The Missional Church

I don't ever want to presume to be able to "define" everything, nor do I want my blog to be a series of threads defining this and that.  I don't feel the need to have everything nailed down tightly (just yet at least). 

However, the thoughts and conversations that my Defining Success posts have generated have lead me to believe that the quest for clarity is not entirely a vain endeavor.  Also, I think that it is imperative that we work towards some sort of general consensus on terms-- otherwise all of our other conversations will be humorously disjointed (perhaps not unlike the game we played in Jr High where we had one person talk about their most exhilarating ride on a roller-coaster to an audience of people who thought they were hearing a description of a first kiss).

With that said, I want to open a new thread exploring the Missional Church.  This is motivated by many things-- not the least of which being that an evaluation of the missional church movement is going to be the focus of my Masters thesis.  Missional Church was the first book from the Gospel & Our Culture Network that I read, and it has had a profound shaping influence on my ecclesiology (as have all the other GOCN books).  I have long wanted to do a series of inquiries investigating "missional" language.

And now I feel like I have received my final cue.

In his recent contribution to The Community Of The Word: Toward An Evangelical Ecclesiology, Darrell Guder (does he have a bio @ Princeton's site?) says this:

The research project that generated the book Missional Church, published in 1998 must be held accountable, it appears, for the rapid spread of the term missional in many circles of discussion dealing with the situation of the church in North America.  Our research team chose the term precisely because it was a relatively unknown word. 

We wanted to stimulate a theological conversation about the church which took seriously the premise that, to use the language of Vatican II, "the church is missionary by its very nature."  Within the Gospel and Our Culture Network, which sponsored that particular project, this was our working consensus.  We needed, somehow, to find a way to talk about the fundamentally missional nature of the church without using terms freighted with all kinds of baggage.  By proposing the term "missional" we wanted to claim the right to define what it means.  Of course, since then the word has taken on so many meanings that any discussion must always begin with yet another clarification of terms!  It is almost comparable to the terminological confusion that always surrounds the term "evangelical", for perhaps many of the same reasons.

Proliferation of possible meanings for the word "missional" complicates the terminological challenge we face when we approach the task of doing "evangelical ecclesiology" (Community Of The Word, 114).

Therefore, I want to begin to take steps toward a better approximation of the term "missional" -- with as many as choose to join me. To ask questions relating to: what are the components that make one missional; how "missional ecclesiology" is defined; "missional' as opposed to ____ (that is, can multiple models of the church be missional); how it shapes the life of the church; etc.

Guder continues

The term missional is an attempt to move the discussion beyond too narrow definitions of mission as merely one among the various programs of the church, and to find ways to think about the church's calling and practice today in light of the fact of the multicultural global church, what Archbishop Temple famously called "the great new fact

of our time."  To describe the church as "missional" is to make a theological claim. to articulate a widely held but

also widely ignored consensus regarding the fundamental purpose of the Christian church.  Rather than seeing mission as, at best, one of the necessary prongs of the church's calling, and at worst as a misguided adventure, it must be seen as the fundamental, the essential, the centering understanding of the church's purpose and action.  The church that Jesus intended, to use Gerhard Lohfink's provocative book title, is missional by its very nature[1].  The church that the triune God gathers, upbuilds and sends, to use the profoundly missional outline of Karl Barth's ecclesiology in volume four of Church Dogmatics, exists to continue the service of witness Community Of The Word 116).

[1] Guder's footnote here shows the significance of Lohfink's title in German, which literally reads, How Did Jesus Intend the Community?

//QUESTION
Are Guder's "the's", in this sentence, "Rather than seeing mission as, at best, one of the necessary prongs of the church's calling, and at worst as a misguided adventure, it must be seen as the fundamental, the essential, the centering understanding of the church's purpose and action." arguing for too much from the outset?

Comments

[Daling]

Please do your own research, or allow all of us to share your ThM.

[KEVIN]

For the record, my thesis topic will deal with the use of Scripture in the missional church movement. I was hoping for a slightly different discussion here. And, yes, Mike, I'll gladly shary my degree with you.

[adam]

What up. Good thoughts and a really good question. I read your post a few days ago and decided to ponder a bit before commenting – it seems to me that this question is worth some processing. And, as a sidenote, I’m glad that you are giving critical consideration to missional church thought; it’s good for guys like me who hold to a broadly conceived missional ecclesiology but who have much work to do when it comes to evaluating such an ecclesiology along the way. A disclaimer: I’m not sure if I’m getting at what you are wanting to get at – just an attempt here. I think you may have something when you ask the question of whether or not Guder is arguing for too much from the outset when he argues that mission must be seen as “the fundamental, the essential, and the centering understanding of the church’s purpose and action” – I hear you from the angle which sees a difference between stating that the church is missional by its very nature and stating that mission is the centering/fundamental/essential understanding of the church’s purpose and action. As Guder notes in the excerpt you posted from Community of the Word, he and the GOCN wanted to stimulate a theological conversation which took seriously the premise that (using Vatican II language) “the church is missional by its very nature.” He also notes that they were attempting to find a way to talk about the “fundamentally missional nature” of the church in a new way. Then, in the second excerpt you posted from Community of the Word, Guder writes that “to describe the church as ‘missional’ is to make a theological claim, to articulate a widely held but also widely ignored consensus regarding the fundamental purpose the Christian church… [mission] must be seen as the fundamental, the essential, the centering understanding of the church’s purpose and action. The church that Jesus intended, to use Gerhard Lohfink’s provocative book title, is missional by its very nature.” Is it possible that Guder may be correct when he refers to the nature of the church but that his idea of the missional church becomes problematic when he confuses ‘nature’ with ‘purpose’? Or am I misreading what he means by “understanding”? It seems to me that if we are talking about the ‘nature’ of the church – its intrinsic or essential character – then ‘missional’ could very well be the most theologically faithful way to describe it (of course, though, this would have much to do with how one defines ‘missional’ to begin with!). Here I would read Guder and resonate. But I think you do well to point out that perhaps when he writes of ‘mission’ as the fundamental/essential/centering understanding of the church’s purpose and action that he may be arguing too much – because ‘nature’ is not synonymous with ‘purpose’ or ‘action.’ ‘Purpose’ can have a wide range of meanings, but I would think that given the context of this discussion the most likely intended meanings would be (1) the reason for which something exists or for which it has been made or (2) the goal or intended outcome of something. ‘Action’ has an even wider range of meanings, but again given the context of this discussion I think the most likely intended meanings could be (1) the process of doing something in order to achieve a purpose, (2) something that somebody or something does, (3) the way somebody or something works or the movement itself, (4) the way in which something functions, or the effect it produces. I think that maybe further clarification is needed when it comes to how the terms ‘purpose’ and ‘action’ are being used in relation to ‘nature.’ I’m not sure how Guder would break them down or if he loosely intended them to mean about the same thing as ‘nature’ (I know that I myself all too often write and use words I think are generally synonymous with another word only to find out later that they aren’t!). I think that ‘action’ can be quite close to ‘nature’ when considering some of its meanings among a range of meanings. But I would think that there has to be a distinction made between ‘nature’ and ‘purpose’ regardless of what meaning among the range of meanings you attach to ‘purpose.’ While it seems to me that the ‘nature’ of the church is indeed missional (again given a particular definition of ‘missional’), my reading of the biblical story tells me that the ‘purpose’ of the church is worship. The intrinsic character of the people of God could be called missional in that they are, at their very core, participants in the redemptive mission of God – but the ultimate end of the existence of the people of God, and of their missional being, is worship. I can’t help but wonder if what I’ve typed sounds like a lot of bla bla bla semantics – and I’m usually the first to despise endless semantic arguments – but it seems that semantics are unavoidable in this discussion. Hopefully I’ve made a little sense.

[KEVIN]

Adam--

Great thoughts man. I want to work through your thoughts on 'nature' and 'purpose' a bit more-- though I suspect you might be on to something. I wouldn't consider any of it to be blah blah (that's Daling).

The issue I was trying to touch here is the difference between saying something is "A" fundamental aspect of... and "THE" fundamental aspect.

[KEVIN]

The more I read Adam's thoughts, the more I think he is absolutely on to something-- and I think that this is where the Missional Church movement has over-bet their hand. Much of their critique about the neglect of mission in contemporary ecclesiology is valid. However, I keep coming back to the opening chapter or Piper's Let The Nations Be Glad: "Mission exists because worship doesn't".

I think one of the things I'm trying to come to terms with personally is this: In our attempt to reform historical missiology and ecclesiology, have we made mission the end-- to the neglect of the glory of God (which is the purpose of mission)? And, if so, How?

Or, have we missed it someplace else?

Thanks Beyer!

[Mark]

stumble across your blog. appears no posts for a couple years. Yet I will add: Seems to me the mission of the church is to aid members to individually and corporately learn to, and practice, loving God (the greatest commandment). Secondly to learn and practice how to love others. I think all other missions/purposed fall under these primary categories. -Mark
-mark@woita.com

[Kevin Cawley]

Mark--

Welcome. Plenty of posts in the last couple of years-- just no comments on this post. Thanks for your thoughts and feel free to browse around.