Missional is a big catch-word in church growth circles these days, and in the SBC. In conversation with some friends recently, I suggested that maybe the divide between many churches was ideological in part and could be defined along a missional line, ie. missional verses non-missional churches. The problem, as pointed out in that conversation, is that no church will admit to being non-missional, and most (if not all) Baptist churches would claim defiantly that they are missional. Yet, the nature of our own Southern Baptist Convention screams otherwise. As a denomination in decline, it is obvious that the majority of our churches are not reaching people for the gospel, and yet, we continue to claim to be missional. What is needed is a clear definition of what it means to be missional. Mark Driscoll has said “Without a clear definition of what a missional church community is and does, tragically, community will become the mission of the church” (Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 32).
I think Driscoll is correct, so what does it mean to be truly missional, and can the rifts in our denomination (and even in evangelicalism) really be defined along these lines? If so, can we right the ship of the SBC and of evangelicalism by appealing to all churches to refocus around the missional claims of the gospel? Jurgen Moltmann is helpful here:
It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church (Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, London: SCM Press, 1977, 64).