What is the true nature of the Church? What is a Missional Church? Why is it even more relevant today?
I have written a doctorate on reclaiming the centrality of mission, (I define mission as God’s love for the world,) and the marriage of this with the church. In my view, no church is truly a church, unless it is missional. By that, I mean it is both authentic in its understanding and behaviour towards God, community, and the world, whilst at the same time alternative, acting as a light to shine on injustice and championing care to humans and the planet. A more theological name for a missional church is a missional ecclesiology. This combination of two theological concepts goes right back to the early church eras. It is predicated on the New Testament understanding of the Greek word ekklesia, which we call the church. Goheen writes that this was the church’s self-chosen name, and they saw themselves as a public community called out to prophetically witness the risen Christ. “In contrast, the enemies of the church employed other terms such as heranos and thiasos” as descriptors.[1] These words interpreted the church not as a new humanity but as a private religious cult that offered personal and otherworldly salvation. Despite this perspective, ekklesia remained firmly an alternative community that challenged, often publicly, the overarching culture of the Roman Empire.
From this courageous and rich heritage, a missional ecclesiology is modelled. Therefore, if we are to take the original heritage of Christ’s church and apply it to today’s, how do we measure up? Well, without being too pessimistic, I feel we have in many ways failed. We have become introspective and insular. During COVID for example, I felt we equated the church with the “Sunday event”, and poured our energies into maintaining a service, relishing our newfound technical skills for streaming, rather than discipling our people to love God and scale an incredible opportunity to love neighbour.
Missiology and ecclesiology were never meant to be organizationally separated as the early church’s self-understanding was a sent, alternative community that challenged the inordinate power structures and remained a prophetic voice championing kingdom values, even at personal cost.[2] And yet, the two disciplines of missiology and ecclesiology became separated for much of Christendom’s eras. In the mid-1950s there was a seismic shift toward the reintegration of the two, commencing with the International Mission Council in Willingen, under the statesmanship of Lesslie Newbigin.[3] The challenge then has become identifying the defining attributes or marks of a missional ecclesiology as distinct from the established church which continues to be formed within a Christendom paradigm.
Next week – The Marks of a Missional Church.
[1]. Goheen, The Church and Its Vocation, 61.
[2]. Jeppe Bach Nikolajsen, “Missional Church: A Historical and Theological Analysis of an
Ecclesiological Tradition,” International Review of Mission 102. (November 2013). Nikolajsen writes, “If we are to better understand the development of a missional ecclesiology, it is important that we consider the 19th-century revivals in Germany and England. In 1792 William Carey, the father of the modern mission movement, encouraged his contemporary Christians to participate in world mission. This calling appealed to many in Germany and England. Nevertheless, the official churches were not willing to make a range of catechumenal, diaconal, and missional tasks integral to their being. Therefore, various mission organizations were established that, on behalf of the church, sought to respond to the Great Commission in the gospel of John (‘as the Father has sent me, I am sending you’ [John 20:21]).”
[3]. Nikolajsen, “Missional Church,” 103.