

Great post; HT Darryl. This is, to me, the next edge of the missional conversation. The need to be missionally engaging disappears if we have nothing to say, nothing to engage the world with. I think Ed would agree with me that I should not be content with trying to reduce my Christianity to loving God with all heart, soul, mind and strength- unless I let God spell out for me what that kind of loving looked like.

And He has. You cannot; let me repeat that – you CANNOT love the Lord with all your heart soul mind and strength without obeying His commands – including His clear, crystal clear, command to evangelize and make disciples. Jesus not only proclaimed the gospel verbally, warned people about impending judgment vividly, but also trained his people rigorously to go, 2 by 2, and learn to share the gospel verbally.

And, in Matthew 28, he commanded them- commanded, mind you – to make disciples, which by definition HAD to include verbal evangelistic proclamation, since so much of the world had not heard of him. And He commanded the disciples to teach us to obey EVERYTHING that He had commanded them – including the command to make disciples, to share the gospel. Verbally.

So the Great Commission is an ever-recurring loop, as it were, a command that replicates to every generation of disciples. It is not negotiable. If you are not proclaiming the gospel – verbally- to those who are not Christians, I cannot imagine how any of the apostles, or Christ himself, would be able to call you missional. To be honest, I would not think they would even call you obedient.

Let us be honest; too many of us are afraid to share our faith. We KNOW we should tell our neighbours/friends/co-workers about Christ. I also know how hard it is; I have been trying and failing for years now.

But let’s call a spade a spade. We are afraid. We lack courage to be rejected, belittled, suspected, marginalized. It’s OK to be afraid; Paul was, too. In Eph 6:19 he asks for prayer, so that..’19 and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel,

So let’s stop justifying and rationalizing this, start confessing, repenting and changing.

Too much of the present missional talk here in North America only makes sense if we assume a near universal cultural awareness of what the contents of the gospel are. Actually, I would go further: it also assumes a near-universal cultural rejection of traditional forms of Christian expression which have, in the minds of many, distorted the actual gospel. I would agree that our culture has rejected a distorted version of the gospel.

But I would add, that our culture also rejects the gospel itself. There is an inherent offence to the gospel that transcends our culture and is timeless; Jesus predicted it in John 15:18:“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

And again in John 3: 19:

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil .

I think the next edge of the missional conversation needs to be parsing the difference between the inherent offence of the gospel, and additional offences we do or do not add to it by how we relate to the culture.

The present animus against Rick Warren is a classic case. He has given and raised millions of dollars for AIDS research and treatment of AIDS victims, including thousands of gay people, gaining the approval and admiration of many gay-rights advocates. But now he is being attacked by those same people right now because he opposes same-sex marriage. His lifestyle is as engaging and humble and loving to them as any of us, but his gospel convictions are attracting considerable hatred.

So how would you, missionally, advise Rick? Is the present animus against him a failure, on his part, to relevantly and winsomely engage the culture – or is it simply the offence of the gospel itself?

From what I can tell, it is the offence of the gospel itself. And I love his response; it does not bother him.

And it should not bother us. The culture, absent a massive move of the Spirit of God, will not wholeheartedly embrace the gospel. Nor will it ever wholeheartedly embrace the church that believes and proclaims the gospel. Our job is not to convert the culture, nor retreat from culture. Our job is to confess Christ to the culture, and leaven the culture.

Ed’s point about asymmetric relation is relevant here: God does the converting. I think I use it differently than he – mine is a reformed assent to this idea, meant to inspire contagious hope-filled proclamation of the gospel. But I agree with him still. Too much of the present missional conversation, however, seems to think that evangelism is up to God but cultural renewal/relevance/impact is up to us! I would reverse that; evangelism is our responsibility, along with social action in mercy and justice. But cultural renewal is an EFFECT, and all redemptive effects are, in the end, the work of God’s Spirit. In short, we should proclaim the gospel in word and deed contagiously, and leave the results to God. We should also engage in cultural renewal winsomely and enthusiastically, but understand, as the saints have throughout the ages, that it is God who saves, God who transforms, God who redeems. Let us do what we are commanded to do, and let Him do what He alone can do.