What is Missional - A Short Answer
"Jesus told us to go into all the world and be his ambassadors, but many churches today have inadvertently changed the "go and be" command to a "come and see" appeal. We have grown attached to buildings, programs, staff and a wide variety of goods and services designed to attract and entertain people.
"Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the "come to us" invitations with a "go to them" life. A life where "the way of Jesus" informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower." ---Rick Meigs
1. From Brother MaynardDescription of a Missional Church
- A missional church is a collection of missional believers acting in concert together in fulfillment of the missio dei.1
- A missional church is one where people are exploring and rediscovering what it means to be Jesus' sent people as their identity and vocation.
- A missional church is individuals willing and ready to be Christ's people in their own situation and place.
- A missional church knows that they must be a cross-cultural missionary (contextual) people and adopt a missionary stance in relation to their community.
- A missional church will be engaged with the culture (in the world) without being absorbed by the culture (not of the world). They will become intentionally indigenous.
- A missional church understands that God is already present in the culture where it finds itself. Therefore, a missional church doesn't view its purpose as bringing God into the culture or taking individuals out of the culture to a sacred space.
- A missional church is about more than just being contextual, it is also about the nature of the church and how it relates to God.
- A missional church is about being -- being conformed to the image of God.
- A missional church will seek to plant all types of missional communities.
- A missional church is evangelistic and faithfully proclaims the gospel through word and deed. Words alone are not sufficient; how the gospel is embodied in our community and service is as important as what we say.
- A missional church understands the power of the gospel and does not lose confidence in it.
- A missional church will align all their activities around the missio dei -- the mission of God.
- A missional church seeks to put the good of their neighbor over their own.
- A missional church will give integrity, morality, good character and conduct, compassion, love and a resurrection life filled with hope preeminence to give credence to their reasoned verbal witness.
- A missional church practices hospitality by welcoming the stranger into the midst of the community.
- A missional church will see themselves as a community or family on a mission together. There are no "Lone Ranger" Christians in a missional church.
- A missional church will see themselves as representatives of Jesus and will do nothing to dishonor his name.
- A missional church will be totally reliant on God in all it does. It will move beyond superficial faith to a life of supernatural living.
- A missional church will be desperately dependent on prayer.
- A missional church gathered will be for the purpose of worship, encouragement, supplemental teaching, training, and to seek God's presence and to be realigned with God's missionary purpose.
- A missional church is orthodox in its view of the gospel and scripture, but culturally relevant in its methods and practice so that it can engage the worldview of the hearers.
- A missional church will feed deeply on the scriptures throughout the week.
- A missional church will be a community where all members are involved in learning "the way of Jesus." Spiritual development is an expectation.
- A missional church will help people discover and develop their spiritual gifts and will rely on gifted people for ministry instead of talented people.
- A missional church is a healing community where people carry each other's burdens and help restore
gently.
- A missional church will requires that its leaders be missiologists.
What a Missional Church is Not
- A missional church is not a dispenser of religious goods and services or a place where people come for their weekly spiritual fix.
- A missional church is not a place where mature Christians come to be fed and have their needs met.
- A missional church is not a place where "professionals" are hired to do all the work of the church.
- A missional church is not a place where the "professionals" teach the children and youth about God to the exclusion of parental responsibility.
- A missional church is not a church with a "good missions program." The people are the missions program and includes going to "Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
- A missional church is not about a new strategy for evangelism.
- A missional church is not missional just because it is contemporary, young, hip, postmodern-sensitive, seeker-sensitive or even traditional.
- A missional church is not about big programs and organizations to accomplish God's missionary purpose. This does not imply no program or organization, but that they will not drive mission. They will be used in support of people on mission.
- A missional church is not involved in political party activism, either on the right or left. As Brian McLaren wrote, we need "purple peoplehood" — people who don't want to be defined as red or blue, but have elements of both.
Etymology of Missional
Definition: "Relating to or connected with a religious mission; missionary."
Part of Speech: Adjective. An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying words. An adjective usually precedes the noun or the pronoun which it modifies.
Etymology: From the word missionalism which is a noun meaning, "missionary work or activity."
First Usage: 1907 in W. G. HOLMES' Age Justinian & Theodora II. Page 687. Quote: "Several prelates, whose missional activities brought over whole districts and even nationalities to their creed" (emphasis added). (Reference: Oxford English Dictionary)
Modern Usage: The first missiologist using the term "missional" in its modern understanding was Francis DuBose in his book, "God Who Sends" (Broadman Press, 1983). By the 1990's the term began to appear more and more in such books as "Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America" (Edited by Darrell L. Guder) and the works of Lesslie Newbigin.
Found and quoted from the Friend of MISSIONAL web site found here: http://www.friendofmissional.org/
What you have just read is what NORTHpoint Network is all about! BEING THE CHURCH as God designed it to be.
