Bruce, I think Stetzer’s quote is pretty good. I don’t think that’s all that’s usually meant by “missional,” but let’s run with it for a minute. If Stetzer’s given an accurate explanation of what it means to be “missional,” then I’d say we are pretty missional. We don’t use that language, but we are surely a church that is seeking to “understand its context and come to express that understanding by contextualizing the gospel in its community.” We’re also trying to become “an indigenous expression of the gospel within that culture, eventually removing all extrabiblical barriers.”

The context we need to understand and embrace is that of Old Louisville. Yes, there are all kinds of people in Old Louisville, but surely you’d agree that there is a culture to the place that is different from the culture in, say, East Texas (where I am now sitting). If you transplanted my home church in Linden, Texas to Old Louisville, my guess is that it would not work. And since you brought up CHBC, my guess is that if you dropped that church in Linden, Texas, it wouldn’t work either, faithful to the gospel though it is. There is a culture in every community, and a church that wants to minister to that community will have to know and embrace that culture (to a point—see my next post).

Normally, I think that probably happens naturally. You plant a church in Southern California, you’re going to get a church that reflects Southern Californian culture, dude. You plant it in East Texas, and y’all’re gonna be doin’ somethin’ entarly difrnt. Because a church is made up of people, it’s naturally going to reflect the culture in which those people live.

We’re a little different at 3ABC. Our church simply hasn’t grown up naturally in the midst of Old Louisville. Most of us drive a good, long way to get there. Wireman wrote in to make the point:

I look at our church and it is an interesting cross-section of mostly seminary folks. That’s who mostly attend our church. Thus, it has the cultural flavor of seminary. Over time, as God sees fit to bring others into our fold, it will smell differently. It must. If it does not, then the people who have joined in fellowship are not being heard and are being stifled.

He’s right. Right now, we are mostly—though not by any means entirely—a seminary-student church. But we’re thinking hard, even before the community really recognizes that we’re here, about how to become “an indigenous expression of the Gospel” in Old Louisville.

I like the word “indigenous.” Maybe that’s a good word for the kind of evangelism we’ve been trying to describe and encourage. We’ve talked about organic evangelism, natural evangelism, corporate evangelism, and even a couple more kinds of evangelism. But what about indigenous evangelism? The kind where we’re out in the community doing community things, going to community places, becoming a recognizable and appreciated part of the community—all to the end of bringing and showing the Gospel to the community. If that’s what it means to be missional (and not the embrace of postmodern epistemology) then I’m all for it, and I think we are it—or at least we’re working toward it.

More on that last parenthesis in a bit.

Posted in Church Life, Culture, Evangelism & Missions |