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Missional Church is in full swing. In classic American fashion, we’ve created a whole industry around it—Networks, Conferences, Books, Blogs, Seminars, Schools, Workbooks, Degrees, and so on. Missional is becoming common parlance among American evangelicals. But at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. What kind of impact is missional church making?
Ed Stetzer reported a disappointing trend in 2008 of continued decline in conversions, church growth, and church starts. Church plants are popping up everywhere, but not faster than established churches are closing their doors. It appears that The Next Christendom isn’t returning to the shores of the West anytime soon. In fact, according to Gallup, cultural Christianity is on the decline. Are we to then assume that the missional church movement is a failure, a fad?
There are several reasons why Missional Church isn’t working. Here I will focus on one reason—syncretistic missional ecclesiology. Syncretistic missional ecclesiology (SME) is the fusion of missional church with institutional church. In other cultural contexts, syncretistic ecclesiology combines Christian church values and practices with other religious institutions like Buddhist temple life. Here we are concerned with the American context, the resurgence of missional church and its unhealthy integration into the institutional church.
Institutional Missional Church
Although many leaders and churches have embraced missional language and theology, they are still having trouble translating mission into their own communities. Why? Because church plants are fusing missional ecclesiology with their prior experience of institutional church. The nature of missional church requires more than cosmetic adjustments to our inherited forms of church. Missional ecclesiology requires an entirely new way of thinking about church, from the bottom up. Church plants and established churches have failed to recognize this important point. As a result, they have created a syncretistic ecclesiology, blending institutional church with missional church. This syncretism is both theologically and practically defective. Sometimes the blending of institutional and missional church is only functionally defective, prone to failure. Other times it is theologically defective, prone to heresy and correction. Here we will primarily focus on functionally defective SME.
Syncretistic Missional Church Practices
How do you know if you are approaching mission institutionally? Here are a few ways:
- Institutional mission relies on preaching, teaching, and writing to implement missional ecclesiology.
- Institutional mission adopts a program of mission during a set season of the year to implement missional ecclesiology.
- Institutional mission focuses on evangelistic and social justice events to implement missional ecclesiology.
- Institutional mission sees mission as a line item in the church budget, not mission as the whole budget.
- Institutional mission views mission as an implication of the gospel, not as part of the gospel.
While these institutional approaches are not bad, they are not enough. Church leadership and practices must be consonant with the nature of mission. The nature of mission is Spirit-initiated not man-made, organic not institutional, training not just teaching, relational not programmatic, gradual not instant. What we need is not institutional mission, but intuitive mission
Intuitive Missional Church
Intuitive mission relies on the intuition of the Spirit through the guidance of the Word to embed a gospel that is missional. It is not primarily concerned with implementation but with cultivation of DNA (see Hirsch’s Apostolic Genius). Intuitive mission is soaked in the Spirit’s guidance. It discerns missional leadership patterns in Scripture. It understands that mission is gospel-centric. It approaches mission as something to be cultivated. Here are some ways to know if you are practicing intuitive mission:
- Intuitive mission relies on Spirit-led prayer that begins with repentance over the sins of institutional, individualistic Christianity in neglecting the mission of the church and diminishing the glory of Christ.
- Intuitive mission discerns missional leadership patterns from Scripture instead of uncritically implementing business models of leadership.
- Intuitive mission cultivates missional DNA through personal and communal forms of training instead of relying primarily upon professional, monological communication.
- Intuitive mission spends lots of time with people not programs, so that we have networks of relationships in which we can authenticate the gospel we preach.
- Intuitive mission does “everyday things with gospel intentionality”, instead of seeing mission as either an evangelistic or social justice event.
If missional ecclesiology is to sufficiently permeate our churches and change our point in history, then we will have to do a better job of spotting our institutionalism. We will need to rigorously weed out unhealthy syncretistic missional ecclesiology. Throw out institutional mission while retaining our rich traditions. Cultivate intuitive mission practices that remain faithful to the gospel and force a gracious, deliberate, and discerning reworking of institutional mission. It is a difficult process. I fall back into my inherited patterns of ecclesiology all the time, so pray for me. I welcome your help. Let’s push mission all the way through our churches, by the grace of God, to see his gospel permeate every aspect of life.
Discussion continued here
In recent research Ed Stetzer examined 450 sermons, with the help of a team, and asked some interesting questions. In particular, he posed: “Do you start [your sermons] with the text or the [listeners] context?” 37% of preachers said they start with context to connect with their audience first, but at closer analysis it was actually over 50%.
Which is Better: Text or Context?
There are pros and cons to starting with either text or context. When we start with text, we reinforce the centrality of God’s word over the preacher’s opinion. We can call people to open their Bibles and follow along. When we start with context, we connect with the listener right away, at a felt need level, and can lead them to the relevancy of the Bible.
Does PowerPoint Reduce Dependence on the Bible?
I typically introduce my sermons with a brief connection to the listener’s context, pray, and then start the sermon. While I think this is good, Stetzer’s comments regarding PowerPoint enriched some of our recent thinking about sermon delivery. Stetzer has almost stopped using PP. Why? People begin to depend on it, not their Bibles.
People at Austin City Life don’t bring or follow along in their Bibles enough. I’m not sure why, so I started an online survey to find out. I think they depend on PowerPoint. I’m glad that some people don’t bring their Bibles because they aren’t even Christians. The fact that they are reading the Bible on a screen is better than not reading Scripture at all. But, there are other ways around that.
I may start using PP less and less. At the start of 2010 we are making a very clear point about the necessity of bringing Bibles to our gatherings, not to be religious but to be reasonable, to reason through Scripture yourself, and not just ping single texts off of a screen. Reading your Bible during a sermon can help you in several ways:
- Focus on the sermon.
- Understand the Bible.
- Read the passage in its larger context.
- Test the pastor’s message against the authoritative message of Scripture.
- Allow you to cross reference what he says with other portions of Scripture.
But a lot of people don’t bring or read their Bibles during sermons. Marshal McLuhan is famous for saying: “the medium is the message”, and I believe one of the unintended messages traveling through our PP medium is you don’t need to read your Bible. Isolated texts on a screen is good enough. That is an awful message, one contradicted by the message of Scripture itself (Ps 19, 119; 2 Tim 3:16).
As a member of the VERGE social media team, I recently received The Tangible Kingdom Primer, an 8 week study to put incarnational missional community to practice. The Primer seems eminently helpful, and has been used by megachurch Austin Stone, host to VERGE, to promote missional community in their own church.
As Halter & Smay point out, when a church grows, slowly or by leaps and bounds, something is needed to continually reproduce your missional values. Their response was the Primer.
The Primer offers helpful exercises, thought-provoking questions, and insightful comments along the way. Here are a smattering of those:
- The reason we struggle to live a missional life is that it pulls against every natural fiber, sin, rhythm, habit, muscle, and thought pattern we’re used to. viii
- Right now, what is hindering you from living a missional life?
- Imagine what could change if the Good news of Jesus was allowed to shape and inform all the area of our lives.
- What personal interests and hobbies can you turn into communal ones?
Although the Primer is highly structured, it provides very practical help in cultivating missional communities. On the other hand, I find it difficult to imagine our church working through a 200 page primer (I thought primers were supposed to be short!). In the end, every pastor and leader must find the methods that best suit their people and their context. No doubt the TK Primer will be a good one for many!
God has done a lot through PlantR this year! It’s amazing to see the gospel advance through a grassroots network with no staff. Thanks to the PlantR board for donating their time to provide direction for the network, and to the trench-weary church planters who continue to look beyond themselves and their churches to catalyze a Christ-centered, context-sensitive movement.
Austin is gaining a reputation as a church planting city. Other cities are learning from us and starting their own area-based church planting networks…
Some churches emphasize parntership/membership in the New Year, so I thought I would update on our material for our Partners on Mission class. The material previously listed under Tools for Missional Church is outdated, so I’ve updated that link. All material is under a Creative Commons License, which means use it, adapt it, but give credit. Merry Christmas!
ACL Partners Class Teaching Notes
The end of a year brings about a time of reflection. We reflect for newsletters, sermons, and donors. But most of all, we should reflect for Jesus. As I have reflected on the clear evidence of God’s grace in my life and our church, I’ve been both encouraged and discouraged.
I’m encouraged by a growing church, a repenting church, a missional church. I’m encouraged by strengthened and renewed marriages, deep community, new leaders, and sincere love. By…
- A culture of repentance and faith in Jesus
- Elderly Loved, Abused Cared for, Broken Counseled, Homeless fed
- Baptisms and Conversions
- Church Growth doubled from 70 to 150
- 130 in Sunday attendance
- 125 people in City Groups
- 45 people in Fight Clubs
- 8 Church planters coached
- 60 African Pastors trained
- 11,000 sermon downloads
- ACL Worship EP: ONE
- Fight Clubs: Gospel-centered Discipleship (10,000 free downloads; 700 sold)
- Music for the City launched
Wow. What a remarkable pouring out of grace in our church. But when I compare my experience of grace with other’s experience of grace, I begin to get discouraged. There are other pastors, planters, and churches with more influence, more depth, and more mission. And the minute I do this is the minute I move from worship to idolatry, from worshipping God to worshipping influence or reputation. Because of this idolatrous tendency, I was blessed by the following words from my new church planting coach and all round godly pastor, Jeff Vanderstelt:
- “Don’t be concerned about position or power, the world longs for these things. We don’t need them because we are already seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
- “And don’t let what is so great about Acts 29 Austin City Life ever be any of us – it is Jesus and the way he is loving his church through each of you.”
May you end the year in worship, not idolatry, in enjoying God’s grace not coveting other’s grace. May we not be concerned about position, power, esteem, or influence but rather rest in the abundantly sufficient grace of God in Christ, who accepts us with an incorruptible love, a Christ who is our everlasting righteousness!
Many of us see Christmas as a time to celebrate and a time to serve. I do. It’s been a sweet season of Advent for me. Our church has followed the Lucan Christmas story for several weeks, tracing the Xmas themes of Hope, Faith, Joy, & Peace in our Sunday gatherings. They’ve been powerful and missional. Sermons have been missional and people have been missional. In sermons, we’ve built in a soft apologetic in an attempt to appeal to those who are struggling with doubt, faith, hope and peace. Consider hope.
Who Needs Hope?
We live in a culture of gross hopelessness. That’s probably not what comes to mind when you think about America. When we think of hopelessness, we think of Africa—economic oblivion, medical crisis, social mayhem, political turmoil. We think of people in despair, and sure there’s despair in our own country, depression over layoffs, a twinge of pain recalling lost loved ones, and so on. Despair is one form of hopelessness, a form that can only be sufficiently reworked, redeemed, through the hope of the gospel.
But there is another, rampant form of hopelessness in America. Presumption. Presumption is the overconfident rejection of hope. If despair gives up on hope, presumption pushes hope down, dispenses with it. With our lives fairly secure, not lacking much in the way of material needs, or even wants, it’s easy to dispense with hope. “Hope is for the hopeless”, we think to ourselves, not realizing that our very thought betrays a sort of hopelessness. A lack of hope.
The Hopelessness of Presumption
Josef Pieper, a German theologian, wrote a book in the middle of the 20th century called On Hope, and in it he describes presumption as: “a premature, self-willed anticipation of the fulfillment of what we hope for from God.” I’ll put it in plain language. Presumption is a leap into the future, an insistence that the future be the present. Heaven on earth. It bypasses hope, insisting we have heaven on earth now. Instant fulfillment.
Are we insisting on the future in the present? A little heaven on earth? Are you stockpiling assets for your own security? Insisting on a standard of living that is supported, not by hope, but by irresponsible debt? Driving cars we can’t really afford, renting where we don’t belong, paying bills and buying Christmas gifts on the credit card? We try to eliminate the need for hope in our quest for security and wealth. Presumption refuses hope, it rejects the persevering nature of hope, its arduousness, which makes it so admirable, and as a result, becomes “the fraudulent imitation of hope.” (Pieper) But Christian hope forgoes present joys for the greater future joy. It sacrifices present comfort for the sake of others. It goes not into irresponsible debt but into deliberate generosity. Hope stirs us to mission.
Recovering Hope
What could you do this Christmas to express true Xn hope? Pieper notes: “In the sin of presumption, mans desire for security is so exaggerated that it excels the bounds of reality.” Our material desires are exaggerated beyond reality and beyond God’s promise. God never guaranteed a mansion this side of glory. Somehow we forget that Jesus was a homeless messiah, who told us that no disciple is above his master (Luk 6:40). Somehow we forget that he was born in “shit and straw”, surrounded by animals. Somehow we reject the hope of the world in favor of the illusion of security.
The reality is that we are all hopeless, having much or having little. We lack very little certainty about the future or clarity about God’s will apart from Jesus. To hope in Christ is to confess that what we have is not enough, and what we don’t have is too much for us to handle. Hope sets our despair and presumption before God in confession, confession of self-centered, inward, focus.
Choose hope this Advent. Live like you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Instead of hording be giving. Let your life stand out in hope, in the Hope of the World.
Smay and Halter are releasing a new book on missional church, AND, aimed at equipping all sizes of churches to engage unchurched people.
AND helps you—whether you are a mega-church, traditional, contemporary, or organic church leader—focus on the vast majority of unchurched Christians and non-believers who are not moving toward any form of church. You will learn how to value existing church forms—attracting people to a physical church and releasing people into hands-on ministry … bringing together the very best of the attractional and missional models for church ministry.
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