Posted on June 23, 2008 - by Stephen Murray

Missional Link Monday

Rick Meigs, the dude behind ‘Friend of Missional‘, has launched a synchroblog around the word ‘missional’ which he contends is in need of reclaiming and definition. 50 other bloggers will be posting their contributions on their own blogs during the course of today. Rick’s own contribution can be found here. I didn’t sign up for the synchroblog but I thought I’d point you around to some of the contributions.

South Africa’s very own Steve Hayes, Arnau van Wyngaard and Cobus van Wyngaard have both made contributions. Perhaps its quite significant that out of 50 ‘missional’ bloggers 3 are South African – maybe 3 and a half if you count Alan Hirsch There are probably at least between 5 and 10 other South African bloggers who could have been able to contribute to this synchroblog which suggests to me that the ‘missional’ conversation in South Africa is moving forward.

Out of all the contributions I most enjoyed Alan Hirsch’s and Brad Brisco’s. I found these two paragraphs from Brad very helpful:

“The church must move far beyond measuring success by the traditional indicators of attendance, buildings and cash. Instead we must create new scorecards to measure ministry effectiveness. These new scorecards will include measurements that point to the church’s impact on community transformation rather than measuring what is happening among church members inside the church walls.

A missional church may ask how many hours has the church spent praying for community issues? How many hours have church members (including staff) spent with unbelievers? How many community groups use the facilities of the church? How many people are healthier because of the clinic the church operates? How many people are in new jobs because of free job training offered by the church? What is the number of school children who are getting better grades because of after-school tutoring the church provides. Or how many times do community leaders call the church asking for advice?”

I would caution though that there are other traditional indicators – other than buildings, cash and attendance – that should and must remain in place. Indicators like praying and caring for the sick and spiritually struggling members within the church, commitment to personal bible reading and prayer, meeting together to study the scriptures and pray etc. These indicators still ‘happen in the church’ but they are important. The church’s impact on those outside is not the only indicator – in fact Paul in the letter to the Galatians seems to imply that doing good to all but especially those ‘inside’ is the best indicator. Nevertheless Brad does well in re-orientating our scoreboards.

What’s my take on the whole ‘missional’ thing? I’m pretty much where Alan Hirsch is in his contribution. Like him, and apparently Ed Stetzer and Tim Keller too, I think there’s a difference between the aims of the emerging church and the concept ‘missional’. Like him I do not primarily see ‘missional’ as something that radically alters my theological convictions but rather something that gives focus and direction to those convictions. Like him, I think that ‘missional’ is intrinsically linked with ‘incarnational’ (although I might be a little bit broader than him with regards to my understanding of ‘missional-attractional’ and why it can still be ‘missional’ – maybe, I don’t know). Like him, I think its important that we retain that core understanding of ‘missional’.