Real Restoration: The Meaning of “Missional”

I’ve written entire series here regarding being a “missional” Christian or church, but it’s been a long time. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that many readers are unfamiliar with the term. A few even concluded that I must have coined the term. Now, I’m not above making up a word when it suits purposes, but I can’t take credit for this one.

The word was coined by David Bosch in Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (1991). But my observation is that the term caught on in evangelical circles due to the series of books edited by Darrell L. Guder, beginning with Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (1998).

Now, to give the readers a very quick and dirty of key names, we have to start with this, from the Wikipedia (in a well-written article) —

The missional living concept is rooted in the Missio dei, which means “the sending of God” in Latin. In 1934, Karl Hartenstein, a German missiologist, coined the phrase in response to Karl Barth and his emphasis on actio Dei (Latin for “the action of God”). Mission is the activity of God himself and that mission should be “understood as being derived from the very nature of God.” The Triune God is the primary acting agent in the world and within the church.

Thus, we have this theological idea — Missio dei — that’s been a part of missiology for quite some time. “Missiology” is the study of how to do missions — “missions” referring primarily to missionary work.

We then skip to Lesslie Newbigin. Newbigin had been a missionary in India for decades. He returned to England to discover that the English churches that sent him had forgotten their purpose, their mission. Through a series of book and lectures, he began to advocate that the Western church should adopt the methods and mission of missionaries. After all, the churches in England had allowed England to become a mission field and therefore needed to think like missionaries — and had this been done this all along, they might not have lost so much of the nation to Satan.

Newbigin thus helped merge the disciplines of “how to church” and “how to do missions” — that is, he urged churches to apply missionary concepts and methods locally — learn the language, study the culture, teach the pure gospel in terms of the local context, separate gospel from Western culture, etc. You see, just as is often true here, those who’ve been part of the church for generations are often culturally so far removed from the surrounding culture that they can’t communicate to the world — much less convert the world. It’s not that we shouldn’t know our Bibles and our doctrine, but rather that we should be able to explain them in terms that can be understood by people with no church background at all.

Guder and many others urge that this concept be expanded by envisioning the church as an extension of God’s own mission — most perfectly revealed in Jesus. Thus, the plea is for the church to get away from mere housekeeping and serving the membership and to instead participate in God’s redemptive mission.

The last decade has been filled with books, seminars, blog posts, etc. seeking to work through the details and ramifications of this concept — and the American evangelical churches are being dramatically transformed as church leadership has replaced old understandings of how to “do church” with better understandings.

A part of this mix is also a better understanding of the story of the Bible (narrative hermeneutics) and thus the nature of the Kingdom (kingdom theology). You can’t understand God’s mission without understanding God as presented by the scriptures, including the Law and the Prophets. If your theology starts with Matthew 1:1, you’ve lost the context for all the New Testament — and you’ll miss some very important things.

Thus, this is a doctrine in process of evolving, as praxis (practical application) interacts with theology (theory) and as ideas are merged together to build a better, deeper understanding of God’s will for today’s church.