Grace Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey

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Pastor's Pulse

by Paul Leggett, Pastor

The Missional Church

September 2010

“When Paul had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over into Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.”  — Acts 16:10

“Daily life becomes a discipline of asking how one may move more squarely into the realm of God’s reign and how one may welcome and receive it into the fabric of one’s life this day more than ever before.”  — Missional Church ed. Darrell L. Guder

We have been speaking about the theme of being a missional church for some time now.  Dr. Darrell Guder, Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, spoke on this theme at our Missions Conference several years ago and also met with the church staff.  We are taking on more and more of the characteristics of a “missional church.”  This is both a New Testament model and one that seems particularly suited to the twenty-first century.  This May I completed a pastor’s course on “Re-tooling Ministry” which was offered through several Presbyteries in New Jersey.  The Missional theme was a key concept in that course.

So what does this all mean?  In broad outline, to be “missional” is to respond to opportunities and indeed visions which God has given to us, his community, the body of Christ, in the present world in which we live.  Our task is to reach out beyond ourselves in an ongoing mission to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We live in a world where the church, as a social institution, is not considered essential.  The church, as an institution, still retains certain benefits such as being tax exempt.  Yet beyond these holdovers the church enjoys no special status.  Sunday is no longer a religious day.  Even marriages and funerals are more and more celebrated apart from any church connection.  The Christian message itself, the gospel or the Scripture as the word of God, likewise, has no particular status.  We are increasingly dealing with a generation that is biblically illiterate.  Expressions such as a “good Samaritan” or a “prodigal son” are less and less recognized by people.  On top of that we live in a 24/7 pressured world (thanks to cell phones, computers and the internet) in which the highest authority, spiritually and ethically, for most people is their own personal opinion.

In this context the church has to be prepared to do two things.  The first is to equip Christians to be able to live and witness in this kind of a world.  The second is to proclaim the gospel effectively, to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).  To do so the church cannot function (as it once did) as a stable institution with a fixed program schedule.  Dr. Guder’s vision of a “missional church” is one in which the Holy Spirit is raising up people continually with a vision for mission.  This vision for mission must be affirmed by the church at large.  It is never purely an individual matter.  Yet the vision may be unique to a particular task, person or moment.  It is not necessarily something which continues indefinitely.  This requires discernment and therefore a missional church must continually be in prayer.

This missional pattern clearly exists in the New Testament.  Paul’s vision of a mission to Macedonia was one such example.  This mission was not worked out in detail ahead of time.  Yet Paul’s companions recognized it as a leading of the Holy Spirit.  The mission was not permanent and was often changed and adapted to suit existing situations (the gospel was not proclaimed in Athens the same way it was in Corinth).  The mission didn’t always turn out as anticipated.  Paul expected to go to Spain, but as far as we know he never got there.