U.S.A. Missionary

There is a term that has been floating around the church world for a while now called "missional." It is based on the idea that America is now a mission field unto itself. It used to be the case that American churches would do missions internationally and do evangelism locally (in America). Evangelism worked well because most of Americans were, at least to some degree, "Christian-based." The foundations of America are largely Christian. Though millions of people came to America, bringing with them many different types of culture, most them were Christian, monolithically so. Even the part of the population that was not Christian knew about Christianity. So for the church, a one-size-fits-all approach to evangelism worked. It worked well.

But not anymore. We are, for lack of a better term, a "post-Christian" nation. There is no monolithic Christian identity any longer. The influx of different cultures coupled with degrading foundation of Christianity (for different reasons) has truly brought us to the point where millions upon millions of people are not familiar with Christianity. So what does that make America? A mission field. (In some areas, like Seattle, it is really pre-Christian, where a Christian foundation has never been established.)

Our evangelistic task, therefore, is different today. We must literally be missionaries to our next door neighbors, friends, and relatives. Rather than having the church be a place where we draw people in and evangelize them, we must send people out, as missionaries, to spread the gospel. That is being missional. But how do you do that?

I have uploaded a few interviews with Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller, speaking to this issue and what it looks like for a church and it's members. I hope it is helpful to you as you reach out to your community, your mission field.

Mark Driscoll on Seeker Churches vs. Missional Churches:



Tim Keller on Being Missional vs. Being Evangelistic:



Update:

Odd. The same day I posted on missional churches, Christianity Today posted an article on the same topic. Read it here.

I quickly read through it and it looks more like a piece on trying to understand the broad scope of the terms "missional" and "missional church" in their different contexts. Todd Billings seeks, in his article, to discover the true definition of these terms (at least as it was originally intended). Following the book Missional Church, Billings states, "The American church had been tied to a 'Christendom model' of Christianity, wherein the church focused on internal needs and maintaining its cultural privilege in society. The decline of Christendom provided the church an opportunity, they said, to rediscover its identity as a people sent by God into the world as gospel witnesses."