What does Missional mean?

The term “missional” has become a popular word among Southern Baptist. It is also popular among Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Assemblies, EV Frees, and Nazarenes.

Ed Stetzer, a leading SBC missiologist and graduate of Southern Seminary, realizes that the word means different things to different people. “I have seen just how much the word “missional” is a true wiki-word,” he said. “Practitioners, theoreticians, fans and foes are defining, defending, and dissecting it. Its blurred meaning has brought it to the point that even some of its earliest and ardent users of the term are becoming reticent to use it themselves for fear of their audience misconstruing their message. But the proponents of the term missional see it as a word set apart from other cousin-words, like missionary, mission, and missio dei. Many see the need for a different term.”

Stetzer has just completed a six-post blog essay that attempts to define the word “missional.” Furthermore, Stetzer explains many other issues surrounding missiology such the dangers of the missio dei Movement (my term): preface, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5. This series is well worth the read. Semantics are one of the most difficult issues we seem to face today in a generation that thrives off of making up new terms and concepts.

Semantics is the branch of linguistics that concerns meanings of words and their usage. Consider this parable:

One of the foremost semanticists of literary history is that eminent (but short-lived) philosopher, Humpty-Dumpty, who – while balancing precariously upon a wall – explained semantics to Alice (of Wonderland fame):

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them – particularly verbs, they’re the proudest – adjectives you do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”

“Would you tell me, please,” said Alice, “what that means?”

Humpty Dumpty gave a lengthy explanation of what he meant by the word.

“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”

Stetzer says, “We probably need to pay the word missional extra for all the work we make it do.” (HT. Ed Stetzer)

As I said, Stetzer explains many theological issues surrounding the definition of “missional.” On of the most interesting issues is the history of missio dei. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian and well known missional thinker, dropped by the comment section of this post and wrote:

I agree with you that the concept of the Missio Dei is crucial and right, but it depends on what people mean by it… I’ve heard missiologists cite the Eastern view of the Spirit in order say ‘God is at work in major ways out in the world, liberating people and it’s the church’s job to get involved with what God is doing”… I think, however, many people who cite the ‘Missio Dei’ concept are going beyond the teaching about common grace/natural law to say that the Spirit is working in people’s lives in a major, virtually saving way apart from belief in Christ.

Stetzer agreed and wrote:

I think everyone would agree that the missio dei (mission of God) is larger than the missio ecclesia (mission of the church). The harder questions are, “How?” and, “For what purpose?”… and, I would add, “What is the role of the church in that work?”
And, if you combine such a missio dei missiology with the “Preferential Option for the Poor” that became prominent in the 1970s, you end up as did the World Council of Churches 1980 mission meeting at Melbourne… focused on economic liberation as God was “at work” there.

Stetzer believes that the leading missiologist thinker today is Chuck Van Engen. Van Engen believes that the missional church discussion will be influenced in how you deal with three issues:

• What is the role and nature of the church?
• What is the kingdom and how does it relate to the church?
• How is God working outside the church today?

Chuck Van Engen explains, “The genesis of my view of missio Dei and of “missional” is the Bible (I do not mean this facetiously at all), and the “traditional view of mission” that assumes a difference between church and world, the nature of the church as being most fundamentally God’s instrument to call the nations to reconciliation with God in Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit, and a missional ecclesiology as I develop in GOD’S MISSIONARY PEOPLE.”

Stetzer believes that Van Engen has also produced the best definition of he word “missional”:

With the term missional I emphasize the essential nature and vocation of the church as God’s called and sent people.
A missional ecclesiology is biblical, historical, contextual, praxeological (it can be translated into practice), and eschatological.
The word missional, with reference to the church, sees the church as the instrument of God’s mission.
Following Lesslie Newbigin and others, a church that is missional understands that God’s mission calls and sends the church of Jesus Christ, locally and globally, to be a missionary church in its own society, in the cultures in which it finds itself, and globally among all peoples who do not yet confess Jesus as Lord.
Mission is the result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purposes to restore and heal creation and call people into a reconciled covenantal relationship with God.
“Mission” means “sending,” and it is the central biblical theme describing the purpose of God’s action in human history, with the church being the primary agent of God’s missionary action.
This definition is based on Darrell Guder, edit. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 11-12, 4-5; see also David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 390.