More people
are talking about going missional. Churches want in
on the missional movement. But what is it really and
why are some claiming it is the biggest development
in Christianity since the Reformation?
"Missional
is a way of living, not an affiliation or activity,"
explains missional leadership specialist Reggie
McNeal in his new book, Missional Renaissance:
Changing the Scorecard for the Church. "To
think and to live missionally means seeing all life
as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in
the world."
The three
major shifts in thinking and behavior seen in a
person or church that goes missional are:
from internal to external in
terms of ministry focus; from program
development to people development in terms of core
activity; and from
church-based to kingdom-based in terms of leadership
agenda.
"For these
(missional) leaders, church has moved from being
internally occupied to externally focused, from
primarily concentrating on its institutional
maintenance to developing an incarnational
influence," McNeal writes.
"These leaders find themselves thinking of kingdom
impact more than church growth."
"An industry based on
come-and-get-it is not penetrating the culture,"
McNeal said to The Christian Post in an
interview on Tuesday. "We are going to have to
figure out how to be the
church where people already are as opposed to
setting up a separate church domain in our culture
and expecting people to identify with it."
"The missional
renaissance reflects the church's response in a time
of a remarkable manifestation of the kingdom,"
he writes.
"Those who miss it will find themselves on the other
side of a divide that renders them irrelevant to the
movement of God in the world."
