Tag Archive for 'Missional'

Emerging Impulses: Relevant

Written by Jasen Tracy. Published on September 3, 2007 ago in Emerging Church and Religion. Closed

Relevance can be a tricky concept to define. Dictionary.com defines relevant as “bearing upon or connected with the matter in hand; pertinent.” There are various ways to be relevant, and, of course, different things or groups of people to try to be relevant to. Thus, I’ll break this impulse down into 3 groups.

Missional
This is being relevant at it’s best. It’s what I wrote about last week. This is people seeking to make the gospel message intelligible to the non-Christians in the surrounding community. This is done in a variety of ways in which Christians “go to” the people, instead of waiting for them to show up in church sometime.

With Culture
This involves Christians being active in mainstream culture, and rejecting the idea of having a Christian subculture. What makes this different from “missional” is that people are primarily engaged in their own interests, rather than reaching out to other people in a way they can understand. This does not preclude Christian witness, in fact, it can create situations where that is possible. This participation in mainstream culture does not necessitate a sell-out of any Christian values or doctrine. For an example of this, check out Relevant Magazine.

Some have accused Emerging Church of having a “cult of cool.” Although I would call that charge false, there is little doubt that many emerging church people do tend to have certain interests in common, things like U2, coffee, and “progressive culture.”

In-House
This type of relevant is a mere updating of existing church models. The classic example would be a large church that adds another service that has worship lead by guitars and drums. It is an attempt by churches to “be relevant” to the preferences of their own (especially younger) members. Some critics lump such groups in with the Emerging Church, but it’d be more accurate to consider such groups (if none or few of the other “emerging impulses” are present) to be the next generation of “seeker-friendly” churches.

Emerging Impulses: Missional

Written by Jasen Tracy. Published on August 27, 2007 ago in Emerging Church and Religion. 1 Comment

Origin and Description of the Term
Although the term “missional” was used beforehand, the concept was not popularized until the writings of Lesslie Newbigin in the 1990′s. Newbigin was a British missionary to India, and as many missionaries before and after discovered, he had to struggle with presenting the gospel over the cultural divide that he faced. This was expected on the missions field, but when Newbigin returned to the United Kingdom, he realized he faced the same problems there. Thus, the missional approach owes alot to lessons learned on the mission field.

Perhaps the best brief description of missional comes from Rick Meigs:

Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.

What it Means in Practice
From the above definition, it might seem that a church “being missional” is only a semantic distinction, but it does lead to important differences. They are rather hard to identify though, since it’s more of a mindset change than the establishment of programs. Other people have covered it better than I could, so I”ll point people to http://friendofmissional.org/ for examples.

Of Emerging and Missional
Most emerging churches have a commitment to the missional idea. Some combine the terms, referring to themselves as an “emerging-missional” church (this is apparently more common in Australia and New Zealand). Not all missional churches are emerging churches though. Some (perhaps many) churches who hold to missional ideas do not consider themselves to be emerging churches and show few of the other emerging impulses.