Over the past few weeks, our church has been looking at what it means to be a missional church as distinguished from being a church that does missions.
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We live in a world where church is no longer the centre of things and it needs to redefine itself to be relevant.
Tim Keller discusses this in his book The Need For a Missional Church. From a paper written for bible college students, David Platt suggests that:
- A missional church is externally focused
- A missional church is culturally engaged without being absorbed
- A missional church is incarnationally not institutionally driven
- A missional church is patterned after God's redemptive purpose in the world.
In a missional church, Christian community must go beyond that to embody a "counter-culture", showing how radically different the kingdom of God is with regard to sex, money and power. This kind of church is profoundly counter-intuitive to Australian observers. It breaks their ability to categorise (and dismiss) it as liberal or conservative. Platt suggest only this kind of church has any chance in the non-Christian west.
A missional church highlights character, virtue, and compassionate deeds as the most effective witness to God's kingdom.
We need to pass everything that we do in the church through this filter. Only when create the counter-intuitive Platt refers to will we be the church that Jesus intended us to be.
Gavin Brett is senior pastor, Orange Christian Ministry Centre
