The following post is by Harry Rowland, CBF’s director of missional church ministries.

Although the word Missional has been around for a century plus, we are in the midst of a New Reformation (giving God’s work back to his people) and therefore finding ourselves having to define and explain it again and again…Here are some attempts:

The Lambeth Conference 1998 asserted, “Mission goes out from God. Mission is God’s way of loving and saving the world…” CBF has a Missional Commitment and defines Missional as participating in God’s mission in the world. As Christians we follow Jesus who said “As the father has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20.21). We are called to serve/participate in God’s mission by living and proclaiming the Good News. It is not the church of God that has a mission, but the God of mission who has a church. This is a significant paradigm shift from how many view the church and mission.

In 1996 the General Synod of the Church of England adopted the Five Marks of Mission.

• To Proclaim the good news of the Kingdom
• To teach, baptize and nurture new believers
• To respond to human need by loving service
• To seek to transform unjust structures of society
• To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain the life of the earth

Much has been written about these Five Marks of Mission, but how do they relate to a Missional Church or a Mission-Shaped Church?  A Missional/Mission-Shaped Church:

• Is focused on God the Trinity: Worship lies at the heart of a Missional Church. It is the sense of mission that births their worship of God.
• Is Incarnational: A Missional Church seeks to shape itself in relation to the culture in which it is located or to which it is called.
• Is Transformational: A Missional Church exists for the transformation of the community that it serves, through the power of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit.
• Makes Disciples: A Missional Church is active in calling people to faith in Jesus Christ (Faith-Sharing)…It is concerned for the transformation of individuals, as well for the transformation of communities.
• Is Relational: A Missional Church is characterized by welcome and hospitality. Its ethos and style are open to change when new members join.

Thus a Missional Journey invites churches and individuals to embark upon these primary transformations. The challenge comes in moving them from “head knowledge” and verbal assent to “heart experience” and lifestyle.

Since I find myself time and again engaged in honest and enthusiastic dialogue along the lines of Missional, I do a good bit of reading about what others are saying about missional. I want to share excerpts about missional from Alan Hirsch’s recent article in Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.

“…..I am concerned about the confusion surrounding the meaning of the word missional. Maintaining the integrity of this word is critical, because recovering a missional understanding of God and the Church is essential not only for the advancement of our mission but, I believe, also for the survival of Christianity in the West.

First, let me say what missional does not mean. Missional is not synonymous with emerging. The emerging church is primarily a renewal movement attempting to contextualize Christianity for a postmodern generation. Missional is also not the same as evangelistic or seeker-sensitive. These terms generally apply to the attractional model of church that has dominated our understanding for many years. Missional is not a new way to talk about church growth. Although God clearly desires the church to grow numerically, it is only one part of the larger missional agenda. Finally, missional is more than social justice. Engaging the poor and correcting inequalities is part of being God’s agent in the world, but we should not confuse this with the whole.

A proper understanding of missional begins with recovering a missionary understanding of God. By his very nature God is a “sent one” who takes the initiative to redeem his creation. This doctrine, known as missio Dei—the sending of God—is causing many to redefine their understanding of the church. Because we are the “sent” people of God, the church is the instrument of God’s mission in the world. As things stand, many people see it the other way around. They believe mission is an instrument of the church; a means by which the church is grown. Although we frequently say “the church has a mission,” according to missional theology a more correct statement would be “the mission has a church.”

Many churches have mission statements or talk about the importance of mission, but where truly missional churches differ is in their posture toward the world. A missional community sees the mission as both its originating impulse and its organizing principle. A missional community is patterned after what God has done in Jesus Christ. In the incarnation God sent his Son. Similarly, to be missional means to be sent into the world; we do not expect people to come to us. This posture differentiates a missional church from an attractional church…..

A missional theology is not content with mission being a church-based work. Rather, it applies to the whole life of every believer. Every disciple is to be an agent of the kingdom of God, and every disciple is to carry the mission of God into every sphere of life. We are all missionaries sent into a non-Christian culture.”

Missional represents a significant shift in the way we think about the church. As the people of a missionary God, we ought to engage the world the same way he does—by going out rather than just reaching out…. When the church is in mission, it is the true church. I often wonder if the problem in defining Missional truly an intellectual one of not understanding or just some sort of denial because in our hearts we understand too well???