About a year ago, I began hearing and reading the phrase, “Missional X”. Shorthand for “Missional Experience.” The question keeps surfacing in different ways and forms: What is missional? What does it mean for a church to be missional? We who find ourselves in typical, historical churches tend to look for another institutional tweaking. OK, if this missional thing is so good and works so well, what do we have to do to be missional? What does it mean for a person to be missional? How does such a commitment change our lives?
Missional is not a model, a strategy, or a tool. One cannot move from an internal maintenance focus to an external missional focus by following five steps. (Bad news, since many of the people I deal with really like steps.) Missional is a way of living and being. The basic idea is that missional means “making like a missionary.” What would happen if we were to adopt fully the idea that we are the “living sent” in our communities and world? How would we act? What would we do? What would our priorities look like? How can we discover this way of discipleship that fully lives out the reality of Jesus in our daily lives?