Posted 159 days ago
The New Conspirators: Missional Church
The Missional Stream – Consider Moving Missional to the Center of Congregational Life
by Tom Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
While the emerging movement (that we looked at in our last e-zine) was really a grassroots movement that began with young, postmodern practitioners creating new expressions of the church in the UK, the missional movement began in the academy. In 1998, The Gospel and Culture Network, a group of theologians and scholars, published a book called The Missional Church, which really gave birth to the movement. The group was uniquely focused on the reflections and writings of Dr. Lesslie Newbigin, who longed to see mission at the center of the life of the church. Darrell Guder, a professor at Princeton and the editor for the book, said he was surprised by the enthusiastic response the book seemed to inspire.
One of the Network’s newest books, Storm Front: The Good News of God, is particularly helpful in moving beyond scholarly concepts to a practical understanding of what a more mission-focused congregation looks like. This book makes it clear that missional churches at their best shift their focus from creating programs to meet the needs of those within the building to equipping members to address the needs of those outside the building through word and deed mission. The authors of this important book insist that this shift should be reflected in very practical things like the stewardship of time and money.
We decided to use the “Me Church” as our Seed Smile because for too many of us faith has become simply another commodity to consume, whether we do it by attending worship on Sunday morning or turning to online resources. Too often in our hyper-individualistic society, the focus of churches is really is all about meeting our own needs and our kids’ needs.
The strong, outwardly missional focus of the early church gave way to the institutionalization of the church after Constantine, which set the stage for this very consumer-oriented form of church. After the institutionalization of the church, the de facto view of mission, born out of both the Catholic and the Protestant Reformed church, shifted inwardly and became primarily focused on meeting the needs of the people inside the building. Except for the occasional missions conference, this has become the normal model of today. In fact, while most churches we work with in Britain, Australia and New Zealand typically sponsor 2-4 ministries in their local communities, most of the churches we work with in North America, while supporting global mission, don’t sponsor a single ministry in their own cities and states. Is it too much to challenge every congregation to actually create one or two ministries to address the needs of those in their community?
Today, any number of churches consider themselves mission-centered or missional congregations. They use all the right buzz words about “God’s sent people,” but to determine whether the church is focused primarily on meeting the needs of those inside the building or those outside, you have to look at where their money goes. Tom Skinner, a former gang leader and an outstanding African-American evangelist, used to tell suburban congregations: “Let’s quit kidding ourselves…we tithe to ourselves!” The first time I heard that, it took a minute for the penny to drop. Then I realized that he was right. Church members take back virtually everything they give to the church in programs and buildings for themselves and their kids. In fact, in most churches I work with, less than 10% of their income ever leaves the building.
In his provocative article in Leadership Journal called “Will the Real Church Please Stand Up?” Tim Conder, pastor of Emmaus Way in Durham, North Carolina, considers “missional” the new buzz word: “So many fellowships that once boldly self-identified as cell churches, meta-churches, seeker-style or purpose-driven now claim to be missional.” Conder defines the term as “a corrective to or an outright rejection of commodified and cultural Christianity, steeped in institutionalism, individualism, and sentimentality” where “programming and finances are directed outwardly.” I like his outward emphasis, but in my research I find that description reflected in emerging churches more consistently than many who are using the “missional” buzz word.
While the emerging expressions of the church still seem to be arising from the grassroots in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and North America, more of the new missional innovations are coming primarily from seminaries and established denominations. I personally see this as a very positive trend within the established church.
The Anglican Church in Britain has encouraged their churches to become more missional as part of their Fresh Expressions movement (www.freshexpressions.org.uk). Reportedly, over 50% of local churches are creating what they call Fresh Expressions. A Fresh Expression can be anything from breakfast churches that meet in housing estates for the non-churched to skateboard churches that reach out to the youth. Be sure to read Stephen Croft’s article “So, What Is A Fresh Expression?” on the commitment to creating new missional expressions of church in the UK.
Denominations like the Anglican and Baptist Churches in Australia are creating new missional expressions of the church like the Anglican Church in the UK. The Forge, which is directed by Alan Hirsch, is a unique missional training center that enables students to create new missional church plants and mission ventures. The training program emphasizes the need for both reflection and action. They also maintain a network of innovators all over Australia (www.forge.org.au).
The missional movement deserves credit for raising important theological questions regarding what it means to be church and do the mission of the church. Several seminaries in the United States have responded: Fuller Theological Seminary, guided by Ryan Bolger, Eddie Gibbs and Kurt Fredrickson; Biblical Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, with the leadership of John Franke; North Park Seminary in Chicago, with the support of Scot McKnight; Duke Divinity School, guided by Steve Hayner; and Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, under the guidance of Dwight Friesen. George Fox Theological Seminary also offers an emphasis in this area that often includes Leonard Sweet. A new organization called Missional Leadership, started by Alan Roxburgh, is seeking to help the church to become more missional (www.mliweb.net). Andy Harrington, director of YFC in Vancouver, BC, reports that the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada is creating a nationwide program called Cadence to train younger Christians to become missional leaders in the church.
In 2006, I discovered a couple of important British books that echo some of these same themes. Stuart Murray’s Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World asks the provocative question: how do we do mission a post-Christendom world? David Smith’s Mission After Christendom sees churches in the majority world radically changing our understanding of faith and mission.
Australians Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost wrote The Shaping of Things to Come, one of the first popular books to reach out to those dissatisfied with the conventional church. Not surprisingly this book is also very popular with the emerging church crowd and became one of the first bridges between the two streams. In 2005, Hirsch and Frost led a conference called “Dangerous Stories” in Melbourne, Australia. Sponsored by the Forge, this high energy conference was the first I had been to that brought together people from the emerging and missional streams to explore innovative ways to become more a part of God’s missional conspiracy.
In the United States, several major denominations have seen the handwriting on the wall regarding the serious decline of traditional congregations, and are making a serious investment in planting a broad range of new, experimental, missional church plants with the hopes of reaching a younger and more multicultural generation. Dave T. Olson, who directs church planting for the Covenant Church, is planting new churches that seek to reflect missional assumptions almost exclusively. These include New Song Irvine and Life Covenant in Edmond, Oklahoma. Both the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America are making major commitments to plant a broad spectrum of new missional congregations to reach very diverse populations. Tim Vink, who heads the Reformed Christian America initiative, told me that their goal is to involve their existing congregations in planting four hundred new churches by 2013.
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