Missional, Mission-Minded, or Missionary?

Church trends make me suspicious; very suspicious. For me, most church trends often feel like marketing or church growth gimmicks. How can we sound trendy? How can we market ourselves better? How can we appeal to more consumers? Thirty days of this, that, and the other and soon your diluting the truth of the gospel. I would much rather lose size before I lose the gospel.

Missional Church

The word missional appears to be one of those church trends. Every church wants to be a missional church. So what’s my natural reaction? Not me. Not CrossWay. In fact, the word has been so broadly used that it’s lost all of it’s meaning. You no longer know what someone means when they say they are a missional church.

What Does Missional Mean?

Does that mean they have a missions program? Are they seeker sensitive (another trend!)? Are they a church planting church? Are they a cell group church (yet another…)? Do they not like to invest in the people of their local church? Or is it just a cool word that we need to include somewhere in our marketing material?

Mission-Minded

Maybe instead of missional we should be talking about being mission-minded? Yet, for me, that’s insufficient. To be mission minded means you like to think about missions without it requiring you to actually do anything. The word missions speaks of action.

Missionary

A missionary is a sent-one. One who is sent into the world to tell others of Jesus Christ. Usually this includes cross-cultural work. Often this includes being sent to a people outside of your immediate geographic context.

A Biblical Perspective

Yet I think there is something good about the word missional. There is definitely something great about the biblical idea of a missional church. But what exactly does the Bible mean by missional. I would like to take some time over the next several weeks to think about what it means to be missional, from a biblical perspective.