Brister on Missional

Timmy Brister makes some good points concerning the “missional” issue:

“There are two polarizing camps which we need to be careful to avoid. The first is the camp of liberalism. Liberalism has historically embraced a naive, postmillennial position where Christianity is subsumed in the culture as their over-realized eschatology forces them to think with an unbalanced emphasis on the immanence of the kingdom of God. The most popular form of contemporary liberalism can be found in the Emergent organization (not to be confused with the emerging church movement, although Emergent is the liberal end of it) who espouse a postmodern epistemology and want to revise and reconstruct orthodox Christian belief. On the other hand, there is the camp of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism has historically embraced a dispensational premillennialist stance advocating a rejection of the culture as entirely worldly. The tend to have an over-reactive, negative view of culture with an under-realized eschatology that leads them to an unbalanced emphasis on the transcendence of the kingdom of God. I believe that both these camps are dangerous to the future of the SBC. The former emphasizes orthopraxy over against orthodoxy; the latter emphasizes orthodoxy over orthopraxy; the former has uncritical acceptance (radical continuity) of the postmodern culture in which we live; the latter has an uncritical rejection (radical discontinuity) of the postmodern world in which we live. Unfortunately, in recent years, what we have seen is these two camps feuding with one another, neither producing converts, and neither championing the cause of the mission of Christ.

Yet there is another stance that Southern Baptist can, and I would argue, should take. It is the camp I call being missional. Those who seek to be missional live with the “already”/”not yet” tension of the reign of Christ and work with the continuity/discontinuity relationship of the church with the culture. They are forced to have a critical appraisal of the culture in which they live, separating themselves from the other camps aforementioned. They recognized that there are aspects of culture that Christians can relate to that is not inherently sinful, creating avenues of meaningful relationships and conversation. They also recognize that there are aspects of culture that is antithetical to Christian faith and practice that must be countered with the way and truth of Jesus Christ. Finally, there are aspects of culture that is broken, whether society on a macro level or families and individuals on a micro level, that must be redeemed. Missional Christians, therefore, must be a counter-cultural community of Christians whose presence in the world can be seen and felt beyond the walls of their church building.”