>I have been wondering lately what church should really be about. Ask various people and you’ll get different answers, usually dependent upon an individual’s own need. However, is that what church is all about? Meeting my own need? Or is there more to it?  Why do people go to church? Why do they pick one denomination over another? Or one local church over a different one. I recently saw a facebook status that said the following:

“According to an EA survey, young adults are most attracted to a church by the resources it provides to support their own personal faith. Relevant preaching was ranked the characteristic that would most attract them to church, followed by excellent worship & with people they can relate to coming third. Least attractive characteristics were the church being mission-orientated or a safe place to invite friends.”

This quote certainly made me think about what I am looking for and why I am so often disappointed by church. Am I looking for something that will just support my personal faith – is it okay to do that? Or is there more to church than what we see as relevant to our lives? A current growing trend is for churches to move in what is called a “Missional” direction, but what does that really mean? Is this the model of how the church should look today?

Being Missional

In an article titled, “The ‘Missional Church’: A Model for Canadian Churches?” David Horrox writes, “The church should stop mimicking the surrounding culture and become an alternative community, with a different set of beliefs, values and behaviors. Ministers would no longer engage in marketing; churches would no longer place primary emphasis on programs to serve members. The traditional ways of evaluating ’successful churches’ – bigger buildings, more people, bigger budgets, larger ministerial staff, new and more programs to serve members – would be rejected. New yardsticks would be the norm: To what extent is our church a ’sent’ community in which each believer is reaching out to his community? To what extent is our church impacting the community with a Christian message that challenges the values of our secular society?”

Dan Kimball in “The Emerging Church” (Zondervan, 2003) describes the missional church “as a body of people sent on a mission who gather in community for worship, encouragement, and teaching from the Word that supplements what they are feeding themselves throughout the week.”

Both Horrox and Kimball capture much of the essence and heart of what it means to be missional, but can we probe deeper and articulate a more definitive understanding? I think we can and what follows is an imperfect attempt to explore and develop our appreciation of what it means to be missional.

1. Being Missional – A Change in Thinking

Related posts:

1. The Missional Church – What it is NOT!
2. Description of A Missonal Church
3. What the Missional Church Looks like
4. Fresh Expressions of Church
5. Michael Frost on the Missional Church