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Reflection & Influence Christians love catch-phrases and keywords. Making fun of or lamenting "Christianese" or the Christian subculture is a relatively easy and lazy thing to do. The more fruitful approach - the one that would hopefully build up the church rather than armchair quarterback it - is to lovingly critique it. How we use language is something that really interests me. It's something that's important to see and think about because, while I'm not a linguist, I can see that language carries with it two big factors. First, language is a reflection of what we think, believe, and value. Secondly, language influences what we think, believe, and value. Blurred Definitions Which brings me to the word I want to bring up in this blog article: missional. "Being missional" or "to be missional" has been a descriptive or imperative catch phrase for about the last five years, particularly among younger Emerging churches. It's a word that I've always felt a little uncomfortable with because of it's ambiguity (but that's another article). A recent Q&A video from John Piper helped me see more clearly the restlessness I felt about the word. In this clip he makes a very good distinction between "evangelism" and "missions".
Cause & Effect? I'm left with a couple questions: 1) Do churches and Christians use the word "missional" because they are afraid of the word "evangelism"? 2) Though it claims to do otherwise, will this North American emphasis on being "missional" negatively effect global missions and the global Church by affirming (instead of challenging) our culture's narcissism and producing culturally insular Christians? |
Comments
Hi Nick-
You've written on a subject that I am very interested in. Your two questions raise a number of side questions and thoughts. I'll try to keep my answers focused on a couple points. Before I continue, I'll let you know I'm speaking from personal experience as my MA Degree is in World Missions and Evangelism. I've got both words thrown in that degree and have experienced struggles with the name anytime I've used it in applying for a job. Actually, I finally gave up and now tell people the degree is Intercultural Studies.
I see problems today with both "missional" and "evangelism" being used in the Christian church. The root meaning of both of these words has changed in understanding over the past few decades. A number of faiths use words like, "missions," "missionary," and "missionary." Mormon boys are sent on "missions." And "evangelism." Well, thanks to televangelist and to people who stand on street corners yelling at people about hell, that word is engulfed with misunderstanding and misrepresentation. My degree easily makes me sound like a Mormon-televangelist-nut-job due to this misunderstanding.
When the word missions and missions came into play, they worked. That was over 100 years ago. Times have changed and if the church doesn't allow for this change in definition, the church will continue to be understand and insular as you've suggested.
I liked how Piper used the language "cross-cultural" when referring to missions. For this generation, cross-cultural seems to be a more fitting term. And we must keep in mind that 20, 30, 40 years from now, there may be a new term that is fitting for that time.
I see the North American church becoming more and more afraid to use any language that is not ambiguous. I think the American Church is afraid of being offensive in every way, terminology or otherwise. The truth is, the Gospel is offensive and the church needs to understand this and remember this when "evangelizing." I also think the church should stop using the word missional altogether. The idea and act behind the word should not change, however, the church needs to get up to speed with the terms it uses.
Just some thoughts for now. Again, thanks for bringing up the subject. It's an important one to understand.
Missional living is a subject I've studied a lot lately and the best definition I see for churches who have a healthy definition of it is "getting people to live normally." Churches that challenge their attenders to be "a part" of their community, to serve them, interact with them, and eventually share with them what should be the most important thing in their life, the gospel, are realizing this is a lost art among Christians in today's transaction-driven, independent, immediate gratification society. I don't think it's an emergent thing, a seeker thing, or an ambiguous excuse for evangelism. I will say I'm not a huge fan of the word, "missional." I don't think the average-joe non-believer wants to be seen as a missions field. I'm a bigger fan of the phrase "community living" or "community driven." Just some thoughts.