The Bible may not “define” terms but it leaves us with images we can quickly grasp, such as lilies that toil not neither do they spin. The Bible is pretty concrete. Frankly, I’m not happy or comfortable with the –and I think it’s an emerging church (though I know the “emerging church” is “over”) –idea that “all of these things just can’t be defined … ” that can potentially contain a seed of arrogance. Again, I understand the impetus against empirical slicing, dicing and control. Well, the jury is out … I will await further posts.

I think one of Roxburgh’s big concerns is that the church too often defines itself pragmatically. The missional church, from the beginning, has resisted this. One of the most helpful ways to understand missional church for me comes from Craig Van Gelder (a contributor, with Roxburgh, in Guder’s Missional Church). He says (in The Ministry of the Missional Church): the nature of the church leads to the activity of the church. In long-hand: the church is, the church does what it is, the church organizes what it does. Van Gelder is concerned that most American churches define themselves in terms of what it does or how it organizes itself, not in terms of its nature. Roxburghs list of 8 insufficient definitions all focus on activity, not nature.
So any definition must begin with the nature of the church. Roxburgh has attempted a definition in The Missional Leader: “a missional church is a community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.” Again, his empahsis is on nature and not defining activity.
I think he’s on to something. By the way, how does this challenge a popular definition of the church where the Gospel is rightly preached and sacraments rightly administered. Are those activities?

Brian,
Thanks. That’s very helpful.

So, yet another blog that “defines” missional by pointing out how “missional” people hate being defined.
This is neither new nor, quite bluntly, especially helpful. If “missional” can’t (or won’t) be defined, why even bother using the term?

Mark, come back for this theme Monday because, so it seems to me, he gets very close to defining “Missional.”

I think the idea of to define in order to control rightly is resisted by missional church thinkers/practitioners. We think that if we have the definition, we have the thing defined in our grasp, and then under our control. Our era has done to “church” what 1st century Judaism did to “messiah”– warped it. Church is an energized reality that can reveal and define itself–so mystery and mission.

I don’t like definitions, they tend to be too static…and become closed. They are certainly helpful. But the danger is the we’ve ” arrived ” scenario. and who’s in and whose out. If there was something that captured the imagination of moving, of growing into something but never having arrived. Sort the idea, the imagination of the early Christian church being called ” The Way.” Jesus being called The Way, captured imaginations, and was something you had to be part of, and to practice to be able to define, and yet still not capture it all. But, we do love our definitions.

Part of what I think Roxburgh (and other missional thinkers) is up too, is a push back against the pragmatism of the modern church & church growth movement which says; ‘give me the three steps to being church/following Jesus.’
‘Missional’ is not a model of church, or a style, etc…
It is mostly a posture.
It is about our approach/attitude towards the world, shaped by the good news of God & God’s Kingdom, which all informs the church.
That’s an ongoing journey for a community of faith… we are never ‘done’ until the consummation of the Kingdom.
And I think Roxburgh (& others) fear that the term ‘missional’ is being co-oped by those who say… ‘just let me check the ‘missional’ box for my church & move on!’

All I know is that unless “missional” includes in it a mission for people who don’t know Jesus yet to know Him as Savior – and place saving faith in His work on the cross and then join Him on mission to others – I don’t believe it is truly “missional”. The book of Acts is an extremely missional book – that to me, really demonstrates missional and a passion for people who don’t know Jesus yet. I’d love to see more attention to defining “missional” by more than only the gospels.

Dan,
The book of Acts is missional, a testimony to the power and mission of God, but it doesn’t seem to provide much guidance for how the churches go on being missional in their local environment day after day, year after year, through all stages of life. Most of us are not called to be itinerant church planters or charismatic preachers. We have only little tidbits of information about what happened in the churches themselves, and mostly centered on Paul or other dealing with problems and providing occasional exhortation.
The gospels provide no direct model either – they relate a special time, place, and happening. There is much teaching we would do well to engage and take seriously.
I wish we had a book in the NT that told us how to integrate the teaching in a local church context in a missional fashion. As we don’t, we struggle forward. (Although even if we had such a book in the canon we’d probably argue about it.)

Dan (#9),
I agree with RJS (#10). While I appreciate your heart for the lost and you see an aggressive church in Acts taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, there is a world of difference between “evangelism” and “missional.” Evangelism rightly cares about lost people, missional concerns the lostness of all creation, yes, of course, including people. Think of the church as an energetic, risk-taking *reconciling* community working in light of Jesus’ redemptive mission to “reconcile all things to God: (Colossians 1).

Dan, I agree with both John and RJS about the meaning of “missional.” The word is more than evangelism and incorporates evangelism, but the term is now being used in a special way for what God is doing in this world — and cosmic redemption in light of the creation mandate of Gen 1:26-27 as well as the consummation of creation in texts like Rom 8:27 as well as the climactic visions of Revelation chart this path — and is a word that is to be distinguished from evangelism.
But, if your concern is that there are too many concerned with “missional” because it gets them off the hook for evangelism, I agree with you. It’s not an either/or but a both/and.