Being Missional -- A Quest for Understanding

I am intrigued by the idea of being a missional church. I'm still learning what that means, which is why I attended the Congregational Transformation workshop at the Disciples General Assembly. Among the presenters were Dick Hamm, whose book Recreating the Church I just reviewed, and Alan Roxburgh, a consultant/coach from Vancouver BC. I'm reading his book with Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader (Jossey Bass, 2006).

Roxburgh and Romanuck write this about being missional:

Mission is not about a project or a budget, or one-off event somewhere; it's not even about sending missionaries. A missional church is a community of God's people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God's missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all creation in Jesus Christ. (p. xv)

Being missional is being outward focused, not inward focused. It's not about program either. It's not top-down, but the mission emerges from within the people who discern God's call and release the imagination. What I'm hearing from Roxburgh and from Dick Hamm is that to be missional is not to get that quick fix but is waiting for God to work, but it's not a passive waiting, it's active waiting.

We have been sold on finding ways of marketing the church so we can build the institution. Mega-church pastors hold pastors conferences and tell us -- do this and you'll succeed beyond your wildest dreams, but for some reason this rarely happens. And we go away discouraged, wondering why our congregation can't be like theirs. Of course we're not supposed to be like their congregation, we're supposed to be the congregation God wants us to be and to discover that we must be open to discerning God's direction from within the community. At least that's how I'm hearing this -- and I expect to learn more in the coming months!