‘Missional’ is the hot new buzz word today. But it’s really not all that new. It goes all the way back to Genesis 12 and the covenant God made with Abraham. What does it mean? It means recovery of the full sense of the Abrahamic covenant: God has blessed us in order for us to be a blessing to the nations (Gen. 12:1-3). To be a ‘blessing’ to the people of the Roanoke Valley is a much larger project than lobbing evangelistic gospel grenades at them from the safety of our Christian trenches. Our models for being missional are not just of Paul standing up on Mars Hill preaching the good news, but also need to include Joseph being the good news by blessing everyone and everything around him in Potiphar’s house when he was a slave and then blessing everyone and everything around him when he was sent off - unjustly - to prison. Missional means we have a vision for prisons and not just for prisoners. Missional means we press order and blessing into whatever circumstances we’re thrown into. To be ‘missional’ means that we realize, in the words of Michael Scott Horton, that America is a mission field, not a battlefield. It is the largest mission field in the western hemisphere with 120 secular, undiscipled people. And because it’s a mission field, we have to think like missionaries, we have to become intimately familiar with and sympathetic to the culture. We have to do a little rocket science perhaps: learn what stories our culture is telling, learn who their heros are, learn where their hopes and fears lie. We have to “open our eyes and look” (Jn. 4:35) at all the ways they are experiencing being “harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd”(Mtt. 9:36). But missional means more than just understanding. It means we are sent into the world just as Jesus was sent into the world (Jn. 17:18) - everyone of us, not just youth workers, missionaries and pastors. We are all sent. We are all on mission. We are all in ‘full-time christian ministry’. And we are all to have the same posture that Jesus had in entering this world: humility (Phil. 2:5ff). This is critical. Humility must be our garment when we enter our world and engage it with the good news. Never, ever is unkindness attractive - or justified! - when we enter the world in the name of Jesus. And the Cross must be our only power and authority when we serve our city just as surely as it is when we ‘do evangelism’. Which means our posture will often be one of “weakness and foolishness”(I Cor. 1:17-2:5). Missional does not mean cultural hegemony, conquering our culture. It doesn’t mean spectacle, or splash or publicity. It means we humbly serve the least and the lost around us in the name of Jesus. Missional means being a good neighbor is more important than buying in a good neighborhood. Missional means opening our eyes and seeing people with compassion rather than as consumers. Missional means treating the person at the checkout counter with dignity and respect because he/she is made in the image of God. Missional means the church exists for its non-members. Remember? Jesus said greatness would be measured by our service to others. So ‘greatness’ in church growth is not measured in bricks, or budgets or attendance, but in our service to others. Missional means people need nothing so much as they need a Good Shepherd (Mtt. 9:36). People need Jesus. But people are not just souls without bodies. Nor are they bodies without souls. People need Jesus in all His gracious ministries of redeeming the deleterius effects of the Fall. Missional, in other words, is a much larger story for us to enter than just evangelism. It’s like combining our Missions Committee, our Evangelism & Outreach Committee and our Deaconal Ministries into one major thrust, because in Jesus, they don’t tend to stay in separate boxes. How do you keep ‘blessing’ in a box with just one lable on it?
