Historical Review of the Term Missional
In the mid-1970s, Lesslie Newbigin returned to his home in England after serving for more than 30 years as a missionary in India. Upon his return, he recognized a significant moral and spiritual decline in the culture he had left behind. He concluded that in the years he was out of the country, England had become a mission field. He devoted the following 20 years of his life to reflecting and writing on “the nature of a missionary encounter with the modern West” (Roxburgh & Boren, 2009, p. 9). His work spawned a conversation which eventually became the focus of the formation of the Gospel and Our Culture Network. This network formed groups in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and North America. In the 1990s, the New Zealand group disbanded. In the United Kingdom, the conversation has remained fairly small and academic, but in the United States the conversation grew substantially (Roxburgh & Boren, 2009, p. 9).
In the late 1980s, that conversation crossed the ocean to North America where a group of church leaders wrestled with questions of “why and how churches had become so captive to individualism and consumerism” (Roxburgh & Boren, 2009, p. 9). These leaders were deeply concerned about the church’s loss of vision and mission for the people and culture around them. Flowing from those conversations, a group of writers came together to record their thoughts in the book Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Guder, 1998). This book popularized the term missional and inspired the writings of more than a dozen books and articles from multiple authors, thus making the term missional widely known.
Misuses of the Term Missional
Throughout the past decade the term missional has gained great popularity. As Hirsch (2008) notes, “A quick search on Google uncovers the presence of ‘missional communities,’ ‘missional leaders,’ ‘missional worship,’ even ‘missional seating,’ and ‘missional coffee’” (Defining Missional, December 12, p. 1). With the wide usage of the term, different people have applied the expression in multiple ways, thus blurring the original meaning.
Not only has the meaning been blurred, but the term missional has been associated with different movements and philosophical strategies of “doing” church. Some leaders see themselves as missional because they have adopted a mission statement, are being intentional about outreach, or are cutting edge in doing ministry. In reacting to the dilution of the term, Hirsch contends, “Missionalis not synonymous with emerging . . . Missional is also not the same as evangelistic or seeker-sensitive . . . Missional is not a new way to talk about church growth . . . Finally, missional is more than social justice” (Defining Missional, December 12, 2008, p. 1).
The blurring also occurs around the understanding of mission and the role and function of the church. The North American church has seen evangelism as a program or “an activity of the church” and a means to build it (Guder, 1998, p. 4). Mistakenly, some have associated missional with a means to enhance or grow the church. Roxburgh and Boren (2009) correct this misuse by stating:
Missional imagination is not about the church; it is not about how to make the church better, how to get more people to come to church, or how to turn a dying church around. It's not about getting the church back to cultural respectability in a time when it has been marginalized. (p. 20)
To clarify their understanding of the church and mission,Roxburgh and Boren (2009) say,“It is not the church of God that has a mission. It is the God of mission that has a church” (p. 20). Similarly, Guder (1998) asserts, “the church of Jesus Christ is not the purpose or goal of the Gospel, but rather its instrument and witness” (p. 5). A careful reading of scripture reflects an ecclessiology of the church existing and functioning for God’s purposes and mission rather than to serve her own wants, needs or ego.
A Definition of the Term Missional
An accurate understanding of the term missional begins with the etymology of the term and a proper perspective of the nature of God. The root word for missional comes from the noun form of the Latin, “mitto, mittere, misi, missus”: “send.” (The Latin noun derived from the verb mitto is missio, missionis). When missional is connected to the nature of God, it references the theological concept that the Trinitarian God is a missionary God or a “sending God” who has taken initiative to restore his creation. The Father sent the Son, the Son sent the Spirit, and the Spirit and the Son sent the church. God’s intent in sending is to bring redemption to the entire world (Guder, 1998). This doctrine is known as missio Dei or God’s mission. As McNeal (2009) states, “To think and to live missionally means seeing all life as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in the world” (xiv). Or as Hirsch (2008) explains, to be missional is to understand that as the "sent people of God, the church is the instrument of God's mission in the world” (Defining Missional, p. 1).
Intimately connected to the church being sent is the cultural context into which the church is going. Being missional encapsulates the notion of the gospel being contextualized. Being missional is being contextual. Guder (1998) notes, “The gospel is always conveyed through the medium of culture . . . To be faithful to its calling the church must be contextual . . . It is important then that the church study its context carefully and understand it” (p. 18). To legitimately communicate the good news, the church must effectively translate the gospel into the cultural language of her ministry environment. Knowing and understanding the environment is essential for determining the language that will communicate.
Finally, inherent in the term missional is the notion that every church and every believer ought to engage in God’s mission not as an activity but as a way of life. Being missional carries with it the sense that every church and every believer is on mission all of the time. In discussing mission Bosch (2009) declares,
Mission is not a fringe activity of a strongly established church, a pious cause that may be attended to when the home fires are first brightly burning… missionary activity is not so much the work of the church as simply the church at work. It is a duty that pertains to the whole church. (p. 372)
Both the individual and the corporate body are missionary and they are to live on mission all of the time. The work of communicating the gospel through action and word is the responsibility of every believer, not just the professional missionary or church leader.
To summarize, the term missional includes three concepts: (a) missional is a theological concept encapsulating the notion that God is missionary and has sent individuals and the corporate body as missionaries into their immediate local communities; (b) missional is a cultural term encapsulating the notion that the church must be contextual in order to effectively communicate the gospel. The gospel must be translated in terms that people in the immediate cultural context can grasp and understand; otherwise, the gospel is not transmitted; (c) missional is mission-focused. Missional is an understanding that each individual in the church is sent by God into the world to bear the message of redemption. It is not just the job of professional missionaries sent from Western countries to less civilized parts of the world, but the responsibility of all followers of Christ to go into their spheres of influence, as instruments of God, contextually bearing the message of redemption. As Guder (1998) states,
We have come to see that mission is not merely an activity of the Church. Rather, mission is the result of God's initiative, rooted in God's purposes to restore and heal creation. “Mission” means “sending,” and it is the central biblical theme describing the purpose of God's action in human history. (p. 4)
