Two Kinds of Missional

I have previously suggested that “missional” is like Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:23: It is all things to all men. I have previously linked to Ed Stetzer speaking of missional as a Rorshach Inkblot test: What you see in it depends on what’s going on in that little brain of yours. So, when we hear the word missional, we need to ask, “What do you mean by that?”

A conversation over the weekend sparked some additional thinking about the way that people use the word missional. I want to briefly address that this morning.

I would suggest that there is a spectrum of meaning of missional with two broad categories of use (with a lot of subcategories). The first is the popular usage. The second is the historical or original sense. I think we need to be careful to distinguish these two.

The popular usage is similar to a buzzword usage. People don’t really understand it’s historical underpinnings, or what it means to those “in the know.” But they see someone they like using it, or they hear someone making the rounds on the conference circuit use it, so they adopt it. For these, much of what’s in missional  is simply common sense ministry. 

For instance, just today Steve Davis (whom I don’t put in the category of buzzword user) highlights the idea of being out among people as the means of getting to know people because you need people to whom you proclaim the gospel in order to do the work of an evangelist and build the church. I like it. I think it’s absolutely necessary for ministry. I think it’s where many pastors are weak, myself included.

In this sense, missional means something like “be a Christian all the time, not just on Sundays and remember our ultimate priority with people is to evangelize people with the gospel.” When we help people with a car breakdown or raking leaves or when we are sitting on the porch talking or mingling at a community event, we are to do it with the gospel in mind, ultimately realizing that this person’s greatest need is a Savior.

I don’t think that is particularly cutting edge. It’s not exactly ground-breaking like inventing electricity or even inventing the internet.  I think it’s actually pretty straightforward NT thinking. It’s what believers are supposed to do.

It is missional only in the sense that people are being “sent out” away from the church gathered to live in their communities with a gospel mindset. It is the opposite of cloistering or ghetto-ing ourselves. We withdraw from the world only on Sundays for worship, and return to the world to live, work, serve, and evangelize for the other 167 hours or so. The church and the gospel is a way of life, not a Sunday morning diversion from life. The gospel is always to be front and center for us even away from the church gathered.

But that’s not new. It’s “rediscovery” is perhaps a testament to just how far the church has gotten from being biblical. It is, in one sense, an intentional condemnation of the seeker-church mentality that the way to evangelize is to invite people to some event (which missional people highly object to, even when they practice it).

I appreciate the emphasis of Steve’s article. I think one of the primary issues, particularly for pastors, is the priority of being around people who need to be evangelized. I am constantly thinking of my own need to be “out there” with people.

But I don’t think, historically, that’s what missional meant to many because it too closely ties proclamation to social consciousness. And here lies the other usage of missional. It is the academic/theoretical/philosophical use of missional. (Notice the absence of “theological” or “biblical.”) Much of what’s packed into this use of missional is little different than old theological liberalism that devalued or denied doctrine and gospel proclamation while emphasizing social issues. It’s the kind of missional that Brian McLaren is, alongside of everything else he is. People who use the term in this way object to the popular usage because they believe it corrupts the essence of missional by distorting the real meaning. 

Many of these proponents believe that mission is God at work building his kingdom completely apart from proclamation and largely apart from the church. Repairing social structures, eradicating poverty, and fighting for equality is the mission because the Kingdom of God surely has no such problems in it. It does not require the church. When the church does get “on mission,” it is merely finding what God is already doing in the world and joining him in it. For these, I think the mindset is that God is at work in the world, and if the church happens to be involved in it or built along the way, all the better. But the church is tangential, at best.

I think this is severely faulty, irredeemably incorrect, and indeed a false gospel—a false good news.

Many missional people (of the popular use) today would either completely disavow or strongly challenge this second view of missional. I am pretty sure Steve would dissociate himself from this. He rightly emphasizes the priority or the ultimate aim of proclamation. This is the position of someone like Keller as well.

The fact is that you haven’t preached the gospel until you have preached the gospel. All the good things in the world won’t take the place of telling people, “You are a great sinner in need of a great Savior,” and then explaining that the only suitable Savior is Jesus Christ. But many object to that, or at least do not see it as necessary. In so doing, they have denied the gospel, and this is a problem at the heart of some missional people. It’s why missional can be dangerous.

I think there is some helpfulness in the popular idea of missional.I think the other usage is mostly bankrupt.

I think there are some interesting questions to address on several facets. Here’s just a sample:

1. What aspects of missional should we or can we embrace?
2. How do we determine what biblical living looks like in our respective communities?
3. How can we establish contacts and relationships in the community with the gospel in mind?
4. How can mercy ministries be carried out inside the bounds of biblical instruction and the mandate of the church?
5. What kind of missional ministries can we partner with to one degree or another? When has someone “crossed the line”?

Extension of the Kingdom?

At the risk of appearing like an old fuddy-duddy, I am going to go ahead and comment on this and this.

Let me start out by saying I think buying mosquito nets is a fine thing to do. I think mosquito nets are very valuable in certain areas of the world in that they protect from life-altering and sometimes fatal diseases. I have no issue at all with mosquito nets, people raising money for mosquito nets, sending mosquito nets to people who need them and can’t afford them, etc.

Here’s the problem I see. One commenter says, “Thank you for the opportunity to take action for the extension of His kingdom!”

Now admittedly, I am no scholar, but I am racking my brain trying to come up with something from the Bible about mosquito nets and the extension of the kingdom.

And I am totally blank.

The closest thing I am coming up with is the fly in Isaiah 7:18 and the locusts in Joel. I think there were some hornets back in the conquest, right? These were sent by God as judgment though, and I am thinking that it is not our job to try to stop the judgment of God. And I am thinking that while mosquitoes are, generally speaking, the result of the fall, they are not expressly the judgment of God on Central Africa (or anywhere else).

Obviously, I speak with a bit of hyperbole and satire, and some of you will be rankled by it. But seriously, in what sense can buying mosquito nets (a perfectly good thing to do) be labeled as an extension of the kingdom. I would argue that such can be said only in some vastly distorted view of the kingdom.

When Jesus came to “extend the kingdom” so to speak, he did it by preaching repentance and belief (Mark 1:14-15), not by buying mosquito nets.

And this leads to my point: We have a severe misunderstanding of the kingdom going on in modern day evangelicalism when we confuse the pursuit of the kingdom with the pursuit of social justice. Jesus did not come primarily to pursue social justice but to redeem sinners who have repented and believed and then to institute a kingdom of social justice.

Stunningly absent from some treatments of social justice is the fact that Jesus didn’t heal everybody, didn’t feed everybody, didn’t build houses for everybody (or anybody that I can recall, except for the ones in heaven). Jesus didn’t address racism. In fact, in one sense, he somewhat encouraged it (cf. the Syrophoenician woman and the Greeks at the festival to whom he refused to talk, though with the advent of the church, those ethnic distinctions are gone).

Buying mosquito nets, or feeding people at a soup kitchen, or running an addiction center, or fighting poverty and racism are all good things to do. But they are not “kingdom work” and they are not based on the ministry of Jesus because Jesus didn’t do those things.

Can you imagine someone standing up for social justice and saying this:

Listen folks, we know Jesus didn’t feed everyone. In fact, he fed very few people comparatively speaking (5000 and 4000). In fact, he prevented some people from eating when he cursed the fig tree so that it didn’t produce any more figs. We know he didn’t heal everyone. In fact, he let some people die. We know Jesus didn’t build houses for people. In fact, he himself didn’t even have one. In fact, almost all of his miracles were done only for those who already believed on him.

But we are going to follow Jesus and have food centers, and medical centers, and house-building groups, and mosquito net-buying groups because, bless God, we want to be like Jesus and we want to show people the love of Jesus and maybe these people will see these works and come to believe on Jesus.

Of course you can’t imagine that because Jesus didn’t show people his love by doing those things.

The point is that you can’t preach “incarnational ministry” from the life of Jesus because Jesus didn’t do what the incarnational people are talking about doing. When he helped the hungry, it was by a miracle, not a food pounding or a Thanksgiving soup kitchen. When he helped the sick, it was by instant healing, not a free clinic to give people medical advice and a seven-day round of antibiotics. So if you want to be “incarnational” like Jesus was, go do a miracle. Not one of the phony TBN miracles, but actually heal someone, or feed 5000 hungry men in your city with a loaf of bread and can of tuna.

I have no problem with food pantries, soup kitchens, rescue missions, medical centers, or the like. I think they are things we should do, probably more often than we do. I think we should have great concern for hurting and hopeless people. But let’s not blame that on Jesus. Jesus did none of those things in the way that people are saying we should do them.

I think this is one place (among others) where the missional idea goes off track. It assumes (wrongly) that we are to follow the ministry pattern of Jesus in social issues. But the NT simply does not bear that out. Jesus gave no command for it. The epistles give no command for it. There’s little NT evidence for the church’s widespread pursuit of social justice in society. The emphasis is on preaching Jesus, calling people to repent and believe, and then go and live like they repented and believed. There was no call (and no apparent attempt) to reform social structures and eliminate social ills. It simply isn’t there.

We need to go back and realize that the reason for the kingdom postponement (however your particular eschatology might shade that) is not because there was a failure of social justice in first century Palestine. It wasn’t because there weren’t enough blog sites raising money to buy mosquito nets or build schools, or enough people raking their neighbor’s leaves and picking up trash on the street in order to be like Jesus.

The postponement of the kingdom in the gospels is because of the lack of belief and repentance in the Messiah. That is why Jesus said, “This kingdom will be taken away from you and given to a people producing the fruit of it” (Matthew 21:43).

So my caution to us all is to be wary of pretending that social justice pursuits are the extension of the kingdom. They aren’t. We should pursue social justice. We should not think that it is kingdom work in this age.

Listen, I am not in favor of social injustice. I don’t want there to be poor and hungry people, racism, sickness, and mosquito-driven malaria. I just don’t see that Jesus came to save us from that.

We should be interested in the communities that we live in because, among other reasons, we have to live in them. Personally, I like it when my street is filled with decent people who treat others with respect, help others in need, watch out for each others houses and properties. I like it when medical help is readily available, when poor people can get food assistance in times of legitimate need, and when race barriers are being broken down.

I am not against any of these things. I am for them.

But that’s not kingdom work.