By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter

First there was the ‘seeker-sensitive’ then came ‘purpose-driven’. Now the new buzz word to promote congregational development is ‘missional’.

The missional model of church growth is the subject of a special report contained in the Winter 2007 edition of the evangelical journal, Leadership – a publication of the Christianity Today International.

Altogether there are eight major articles on the missional model of church growth in the 114-pages publication. The author of these articles either state outrightly or hint that the missional way of doing church is not a fad, but is consistent with first century Christianity.

Eric Reed, managing editor of Leadership in an article introducing this model of church growth, stressed, “Missional is more than a trend as today’s Christians recover an old calling. ‘Missional’, he maintains, “Refers to a philosophy of ministry: that followers of Christ are counter-cultural, on a mission to change the culture. Missional refers to the specific activity of churches: to build the Kingdom of God in all settings where church members are at work, rather than building up the local congregations, its programmes, numbers, and facilities.”

Reed in an article entitled ‘New Ownership’ argues that being missional means less of the top-down approach to ministry in preference to the bottom-up. It means, he argues, that less ministry will be driven by church boards, denominations and parachurches. Instead, ministry will be birthed and implemented by ordinary Christians seeking to touch communities.

Hence the pace-setters in doing ministry become the individual vis-a-vis the hierarchical structures of the church.

Reed cited the case of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) where missional thinking is positively affecting this, the largest evangelical denomination in the United States. World’s largest team

The Southern Baptists Convention’s International Mission Board, which has for decades prided itself for fielding the world’s largest team of missionaries, turned to local congregations for assistance in reaching ‘unreached people groups’. In SBC life this is a remarkable change from the decades in which ‘all’ the churches supported ‘all’ the missionaries in order to reach ‘all’ the lost people – in the process losing close contact between missionaries and the people back home.

Reed hints that whereas denominations have traditionally formulated its plans and asked local congregations to support those plans – the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction. At this time, it is congregations that have formulated ministry plans and the denomination is now asking how can it assist local congregations.

‘We aren’t about weekends’ is the title of an article which features an interview with Pastor Bob Roberts of NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas. Pastor Roberts is the author of ‘Transformation: How Global Churches Transform Lives and the World, as well as Glocalisation: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World.’

The article, perhaps the most potent in explaining the concept of missional, has Pastor Roberts saying, “People living like Jesus: that’s what changes society. Too often, we start with a preacher who tries to gather a church first, thinking that, in time, they’ll get around to engaging the world. That’s backwards. It teaches people to think engaging the world is something we pay people to do after the church is built, or that is an occasional trip we make. No, we want people to understand the Great Commission is not the church’s project, but it’s something we all own personally. 'Missions doesn’t mean multiplying churches, but finding ways to show God’s love and greatness to the world. If you focus on mission, churches will follow, but if you focus on churches, mission often gets lost.”

Identify things in the community

Pastor Roberts stressed that in being missional, a local church should identify a few things in the community it serves and zoom in on those with the resources it has. He hints that as one does that, that engagement will attract additional resources. Being missional is a huge challenge for a lot of churches, writes Chad Hall, a ministry coach living in North Carolina in Leadership. According to Hall, there are two main distractions to becoming missional. The first is a church’s instinct for self-preservation – that is when the church begins to exist for the sake of itself. The second distraction is church growth where the emphasis is on getting people to come to church rather than getting the church to go to the lost world.

Hall, in an article entitled ‘Missional Possible: Steps to transform a consumer church into a missional church’ cites Leith Anderson, a pastor from Minneapolis, who warns that the focus of attracting people to attend church is not the best strategy for getting persons to come to Christ as a “problem arises when attracting people to church becomes the mission.”

Churches in our area have grown

Hall, quoting another cleric, Brian Wright, from an Atlanta church, says, “We’ve found that many churches in our area have grown by putting on a great show. Our model is different. We believe that by serving those around us, we show them Christ, which does have an attractional quality. Still, the primary goal is to serve, not to attract. Mark Buchanan, pastor of a church in Duncan, British Columbia wrote if by their fruit you shall know them, “Then the conclusion is inescapable: many pastors and churches could not care less about their communities.” Using the story of the four men who took a paralytic to Jesus (St. Mark 2) as his frame of reference, Pastor Buchanan said not being missional means “We care about keeping things intact than about restoring lives that are shattered. It’s when we’re more upset when stuff gets broken than excited when the broken are mended. It’s when church gets reduced to the preaching of Jesus so that we fail to notice that we’re seeing very little of the forgiveness and healing of Jesus. Its when we are so fearful of upsetting the religious folk in our midst that we stop taking risks to get people to Jesus.

Being missional, writes Buchanan, means that one does ministry to a community by asking two questions. Firstly, “What are their needs and how might we do good unto them ( contra, what are our needs and what would make us feel good)? Secondly, “What are they already doing and doing well that we can celebrate and thank them for (contra, what are they doing wrong that we should protest and denounce)? Buchanan’s article is entitled, ‘Wreck the roof: Are you willing to take apart the church to bring people to Jesus?’

Identity traits

Tim Conder, pastor of the Emmaus Way, in Durham, North Carolina, offers identity traits of missional churches while Gordon McDonald, editor-at-large at Leadership warns of the dangers of missionalism gone awry. He calls is ‘missionalism’. At its worst, the church adopts the approach that says the ends justifies the means.

Missionalism, warns McDonald, is often located in congregational leaders. He describes missionalism as “The passionate need to keep things growing and growing so that one proves his/her worth.” McDonald lists some antidotes to missionalism among which he stressed is a small accountability group. Pastors he hinted should minister to the many but major on meeting a few weekly to mentor them and to be accountable to them.

Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com