Missional

Missional Living and the Scriptures

May 2, 2017 By Daniel Im

Mission is not something that your church does. Nor is it something that your church can opt out of. And it’s not a strategy, preference, or style of ministry either.

Mission needs to be core to the identity of any and every local church. After all, a church without a clear understanding of its mission is a church without power. As scholar Martin Kähler said a century ago, “Mission is the mother of theology.”

What It Means to Be Missional

I’m not talking about having a mission statement. I’m talking about the great and grand mission that God has invited us all into: the mission of God, the missio Dei. The concept of missio Dei is recognition that God is a sending God and that the church is sent.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you. (John 20:21 CSB)

In describing the mission of the church, Tim Keller notes: “God does not merely send the church in mission. God already is in mission, and the church must join him. This also means, then, that the church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.”¹

The church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.

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The church has been sent to join the most important mission in the Scriptures.² Jesus Christ embodied that mission; the Holy Spirit empowers for that mission; the church is the instrument of that mission; and the culture is the context in which that mission occurs.³

As missiologist Wilbert Shenk points out: “The Great Commission institutionalizes mission as the raison d’être, the controlling norm, of the church. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a member of his body is to live a missionary experience in the world. There is no doubt that this was how the earliest Christians understood their calling.” ⁴

And this is how we need to understand the word mission or its adjective, missional, today. A missional church is a church that’s adopting the posture of a missionary, joining God on His mission, and learning and adapting to  the culture around them while remaining biblically sound.  Think of it this way: missional means living and acting like  a missionary, even if you never leave your city.

Interview with Jeff Vanderstelt on Missional Practices

January 10, 2017 By Daniel Im

Recently, my friend Jeff Vanderstelt shared his heart on the Saturate Field Guide that he developed with Ben Connelly, another one of my friends and one of our regular authors at NewChurches.com. Here is the interview.

Q. How can an attractional church move towards being more missional using this book?

A. The book guides believers through a study whereby they will come to understand the gospel and its implications for discipleship and mission. As participants work through the daily study and exercises, they will learn to embrace their identity as God’s family, sent as servants and missionaries to the world. The guidebook is most effective when a small group of believers commit to go through it together. As they travel together through the study, not only will they be led to personally grow as God’s missionary people, but collectively they will learn to realign their lives together around God’s purposes and mission. The guide was designed to move people from being Sunday only believers to everyday disciples who make disciples together in community while on mission.

Q. How do we normalize mission in the life of my church?

A. First of all, we need to preach the gospel indicatives – What is true about 1) who God is as revealed by 2) what God has done (especially in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ) leading to understanding 3) who we are in Christ. Then, we need to help people see how believing the gospel leads to new behaviors. The indicatives of the gospel lead to the imperatives of obedience.

The outcome of the gospel is mission

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The reason this is key to normalizing mission in the church is because the church needs to understand that the outcome of the gospel is mission. God is a missionary God who sent his only son to rescue and redeem a people for his mission on the earth. God is missionary, and we are his missionary people. It begins with us understanding our true identity as God’s people. Charles Spurgeon was famous for saying: “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” There is not a category for non-missionary Christian. If you are a Christian, you are a missionary.

Seismic Shifts and a Missional Response

October 4, 2016 By Daniel Im

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There have been two seismic shifts in the church and culture in the English-speaking Western world over the past few decades. The first shift is predominantly a good one, while the second shift has mixed reactions.

Seismic Shift #1: An Increased Focus on Church Planting

Recently, I came across a tweet from my friend, Jeff Christopherson, who leads the North American Mission Board’s Send Network.

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I love this! In the Southern Baptist Convention, church plants baptize almost four times the number of people than existing established churches! I agree with the hashtag, #plantingworks.

Statistics like this are one of the reasons that denominations are placing a greater emphasis on church planting. The dynamic long-term growth of many church plants has helped as well. Consider Life Church with Craig Groeschel, Saddleback with Rick Warren, and Redeemer Presbyterian with Tim Keller, among many others. Compare that to a few decades ago, when church planting was on the periphery and seen as a ‘suspicious activity’ to most.

Seismic Shift #2: The Church Moving to the Periphery

4 Ways God Shapes Us For Mission

September 12, 2016 By Daniel Im

“Dead orthodoxy cannot fuel a movement. We need a living theology.”

What powerful words on the opening pages of Chapter 5 – Missional Theology in JR Woodward and Dan White Jr.’s latest book, The Church as Movement: Starting and Sustaining Missional-Incarnational Communities. I was privileged to speak into the development of this book at a few different levels, first as an anonymous reader, and second over my kitchen table with JR. Here’s both a summary and my wholehearted endorsement as quoted from the first pages of this book:

Practitioner led, biblically based, and theologically sound. In this book, JR and Dan have been able to navigate the line between missiology and strategy by presenting a team guide for discipleship and church planting. So buy this book, gather your friends together, and learn how to start a movement that will change your city!

This article is Part 5 of a Blog Tour for this book. You can look up #churchasmovement for links to the other articles, as well as go to their website for additional resources and downloadables.

There are four ways that God shapes us for His mission.

That pronoun, His, is key because the mission that we are on is ultimately not ours or about us. Mission is not what we can do, it’s what God is doing in this world and how we can join Him! The South African Missiologist, David Bosch, in his epic primer on all things missional, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, says this about the mission of God, or missio Dei, as he refers to it.

Missio Dei has helped to articulate the conviction that neither the church nor any other human agent can ever be considered the author or bearer of mission. Mission is, primarily and ultimately, the work of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, for the sake of the world, a ministry in which the church is privileged to participate. Mission has its origin in the heart of God. God is a fountain of sending love. This is the deepest source of mission.

So if this is ultimately God’s mission and not ours, how can we participate in it? How does God get us ready for it? And how does this concept shape the way we need to approach ministry and mission? Here are four ways that God shapes us for mission, as outlined in Chapter 5 of The Church as Movement. I’ve built upon their ideas here.

1. He Initiates

Instead of strategizing on how your church can make the biggest missional bang in your city, the better way to join God in His mission is to first grow in your listening and noticing skills.

5 Steps to Being Missional

June 28, 2016 By Daniel Im

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Last post, I covered some important concepts on serving as a group, but today, I want to go a bit more in detail on being a group that extends and lives out the love of God–a group that is, as Jesus puts it–salt and light.

Evangelism is best done out of the context of a gospel community whose corporate life demonstrates the reality of the word that gave her life. – Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church

In this day and age, how do we tangibly tell others about the good news that has so shaped our lives? Out of love, we want to tell others about Jesus, but how do we do this in a way that doesn’t feel like we are shoving something down someone else’s throat? How do we appropriately engage others with the truth of the Gospel?

Here are five steps that will help us to better share about the wonderful hope that we have in Jesus Christ with our family, coworkers, neighbours, and friends.

1. Developing Trust

This is all about developing trusting relationships. After all, people don’t care what we have to say, unless they know that we care. This isn’t about trying to fake a trusting relationship, this is all about genuinely loving and caring for those around us so that trust is built up between us. This isn’t a bait and switch thing either, it’s simply about being a great friend. Doesn’t everyone need great friends whom they can trust and rely on? That’s what we need to do–be the best friend, coworker, neighbour, and family member that you can be. Why? Because that’s what Jesus would do, wouldn’t he?