Bringing Missional Clarity

by Trent Grable, Director of Strategy & Leadership

In the world of church leadership, we throw around a lot of terms and phrases like ‘missional expression,’ or ‘operational capacity’ and one hundred other words that certainly mean something, but it’s not always clear what. It is true that changing our language can be revolutionary in helping us break out of old ways of thinking. New words and new definitions of old worlds can provide a fresh perspective. Yet, I worry that even savvy and intelligent church leaders are still just as likely to get lost in the terminology as they are to be helped by it. We can slap “missional” in front of any word we want, but is it helpful? In that spirit, the following article will help you to answer some fundamental questions about your church and your church's mission. First, is your church really a missional church? We provide three definitions that might help you creatively think through that. Second, if your church is missional, is the mission itself Biblical? Again, we provide three questions to ask as a litmus test for your church’s mission.

Neil Cole, in his book “Organic Church,” defines ‘missional church’ as anything that meets the following three criteria::

These elements can help determine if a church is missional, that is, if it has organic potential to bring other disciples into the mission and take ground for the Kingdom of God. Next, we ask: how does one determine if the mission is biblical?

Neil continues later in “Organic Church” by exploring the DNA of all Spirit-filled church missions: faith, hope, and love.

When we think of mission, perhaps we also think of the risks. The old adage is true that whatever the risks of mission, it is far riskier not to be missional. Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim, in their book “The Permanent Revolution,” observed that when risk aversion becomes a core tenant of an organization, destruction of that organization tends to follow. Even more so for the church. “Christian spirituality requires that we find ourselves by giving ourselves away, that we risk loving until it hurts us, and that we engage in the risky enterprise of mission.” The Christian journey is a perpetual risk of everything temporary for the certainty of the eternal. We hope that by presenting criteria for a missional church and asking simple questions about the nature of your mission, we have provided tools to evaluate your church's mission. For now, we can see only a reflection of heaven’s perfection in our missional expressions here on earth. But in the end, “three remain: faith, hope and love.” Against such a church, “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”