This was the title of the first talk of the evening given by Dr. Ed Stetzer. As I mentioned in the last post, Dr. Stetzer is a relatively young guy, but he has a vast experience in the world of church planting, having been involved in it since 1988 (I was still in high-school then).

Missiology is simply the study of missions. The word “missional” is used a lot these days, especially in the context of the Emerging Church. It means, quite simply, to act in and be identified in missions. Just like the word “adversarial” means to act as an advisary. As for church planting, it is a missional endeavor in that church planting is a true venue for people to ask the hard questions about missions.

It is easy for a church to be “mission minded,” or as Dr. Stetzer calls it, “missionminded” (one word). However, it is difficult to be truly missional, especially in the sense of being continually intentional about interfacing with your community and bringing the Gospel in a context the community can understand. An interesting point is that there really is no distinction between “missions” and “evangelism” – they both are purposed to accomplish the same thing. Clearly, there are challenges to being missional, but there are also rich opportunities. I’m not going to recap Dr. Stetzer’s talk (it is, afterall, copyrighted), but I am going to talk about some insights for our community in New Mexico.

The goal of any new church in my community should be to be culturally relevant. This does not mean “watered-down theology,” but rather to bring the mission to the community in context with where it is. The community needs to see us as proclaimers of the gospel, has having authority to teach, as having a good reputation with the community, as being instrumental in the transformation of the community. This ultimately comes from those who don’t know Christ coming to the knowledge of Him, but it is an even bigger concept than that. For centuries, the Church was the center of the community. It literally was the center of society. Why can’t it be that way again? I believe it can – but we need to fess up to the sins of the past and press on to new life through Jesus Christ.

The Church cannot be in the business to promote itself – only Christ has the right to do that. We need to be proclaimers of Jesus Christ. We must decrease so Christ can increase, or what are we doing in the first place? If all the people see when they look at us is US, we aren’t doing our job. Yes, we need to be active, working in the community, helping the poor, healing the sick, working with the wounded and oppressed – but if all people see is us, we’re doing it wrong.

There are several churches in my town – most are either staying the same or shrinking in size. Most have been around for many years, looking more or less the same as they did 40 years or more ago. Many enjoy faithful congregations, but few (perhaps even none) are seeing any number of unbelievers coming to faith. However, We have great churches serving as hospitals for the “Christian Wounded.” I believe we are starting to see the first great sending out from those churches. Where are they going to go? They are going to go to the 9-5 worker in the office who craves to be part of something bigger than themselves. They are going to go to the blue collar laborer who struggles to provide food for a family of 5. They are going to the college student alone in a new community for the first time. They are going to the post-Christian community native who hasn’t been to church for 20 years.

Where will missional thinking lead for a church willing to follow? Only God knows.