The term “missional church” has appeared frequently in recent discussions of the new Form of Government proposal. The use of the term – especially by some evangelical groups – seems to be a positive description of the “FOG” report, indicating what they see as a more flexible structure that serves the primary purpose of the church, which is mission.

This primacy of mission is not a new discovery, but it’s very helpful to be reminded of it. My experience in “mission” (as working outside the U.S.) was long ago, in the 1960s and ’70s, when I spent ten years working with the Christian churches in Indonesia. But I believe as strongly now as I did then, that mission is the heart of the church’s life, and of the Christian’s calling.

The idea of a “missional church” concerns me, though. I worry that it can be used as a distraction, when being “missional” is set over against everything else that the church is and does. Mission sometimes seems to be viewed as a set of activities, and set over against the structures for institutional support, which seem to be dismissed as just the demands of stodgy bureaucrats (mainly “in Louisville,” with an implied “Yech!”). Certainly any large organization can become rigid and ineffective and irrelevant. But it’s hard to find any group of people engaging for any length of time in a coherent activity (to win baseball games, to teach kids to read, to help sick people get well, or for that matter, to raise children) without some kind of persisting structure, with rules and patterns of behavior and consistent expectations of one another.

Witherspoon Board member Bill Dummer has contrasted the notion of a “missional community” with a “maintenance congregation,” whose main concern is “keeping the local church machinery running just for the folks inside.” Certainly we all know – and probably love – congregations like this. We need to recognize that “maintenance” is necessary and good – but is never enough.

So we need a balance between mission and maintenance. The great Geman theologian Emil Brunner offered the insight that “The church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.” Mission is simply what we do when we’re being the church. A church that loses its mission is every bit as effective as a fire that has gone out. Just ashes.

So what is that mission?

In the second half of the 20th century, under the leadership of the global ecumenical movement (which grew out of the earlier “missionary movement”), we began to see our churches’ mission as a three-fold engagement with the world. Following the work of New Testament scholars, we understood the church as called to engage in marturia, koinonia, and diakonia – witness, fellowship (or community), and service.

As our church gathers once again for the General Assembly, we might benefit by being guided by this wholistic vision of being a “missional church.”

We can engage in witness to the world around us – our near and far neighbors – as we help people to see their lives in the light of Jesus’ deeply human and profoundly Godly life. Thus they may come to know that all of us are loved, and to know that our ways of living together, with our abuses of power and wealth, are always under the judgment of God. This witness, like that of the prophets, is always both an announcing of love and grace, and a denouncing of the injustice and violence that violate the sacred value of God’s creatures.

And we can take seriously our call to community – to caring for one another, and to welcoming the strangers at our doors as if they were “family” – as indeed they are. And so we may come closer to showing the world what the Reign of God can be for all of us.

And finally, we can engage in service – following Jesus’ example by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and responding to all the other forms of human need. More than that, as we see in our Presbyterian mission programs around the world, we must engage the structures and systems of society, resisting their exploitation and pollution and other violations of humanity and nature.

May this great gathering of our church in San Jose be an occasion for celebrating all that we are doing in mission – proclaiming the Good News, resisting the evils being done through violence and the materialism of the global market economy; building up our church as a community of care and respect and welcome; and helping people – both face-to-face and through broader social and political changes – to live fuller, joy-filled lives.

If we do this we will truly be a missional church. And it will be good – for us and for God’s creation. 

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