The Missional Church
As a follow-up to his book The Present Future I’ve started reading Reggie McNeal’s Missional Renaissance. For those Pilgrims who were present for our session with Dr. Scherer last fall, McNeal’s book is a continuation of that.
This is from McNeal’s introduction:
“The rise of the missional church is the single biggest development in Christianity since the Reformation. The post-Reformation church of the modern era differed remarkably from its medieval predecessor. The missional church will just as dramatically distinguish itself from what we now call “church.”
“Whereas the Reformation gifted us with a plethora of denominations distinguished by doctrine and polity, the missional movement actually simplifies the taxonomy of Christianity into two groups: those who get it and those who don’t. And as a friend of mine likes to say, “If you have to ask what ‘it’ is, you don’t get it.” The ones who get it (the missional thing) come from every tribe in the universe of Christianity. They have more in common with others who get it, no matter what tribe or tradition they are from, than they have in common with those in their own tribe who don’t get it. The missional din is the result of their calling out to one another, to locate others of their persuasion so they can link together and forge a new expression of life.
“Missional is a way of living, not an affiliation or activity. Its emergence springs from a belief that God is changing his conversation with the world and with the church. Begin missional involves an active engagement with this new conversation to the point that it guides every aspect of the life of the missional believer. To think and to live missionally means seeing all life as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in the world.
“The missional understanding of Christianity is undoing Christianity as a religion. The expression of the Christian movement in North America is fundamentally altering before our very eyes. The shifts are tectonic. They involve both form and content. These developments go way beyond denominational affiliations, party labels (liberal, conservative, mainline, evangelical), program methodological approaches (purpose-driven, seeker-friendly), or even cultural stances (postmodern, emergent, emerging). The missional development goes to the very heart of what the church is, not just what it does. It redefines the church’s role in the world in a way that breaks sharply with prevailing church notions. These differences are so huge as to make missional and nonmissional expressions of Christianity practically unrecognizable to each other” (The Present Future: Six Though Questions for the Church, Reggie McNeal, pp. xiii – xiv).
If this is truly “the single biggest development in Christianity since the Reformation,’ I want to learn more about the missional movement and its impact upon us.
Starting this fall we will offer a series to Pilgrims using the DVD materials from The Present Future as a way to help us begin to continue to think about the future. It will give us an opportunity to look at God’s call to us as the church in mission. Join us in that.
In preparation this summer we’ll offer some more thoughts to give you a start at prayerfully considering the mission God has for you and your place in the church.