Editor’s note: The following is a response to some who thought the assertions were overstated in the article, “Is ‘Missional’ the Best Word to Use?” I don’t believe they were, in fact, I was quite restrained in pointing out missional’s history, its theological system, and its implications/applications. Missional is not just a single word defined in isolation, it has a context, which cannot be ignored and context does affect ministry. Ideas and words have consequences and certainly do in the case of missional.

Let me put some context to my article; the assessment I made was not a criticism directed at anyone specific but of the concept “missional” in general.

I first heard the word “missional” in the late 1980s from a friend with whom I grew up in Miami. We attended the same church and the same college. His sister and I were the same age and graduated from the same high school. My friend and I also graduated from the same seminary. I was in his first marriage (his first wife died a little after just a year of marriage) and I performed his second marriage. This history is provided to show how close we were before our friendship cooled over “missional” and attendant views.

My friend was always a bright intellect and a very able teacher. After some time in a college ministry, he pastored a church in Mississippi. I was not surprised when he went to Princeton to work on a Ph.D. His dissertation was on the missiology of Lesslie Newbigin, who can rightly be called the father of “missional” and its attendant missiological principles. It was while my friend was working on his dissertation that he first told me about missional and Newbigin’s views. By this time he had moved from a clear commitment to historic Reformed theology (and he was a mighty and gracious exponent of it) to a mixture of classical liberalism and neo-orthodoxy, which showed Newbigin’s influence on him. He was called to teach missions at a mainline.

My assessment of “missional” flows much from this brief history and interaction with my friend; although we have parted theologically we remain respectful of each other. When we are together we talk about old times, not our present distinctives which are miles apart. To understand “missional” from the perspective of my first introduction to it, what I heard from my friend, just scroll through any of the articles at the Gospel and Our Culture Network (http://www.gocn.org/); by the way, Newbigin was the founder of the Gospel and Our Culture Movement. Or glance at this article and see if it sounds anything like men who count themselves Reformed and/or Evangelical: http://www.gocn.org/resources/articles/proposals-missional-hermeneutic-mapping-conversation. See if what you read on this site could be defined as Evangelical; also count the number of times “missional” is used and how.

This is my orientation to why I believe “missional” is tainted with a belief system that is antithetical to Evangelical and Reformed theology. Just a cursory review of Newbigin’s theology will show the various strands of thinking that he mixed together and that his followers have refined: the presence of the kingdom of God that is central to the social gospel; the existentialism of Neo-Orthodoxy, and the hermeneutics of the New Perspective. If I gave it some more thought I could probably find other streams or rivulets running in the system.

Over the years, here and there in the PCA and other Evangelical circles I began hearing “missional” being used and was surprised because of the history I recounted. When I would ask for a definition I received all sorts of responses, few matching what others gave. Then the Emergent movement began to get traction and the main leaders of this movement were using the term. So I began reading up on it and still could not find a cohesive definition (hence the “nailing Jell-o to the wall” comment). As is wont in the church, terms and phrases are thrown about, people pick up on them, use them, but have almost no clue regarding their meaning.

Reformed and Evangelical theology has a rich heritage that speaks to the theoretical and the practical. Why can’t we find our own words that define what “missional” is supposed to define? The church goes through its pendulum swings from too doctrinal, over to too emotional; from too infacing, over to too outfacing. The assessment I wrote was intended, in part, to call the Reformed branch of the church to balance (a word that J. I. Packer once said he didn’t much care for, but I think it is a good word when properly used).

What I think (and I can only guess because of the lack of clear definitions and the fluidity of “missional”) is that I see the pendulum swinging from the infacing, individual-centered, personality driven, mega-church platform-based ministries of the last 20-30 years (those darn baby boomers get the blame for this), to the outfacing, community centered, out-of-the-building, mercy and deed-focused ministries. My argument is that a balanced ministry that has its head and heart closely tied together doesn’t have to choose between these two extremes (a former seminary colleague had a warning that is apt here: “Beware of absolutizing modal spheres”).

This is why I stated that the three main stances of the church each has its own validity and integrity: The church’s stance is upward as it worships, with its focus on God and his glory; its stance is inward as it engages in edification, training, discipling and equipping the saints for works of service; and its stance is outward as it goes into its world and culture, studying the culture in order to speak and minister to it. As the church understands these distinctive stances and develops goals for each one, its ministry is vital, healthy and balanced.

As much as I have been able to understand it, Evangelicals have sought to co-opt “missional” to express/define that every aspect of ministry must be seen from an outward stance, that is, from the point of view of its culture (if someone tells me this is not what it means, then, because of the fluidity of the term, I can find someone who has defined it this way). But in any case, if this brief summary is accurate then my contention that missional is narrow and faulty stands. For example, biblical worship is what believers do as the covenant people before God, not before the culture. A fallen culture is incapable of discerning what covenant people do; it cannot understand the mind of God unaided by the Holy Spirit. While we arise from worship and go into the fallen world, that culture doesn’t dictate the content of our worship; God sets the agenda in Scripture.

I trust that you can see that I didn’t write my article to question the commitment of any Evangelical brother. Note that no names were used; the assessment was on the theoretical concept as understood historically. If there are some within the PCA who are using the term, I asked in the title, “Is ‘Missional’ the Best Word to Use”? I believe that it is not because it is tied to a specific history and theology. Words can be co-opted. I wish we could use the word “gay” with its historic meaning: to be happy and joyful; that word has now been taken over in culture to mean something else (so now we choke when singing “Deck the Halls” because of the type of apparel we don).

Obviously, a word can be used by different groups even if that word is defined differently by each group. My contention is that “missional” is so uniquely tied to Newbigin and his theological system that Reformed and Evangelical people should avoid it to prevent misunderstanding. This makes all the more sense since “missional” is not a word used for a long time in church history. So to use words like “infallible,” “redemption,” or “evangelism” across the theological spectrum makes sense in that these words have been used for a long time. Even though each theological system now has it own definitions of these common words, at least they are common. Missional doesn’t fit this category.

On top of this, while missional has a recent historic origin it arises from a very specific theological system. And even within that system all sorts of nuanced definitions have arisen (since it is also a part of the whole post-modern lack of wanting nailed-down, clear definitions). The Emergent movement has popularized the word, but as I argued there isn’t one, clear or concise definition; it is all over the vocabulary map.

So my point: why use a word of recent vintage, created by a person in a non-Reformed theological system, that was an attempt to bolster and redefine the liberal church’s ministry, that is afraid of the historic use of the word “missions,” that is man-centered, works-oriented, and culturally-driven? Reformed theology has within its historic nomenclature many words that adequately define the purpose, mission and ministry of the church. Evangelicals, as I said in my article, are selling their heritage for a mess of pottage, and this will adversely affect its ministry.

As I have stated in other places and in the classroom, in the course of history movements come and go; powerful and influential personalities come and go; new models of ministries rise and fall. Each of these is used to some degree in their time. But the ministry that stands is that the Word must be preached for sinners to be saved, for believers to be edified, and for church members to be shepherded.
__________________
Dr. Dominic Aquila is president of New Geneva Seminary in Colorado Springs, Colo., and editor of The Aquila Report.