The Missional Hail Mary

Being “missional” is all the rage these days. Are you missional? Is your worship missional? Do you sing missional songs? All words are prey to sloganeering, and it appears that this one is in a bear trap. The more places I see it, the more it’s becoming obvious that those promoting it are the least missionally minded–that is, willing to confront unbelief with the Gospel of God’s grace.

My most recent encounter occurred at a “Reformed” church where the pastor talked (I can’t say preached) about his pet gerbil and lessons he learned about God from his weightlifting. In doing so, he robbed me of hyperbole. I just can’t top it. It’s funnier now. At the time I whispered to my wife that we need to come up with a point at which we leave the service. When does blasphemy lite become too much?

This pastor is young (probably late 20’s), no doubt sincere, and preaching to a congregation of mostly senior citizens. The majority of his leadership consists of ladies, my guess is older, who are clearly running things, officially or not. All of this was familiar to me having grown up in the mainline Protestant church. What was new in this context was the multiple references to mission and missional living. It wasn’t the theme of the sermon, so it seemed a little heavy. The church explicitly promotes itself as an outward focused church, and as the service closed, the enormous screen power-pointed “YOU ARE ENTERING THE MISSION FIELD.” To give them credit, it looks like they are actually serving the community, and blessings as they do so. But why would a congregation which has caved to evangelical feminism and info-tainment teaching so loudly beat the missional drum?

And then it occurred to me: to stay alive. If this church doesn’t get more young people, in particular young families, the doors will be closed in less than a generation. To be fair, the community is largely a resort/vacation spot, so it makes sense for them to have an unusually heavy senior population, but the fact remains that they need young people, and what they doing will bore or disgust the sort of Christians or potential Christians who would want to be equipped to serve as missionaries in our society.

Nothing can take away the good work done by missiologists like Lesslie Newbigin and Roland Allen, and for those familiar with their work of faithfully contextualizing the Gospel, words like “missional” are precious–helpful descriptions against navel-gazing fundamentalists and pessimistic Presbyterians. This is exactly why others who have capitulated to the spirit of the age grasp on to them, hoping like a losing quarterback about to be sacked to throw a missional hail Mary. Who knows, maybe someone will catch it.

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