Culture-engaged, Missional Communities
At its essence the fairly new phrase "the missional church" describes where we find ourselves now that the Christian Era is closing. It is Christians, operating in myriad, daily ways -- often unnoticed -- working in and through and amidst the post-Christian setting in which they find themselves. Think of it as being a missionary in one's own city, but more. It is not a tacked-on program. It is a holistic, reciprocal way of thinking about mission. We go into the community-at-large to live, and that's the core place we see the gospel realized, and the place we become changed by God as well. We no longer rely on the crutch of other 'missionaries' to do the work (these career sojourners still exist, but their emphasis shifts). To quote Mennonite Chris Arney, "there's a whole new encouragement to mission -- one where each congregation and each believer become centres of mission."
Tim Keller's 2001 paper called "The Missional Church" succinctly says everything I want to say on this topic. (Click here to download the PDF.) It's a great read, and I have little to add to Keller's respected words. It covers The Need for a 'Missional' Church and points us to some Elements of a 'Missional' Church (including topics such as: discourse in the vernacular, re-telling a given culture's stories with the gospel, the theological training of lay people for public life and vocation, the creation of a Christian community which is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive, and willing to practice Christian unity on the local level.)
Perhaps most importantly, Keller reminds us that the emergent church will be sensitive to language (explaining ourselves with sympathy, patience, and creativity to a post-Christian audience for whom our Biblical examples, theological terms, Christianese and "styled prayer language" will be, in essence, rendered in a foreign tongue), and to training lay people about Christian distinctiveness while acting with Biblical love and deference to the different 'other' in the public square. Keller writes, "the charge of intolerance is perhaps the main 'defeater' of the gospel in the non-Christian west." The gospel and our culture network has lots of back-issues of their newsletter online for further reading in this vein.
So we reject Modernity's solutions ("let the parachurch do most of the evangelism/missions; and we'll departmentalize the rest, and turn the natives into westerners while we're at it"), and all the while we will hold in tension the delicate cultural balance:In the world but not of it. Sadly, evangelicals have flipped Christ's (John 17: 14-16) teaching. They have instead decided to live not in the world (separation) but be of it (capitulation).
Former Vinyard national director Todd Hunter describes churches living on the margins of society, not inclined to accomodate culture. He points to a pre-Constantinian mode of life as the direction for the future. Post-Christian culture offers benefits and contains drawbacks. But one clear benefit is a way to offer love in a softer, alongside/paracletic sort of way. Hunter then says:
The missional churches of the future will thrive, then, under God's commands and through his power. God will give them love for society, a gentle love that winsomely leads others to Christ in a way that is appropriately responsive to the shifts in human experience that we see all around us.
