By Easter I plan to have my book on movements finished and ready to print. That’s why you haven’t heard much from me lately. I’ve had “book fever.”
I need some input on terminology. I’d like to go with the concept of the people of God as a “missionary movement.” Some wise counsellors are saying that phrase will confuse people. But I’m not happy with the term “missional movement” as an alternative.
So here’s two paragraphs from the introduction.
Our English words “mission,” “missionary,” and “missional” come from the Latin missio, meaning “to send.” Missio is the equivalent of the New Testament Greek word apostolos, also meaning “to send.” Jesus told His disciples, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” Then He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:21b-22). The Church as a missionary or missional movement is called to carry on the ministry of Jesus in the power of the Spirit. “The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus.” The Church, in its very essence, is a missionary or apostolic movement with a mandate to take the good news of Jesus to world.
Today there appears to be some confusion over the terms “missionary” and “missional” when used as descriptors of the church. The words are identical in meaning. They refer to being sent by God into world. Unfortunately when we hear the word “missionary” we tend to think of cross-cultural or overseas mission. When we hear the word “missional” the focus tends to be on mission in a first-world postmodern context. The mission of God knows no such cultural or geographic boundaries. There is only one missionary=missional mandate. There is only one missionary=missional church. Jesus founded one missionary=missional movement.
Over to you. . .
10 Comments
I like missionary movement. The term ‘missional’ carries a lot of baggage these days. But then, who is your target audience? The only issue with missionary movement is that it does have that ‘old church’ stigma of old time missionaries.
witnesses, set apart, sent ones, evangelists
Let’s just fix up your Latin:
missio is a Latin word meaning ‘sending’. It’s an abstract noun.
mittere is the infinitive verb meaning ‘to send’.
Greek apostolos refers to the sent-one. apostellein would be the infinitive verb form.
You make good points about ‘missional’ and ‘missionary’ though.
Have you though about using the term send or sent in the title,Like a sending movement or something like that?
I also like missionary movement. Within your text I believe you can redeem the term from its current use. Go for it!
Thanks for some definition – Here in the UK the \mission\ family of words is rather slippery, make them what you want. I think there are two ways we do that, by keeping the historical idea of \overseas missions\ whereby we support the work from a distance; and by letting it cover anything and everything the church does to better society.
If we could capture the idea of \sending\ as in the Missio Dei, we could start hearing the challenge of being sent by the God of mission into his world with the good news, the UK church could maybe recover its missional character again.
Tim, yes. I’ve also thought of words like “pioneering” but somehow they lack breadth and weight.
I like ‘missionary movement’, i find ‘missional’ a very ugly word and I don’t like the divide it creates between ‘home’ and ‘abroad’.
*But* I understand that in missiology, ‘missional’ referred not to “being on mission” but “sending missionaries”. In earlier missiology, a ‘missional church’ was a church that commissioned and sent missionaries – like Antioch in Acts 13.
The shift that the the new, emerging crew brought was to say that we need to not only send missionaries, but actually be in a constants state of being sent. The church is missional because it is itself in a state of ‘sent-ness’.
That history aside (if I am right on it), I still think ‘missionary’ does the job fine!
This just came thru from Dave Lawton via email, “A missionary movement of Apostolic Missional Disciples in an Emerging Post-modern and Post-Christian Pluralistic Context… ”
He forgot “organic.”
who sip lattes, smoke cigars, and listen to Brian…
Here’s some input from Bill Hodgson that came in via email:
HI Steve,
I like the emphasis as it takes everything back to the beginning which was with and through Jesus and what he did in the time frame of his life and ministry as God incarnate in human flesh.
Jesus launched the movement of God’s mission in the church age (“I will build my Church…”), it began with Him and his deliberate activity and everyone from then on through Book of Acts till now is simply building on and extending that movement of mission. Paul instructed “follow me as I follow Christ…” and clearly saw himself as an extension and adaptation of the DNA built into the disciple-making movement of Jesus.
This is one of my great passions that we need to get leaders and new believers alike to get immersed into the gospels and the life and ministry of Jesus for both good Christology and practical missiology of movement building. We need to help people see that Jesus life was not just about a body of teaching and doctrines and demonstrations of His divinity and authority but it was purposeful, linear, and progressive in the development and building of a movement of multiplication through the lives of very ordinary people. The fruit, the 60/80/100 fold return of the good soil was the multiplication through the ordinary believers he invested in who proved to be ‘good soil’. Jesus didn’t come to plant a Church or to build a ministry but to launch a movement that would continue until his return- self sustaining, self resourcing, indigenous, self replicating, and effectively adapting to every context.
So I like the idea of taking it back to Jesus and calling it ‘Missionary’ although you are right in that the term will require redefinition.
Bill.