Buzzwords: Missional

The first big buzzword I worked though was missional. Don't know for sure who first said the word, but I did notice Ed Stetzer using it early on. So, I looked at how he had used it. I basically came to the conclusion that missional meant that a church was "on mission." Whew! Glad that was solved! Now what does that mean?

It means two major things to me:

1) A church sees itself as a missionary organization. It makes decisions the same way a missionary church plant would in Africa or China. It ignores the realities of church tradition in the States and acts and thinks as if it were planting in a foreign soil. That means that the church has to think about things like "contextualization" in a different way than if it weren't missional. A traditional church is inward focused, contextualizing for the people who are already there and who have been there for years. The goal is to maintain. The surrounding community is of little importance to the way church life is expressed. The missional churches sees itself more as a part of the culture and the community it is trying to reach. It is outward focused and culturally relevant. For example, a church in africa would look different in some its expressions than one in Detroit because the missionary communities are different.

2) A church sees itself as a missionary sending organization. By this I don't mean just simply sending missionaries to other continents, though this is a part it is not the whole. I mean it sees itself as an organization that trains and sends missionaries into the surrounding community. Sometimes this is expressed as "taking a mission trip to your city." Or it maybe more general, where the culture of the church is such that members see themselves as on mission everyday in their jobs, in their friendship, and in everything they do.

Phew! I liked that one. Actually, I love it. If I am correct in my assessment of the concept of being missional then I am on board. Maybe you could some up the idea of missional as it is where church is all about the them and not about us. Or where church is about the community outside the the wall of a church building more than the community inside the building.

Missional? Thank you ma'am and I'll have another. Let's talk about being "Gospel-centerd."