They Call Me "Mister" missional

I got in on the missional church movement before it was cool, and I'm still in now that everyone thinks it's a joke. I came at missional church as a theologian, and it provides me with the best way to elucidate what I consider to be the most important theological point:

OUR MISSIONAL GOD HAS A CHURCH. It is not "the missional church has a God." Mission is an attribute of God, (Bosch), and congregations are missional only if they live out and participate in the missional nature of God. This distinction is huge, and makes quite a bit of difference in how and why congregations go about doing ministry.

Congregations want to "own" ministries. People within congregations want to control ministries. This is getting the order exactly wrong. God owns the ministries, and we should strive to give control away from the work we do. We should be striving to set people free to live their own lives, and to participate freely in the life and being of the Triune God. The minute we think God needs us to do something, we are in trouble.

And whether we say it so overtly or not, many of our activities seem to indicate we do believe God needs us to do it. If it wasn't for us, God's mission wouldn't get done. This is non-missional thinking.

Missional thinking is to understand that God loves us, and wants us to participate freely in what God is about in our particular corner of the sky. Missional work is discerning, praying, reading, and helping when invited by God. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to pray and discern before we comprehend the invitation!

So I'll probably be "missional" until I die...but if God is good enough for me in this life, I'm sure God'll be good enough for me in the next.

May your tables be full and your conversations be true.