"Exactly what would a "missional" church do that a "non-missional" church wouldn't do?"
This question was left as a comment on my previous entry about "Being Missional for the Wrong Motive." I'm going to attempt to answer this...and maybe only in part. But let's give it a shot.
First, let's look at what the church has been great about doing over the last twenty years or so. By and large there has been a big push toward cultural relevancy...or making the gospel applicable to those of our surrounding culture. This has come through how we preach (or how we don't preach). We've become sensitive to the seekers and have really rearranged our churches (for better or worse) around the visiting seeker. This was a profound move for a church that by and large had an 'in the world but avoid the world' mentality before that. So we were able to span the gap between the church and the world by making ourselves a little less threatening to the outsider.
One of the things this produced was the megachurch who marketed themselves toward a certain demographic. Then you had the smaller churches that would try to follow their seeker driven models. Houses of worship became more appealing to attend. It wasn't all about the Sunday best suit and tie anymore so much as it was coming together to seek God...or perhaps seek after God. What I'd like to focus on here is the houses of worship and the ministries they produced during this time, because I believe that has a great deal to do with the distinction between missional or not missional.
In order to reach those outside the church became focused on events as a main mechanism for reaching people. It would look to hold events to draw seekers into the church in order to make a connection. This was fantastic at the time because it was bringing people into the church who might have not come before. So churches would hold community festivals, motorcycle Sundays, etc. Point being, the base of all the ministries of the church was still the church. The mentality was still to get the people to come. The old Field of Dreams motto was almost the one of the church..."If we build it...if we have this or that...then they will come.
Therein lies the distinction, at least for me. The 'missional movement' is looking to move the church beyond itself. Let me put it this way:
Less Missionally Focused Church - Picture it as a grocery store.
Missionally Focused Church - Picture it as the distribution center for a food bank.
It may be a poor analogy, but I think it works. The former is founded on people coming to it. The goal of the grocery store is to bring people to it to buy its products. The mission of the distribution center is to be a supplier of the food to other food banks that will feed the people. Both provide food, but they are vastly different in mission. One expects people to come, the other acts as one who goes out and provides. One is a single entity, one works in partnership with others (Please don't carry this too far...I know the grocery store has to have partners to get it's food...that's not my point :-) . In other words the missionally focused church positions itself in such a way where it (church building, facilities, in house ministries) are only a PORTION of the total ministry of the church. This type of church will continually look to reorient itself to be a part of the local community in ways that serve the poor, needy, outcast...or basically just serve their neighbor.
The main issue with the non-missional (and I don't really like slapping that label on anyone) church is that they view their house of worship and their ministries as the place where people need to come to find God. If they want to do something with the community, they reinvent the wheel, put their churches name on it, and then go about doing it themselves without building a partnership with someone who is already doing the same thing in the local community...but they just aren't 'Christian.' The missional church would/should look to join up with anyone out there that's doing what that particular church feels called to, even if they are not people of faith. That is NOT compromising. Rather, that is building relationships and partnerships and supporting the calling both of you feel. In that partnership there is immense opportunity for the Spirit's work and for us to give witness through our conversation and work flavored with the salt and light of the gospel.
I hope, at least in part, this gives some insight into what I see as the difference between the two. This post has gone on long enough, so let's just put it out there and get some feedback before we move on. I have some other thoughts we'll save perhaps for next time.
I'm also shooting Todd Hiestand an e-mail to see if he would comment on the question we're trying to address. He's a local pastor in Philly with a good pulse about such things. Check him out at http://www.toddhiestand.com/. I'm not sure when and if he'll post on it, but check it out either way. It's a great blog.
