Why We Use The Word The Word "Missional"

Most likely, you have a drawer somewhere in your house that catches everything without a designated place. In other words, a junk drawer. Interestingly enough, some words take on this quality as well. Nearly everyone throws a bit of uncategorized definition into the word, until it comes to resemble a junk drawer. Different people mean different things by the same word. If you’ve followed popular “Christian” culture over the years, the terms Evangelical and Emergent fell into this category.

The latest word to fall into this camp seems to be “missional.” In March, Christianity Today wrote an article asking ” What Makes a Church Missional?” More recently, my friend Jonathan Leeman wrote a piece for 9Marks Ministries asking “What in the World is the Missional Church?” It seems that “missional” has become a junk-drawer word.

The word has become mired in a good bit of both confusion and controversy which leaves us with some choices: we can abandon the word altogether, we can join the fray in fighting for a clear and broadly accepted definition or we can use the term being as clear as possible about what we mean by the word. We at Church of the Cross call our small groups “Missional Communities,” so we have obviously decided to use the word. We are not interested in trying to define the term for everyone, so we must be as clear as possible about what we mean with the word and why we have chosen to use the term.

We chose to use it quite simply because, when (we believe) properly defined, it gets right to the heart of what we want to be about. There are few, if any, other concise terms that can carry so much weight. But perhaps there is the necessity for a bit of clarification. I have seen many churches that are “mission-minded” that are not necessarily “missional.” Ed Stetzer, noted Southern Baptist missiologist helps us understand the difference in his book Planting Missional Churches (italics in the original):

“don’t confuse the terms mission-minded and missional. The first refers more to an attitude of caring about missions, particularly overseas. Missional means actually doing mission right where you are. Missional means adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining biblically sound. Think of it this way: missional means being a missionary without ever leaving your zip code. You can see how a particular congregation or denomination can be mission-minded without being missional.

In other words, being missional means understanding and living like the mission-field begins at your doorstep. It means adopting missionary strategies (studying and interacting with the surrounding culture in biblically appropriate ways to penetrate it with and transform it from the inside out with the Gospel) and it means understanding that missions lays the foundation for effective evangelism. It means encouraging people to be conscious of every opportunity to live the Gospel out in their surrounding community. It means understanding that God has already called you to and placed you in a mission-field.

This does not discount foreign missions. Far from it. It means being convicted of the fact that it is hypocritical to think that we will go across the ocean to share the Gospel when we don’t go across the street. It means understanding that foreign-missions can be used as a band-aid for a lack of local involvement.

Until there is a better term for all of these concepts and practices, we will continue to use the term missional. We certainly don’t succeed at these things the way we’d like to but for now, we’ll strive to be missional.