Reviews for Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America

The average rating for Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-12-30 00:00:00 Kaka Kapol I strongly agree with this book's essential premise, which is that we should not think of a church SENDING people to do mission, but rather as a body whose very nature is missional. Thus "'Mission' is not something the church does, a part of its total program. No, the church's essence is missional, for the calling and sending action of God forms its identity. Mission is founded on the mission of God in the world, rather than the church's effort to extend itself." Through this understanding we see that the church is more than a "vendor of religious services and goods", with its members being the primary consumers of those religious services and goods. Members need to be those living out and incarnating the mission. Pastoral leadership needs to lead and equip them in doing this, instead of being the primary instruments of mission themselves. As such, one problem with this book is its highly academic, even esoteric language; language which might speak to ministers, but which does not speak to most laity, those who need to start thinking of themselves as involved in mission. I also agree with this book's view on what a successful church is: "...the indicators of a successful missional community are not determinded by quantitative measures: the size of its budget, the number of its members, the quality of its musical efforts, or even the amount of its social services. Instead, success is exhibited in the quality of Christian love experienced in the midst of its common life and ministry." Like the song says, "They will know we are Christians by our love." But this should not be inbred, incestual love, love for all our fellow members, while disregarding those outside the walls of the church's building(s). Here is where I get to my central areas of discomfort with this book. First of all the authors seem to put down the idea of a church responding to the needs of the people around it: "When leaders are shaped primarily by contextual needs, they fail to connect the gospel in a specific setting with its eschatological nature." Again, highly academic language, but it seemed to be encouraging church leaders to be (in the words of a former preacher of my youth), "so heavenly minded they are no earthly good." Christ had his disciples provide those around them with bread, and he himself brought them physical healing. In fact the main way a church can incarnate the love of God's kingdom is to respond lovingly to human need. They speak of worship as the center of a church's corporate life, but they seemingly forget how God speaks through Isaiah to say that worship without showing justice is abhorrent to him (Is 1:12-28; 58:6-7.) A second area of discomfort relates to the authors' view that the primary mission of a church was to its own context. There is certainly truth in this. Some church leaders used to trip over their own family and neighbors while trying to reach out to the "lost souls of Africa." A good example of this can be found in the recent novel "The Help" where the women's group mistreats their help while raising money for African orphans. The authors rightly point out that today it is the people of Africa and the Southern Hemisphere who are often the most faithful Christians, and the people who need a faith perspective are those in secular America. But the perspective of the authors can also fail to confront a dangerous American tendency toward parochialism. "Why help people in need in Haiti or Africa, when OUR OWN PEOPLE have needs right here?" The needs of people in the developing world absolutely dwarf the needs of people in our country, but a idolatrous nationalism still says "let's take care of our own first, and if we have any crumbs left over..." Preaching the Gospel in our own context and declaring the kingdom of God in our own context MUST include expanding America's view of who our neighbor is. Virtually everyone in the world is just the click of a few computer keys away, and all are equally loved by our God. America (and the American church) has too large of a percentage of the world's assets to not see beyond our own borders. So I would say that to truly be a missional church, a church must minister to its own context, but also connect that context to a wider world and God's full family. I did not find that emphasis in this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-22 00:00:00 Ronald Reich A good book. My understanding is that this is in fact THE groundbreaking book on missional hermeneutics/ecclesiology. It is easy to see why, both because the content of the book is so thoughtful and because its influence is present in the thinking of a lot of authors I enjoy (Wright, Goheen, Bolsinger, McKnight, to name a few). I benefitted from the authors' articulation of the mission/witness of the church as representing the reign of God in community, service, and proclamation. I found that easy to remember and transliterate (so to speak) into my own congregational context. This is a solid book for getting a "lay of the land" for both missional hermeneutics and "The Gospel and Our Culture" series. My gripes are twofold. 1) As is often the case, this book didn't have to be this long (268 pages of reading). The final chapter was, in my view, gratuitous, and could have been dispersed throughout the other chapters. Also the chapters in general could have been condensed. 2) There were a number of moments where the academic disconnect was so blatant that I couldn't help but think "yeah right." One example is their concern for the concept of congregational "membership." I understand where they're coming from, I just think it's silly to suggest that "membership is an irrelevant concept" and that we would be better off using "venerable terms like novices or catechumens." For congregations where catechesis is a part of congregational life, perhaps such a notion could be entertained, but my Baptist parishioners would laugh at the idea. Sometimes the best way to redeem structures is to redefine the concept, not replace it.