I ran across Tim Keller’s paper on the Missional Church (attached). I found his points challenging, as we move from Christendom’s assumptions to learning how to be “missional” in our efforts to build movements everywhere. As Keller argues, we don’t simply need evangelistic movements, but rather “missional” ones. I’ve adapted some of his comments for this post, read the whole paper to get his complete argument.
The Elements of a “Missional Movement.”
1. Discourse in the vernacular.
Missional movements avoid “tribal” language. A missional movement avoids ever talking as if non-believing people are not present. If you speak and discourse as if your whole neighborhood is present (not just scattered Christians), eventually more and more of your neighborhood will find their way in or be invited.
2. Enter and re-tell the culture’s stories with the gospel.
In a missional movements communication should always assume the presence of skeptical people, and should engage their stories, not simply talk about “old times.” To “enter” means to show sympathy toward and deep acquaintance with the literature, music, theater, etc. of the existing culture’s hopes, dreams, ‘heroic’ narratives, fears.
3. Theologically train lay people for public life and vocation.
In a ‘missional’ movements, everyone needs theological education to ‘think Christianly’ about everything and work with Christian distinctiveness. They need to know: a) what cultural practices are common grace and to be embraced, b) what practices are antithetical to the gospel and must be rejected, c) what practices can be adapted/revised. Missional movements lift up all vocations as “real kingdom work” where Christ-followers renew and transform culture in their “secular” work.
4. Create Christian community which is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.
In general, missional movements must be more deeply and practically committed to deeds of compassion and social justice than traditional liberal churches/efforts and more deeply and practically committed to evangelism and conversion than traditional fundamentalist churches/movements. This kind of movement is profoundly ‘counter-intuitive’ to American observers. It breaks their ability to categorize (and dismiss) it as liberal or conservative. Only this kind of movement has any chance in the non-Christian west.
5. Practice Christian unity as much as possible on the local level.
Missional movements need to define themselves over against ‘the world’–the values of the non-Christian culture. It is very important that we not spend our time bashing and criticizing other kinds of churches/movements. That simply plays in to the common ‘defeater’ that Christians are all intolerant. While we have to align ourselves in denominations or similar efforts that share many of our distinctives, at the local level we should cooperate and reach out to and support the other efforts in our local area which are pursuing “kingdom” values–whether evangelical or not or whether they know it or not. This will raise many thorny issues, of course, but our bias should be in the direction of cooperation.
