My friend Tim Conder has an article on Leadership blog Out of Ur called Missional Buzz. He says . .
“Today, it would be almost impossible for “the real missional church” to stand up. Yes, there are plenty of imposters, but there’s no one true example to play the day’s mystery guest. And any panel of celebrities probably wouldn’t accept the outcome.
So many fellowships that once boldly self-identified as cell churches, meta-churches, house churches, seeker-style, or purpose-driven now claim to be missional. It’s such a buzzword that it’s fair to ask, “Is there really any such thing as a missional church?” Although some use the term glibly, I believe the answer is “yes.” “
HT: Kevin Cawley and Smart Christian
Technorati Tags: emerging church, missional
This is why labels for ministry usually mean very little. Ministry is defined by gifts and passions and calling. Typically this is very person-specific, thus to try and boils everyone down to one label that means “x” is in my opinion pretty stupid. I find that most people try and hide behind whatever the “hip” label of the time is instead of really asking God what it is they are specifically supposed to be doing. Don’t tell me what your ministry label is… Let me or others be the judge of that, just tell me who YOU are and who God has called you to be, and forget all those unhelpful labels.
I have written about this here:
http://takeyourvitaminz.blogspot.com/2006/09/ministry-labels-are-somewhat.html
I remember a conversation in my youth group about what we called “Christian Jargon”. This was in the 1970’s and we felt it was less than helpful in winning the lost for Christ. It seems that within Christian circles there will always be buzz words and now they are also generational. Who makes them up anyway? I grew up being taught that each one of us was to be a ‘little missionary’. Is that different from being ‘missional’? Would a non-believer understand either of those words? Do we use these words just to impress our fellow Christians that we are on the cutting-edge of the church movement?
this has all been very interesting… our house church, desiring to be different from what we left, hasn’t become what are vision was to become, and we find we are stuck in different ruts and “inwardness” than what we left and so desperately wanted to be different!
The good thing about this, is God hasn’t allowed us to be content, and is not letting us sleep deeply… and is reawakening that desire to reach out, to be a part of “others”… HOW?!?!? I have no idea… I only know I want it. Desperately. So I hope that will help us find it.
Spoken with such authority Tim. Its lucky for the body of Christ that we have you to tell us what missional is.