by Jason Robertson
Tim Keller asserts that churches need to structure their church to inhabit its culture. For instance, a church in a metropolitan city needs to be prepared to communicate the gospel effectively in every ministry of the church to a generation that does not understand the Christian world-view and are hostile to Christianity. Keller explains by comparing an “evangelistic church” to a “missional church.” For example, an “evangelistic church” will have a Department of Evangelism that will communicate the gospel effectively to the culture. But if a lost person were to enter the church without going through the Evangelism Department,they could be confused at best and never return at worst. An “evangelistic church” expects the believer to immediately adopt instantly the Christian world-view, be comfortable with the “new” Christian lingo, and operate as a mature believer. On the other hand, a “missional church” not only does evangelism but every ministry of the church supplements and compliments that evangelistic effort by participating in communicating the gospel clearly. A “missional church” assumes that even Christians will not understand the Christian word-view quickly.
Missional Worship
Yes, it is true that true worship can only be accomplished by believers. Thus worship services should be designed to enable the believer to worship. But our worship should also be a “means” by which the gospel is communicated to those who come into contact with our worship. In Acts 2 one-hundred and twenty disciples were worshiping God when they were asked by men in Jerusalem what all of the commotion was about. Peter then focused on answering their questions by preaching his famous “Pentecost sermon.”
Tim Keller says that we should “expect that God will bring lost people into our worship services.” Keller says that our services should therefore be “challenging and comprehensible, but not comfortable” for the lost person. He says that if the Sunday service and sermon aim primarily at evangelism, it will bore the saints. If they aim primarily at education, they will bore and confuse unbelievers. If they aim at praising the God who saves by sheer grace they will both instruct the saints and challenge the sinners.”
God Adds
In fact, I think this is advice that many Reformed churches need to heed: Keller asserts that we should “worship as if non-Christians are present before they really are, and they will be brought.” My prayer is that when I preach this Sunday my church members say to themselves, “That sermon edified me, revived my spirit, and taught me how to be a better disciple of Christ. And I wish my lost friends could have heard that sermon, too! Next week I shall bring them.”
This Is Not the Seeker Model
This type of thinking is not what permeates “Seeker Churches”. Not at all. This is the nature of a church that has infused a missional consciousness in its people. Seeker Churches actually segregate people between those who are lost and those who are saved. And even worse, Sunday’s are given to targeting the lost, Sunday worship is comfortable to the lost and objectionable to the saints. Christians are segregated to small groups and mid-week worship services, removed from the “center” of the ministry so that they will not offend or “turn off” the seeker or hinder evangelism. Missional churches look at that and are disgusted — THAT’S NOT CHURCH, THAT’S NOT CHRISTIANITY. In a way it is false advertisement of sorts. Missional churches say we do not hide or disguise our Christianity nor or we ashamed of our biblical worship. In fact, we invite all to attend and we will consciously and humbly teach you what we are doing and why!
Evangelistic Churches are Effective Too
Every church doesn’t have to be a “missional church”. Maybe your church is not in New York or San Diego or London. Maybe the lost people in your town are very conservative and traditional in their values. Maybe they have been reared with a “Christian” world-view even though it is absent of the Lordship of Christ. Simply being an “evangelistic” church will be effective enough to reach such a culture. Such churches have been successful for hundreds of years.
Other FIDE-O posts attempting to define the concept of “missional”: Link 1, Link 2
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Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his the Church with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He founded Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
You can hear his sermons and read his manuscripts on sermonaudio.com. Just follow the link to "sermons" at the top of this page.
Good post as this gives the most cogent definition of missional I have heard, at least from a conservative perspective. I recently finished Ed Stetzer’s book “Planting a Missional Church” and there are similarities between what Keller is saying and what Stetzer is saying. However, the term/concept is still a little fuzzy like what does Tim mean when he uses the word organic. Missional is used by many to make themselves feel like they are really doing something new and different or to cover their emergent tracks.
We do live in a post-modern, post-christian culture, but the Scriptures were written in a pre-modern, pre-christian culture where much of the same mind set was the same as it is now. Read Judges, Leviticus, Deuteronomy,
I & II Corinthians, and Christ’s words to the seven churches and you will see the parrallels between them and us. The church needs to be the church, the faithful church, the pillar and support of the truth and watch Christ build His church.
There is certainly some irony in this whole issue. There continues to be debates and misunderstandings of what “missional” and the terms that come with it mean as well as how it actually works out in a church. Yet, one of the goals of this movement is to help Christians understand how to communicate with the current culture. So we have this movement telling Christians how to communicate with the culture using a vernacular many Christians aren’t really understanding.
Mark
To be honest, I didn’t read the whole of this article. I needed to only read the first paragraph to know that Tim is making church man-centered instead of Christ-centered. As though the Holy Spirit needs help from us in order to save someone. Read about the life of David Brainerd (I’m doing so now). He went into the wilderness with an interpreter and spoke the truth of the God to the Indians. He didn’t try to become culturally relevant. He just did his part (spreading the Gospel) and he allowed God to do His part. It really isn’t that complicated. It seems to me that only in the last 100yrs have we become so concerned about how man feels or if man can relate etc etc. When we take our eyes off Christ, we put them on man. Can man save man? NO! So why look to man for guidance? Nothing in the Scripture tells us to make the Gospel culturally relevant. If you’re preaching with big words that not even believers can understand, then you are not preaching wisely. If you want to preach with big words, then define them so others can learn. That’s not making the services culturally relevant though…that’s just teaching ignorant people info so that they are no long ignorant.