Vol 3: 20 Misunderstanding Missional: A Response to Ron Adam’s article in The Mennonite – “Bearing Witness to our Missional God: A proposal to replace the word ‘missional’ with ‘bearing witness.’”

Ron Adams, pastor of Madison (Wis.) Mennonite Church, is more missional than he realizes as he makes the proposal for replacing the word missional with bearing witness.  In the June 2012 issue of The Mennonite (pp. 16-18), he argues that a new term is needed because we are befuddled by the word missional (p. 17).  Adams has a point and yet he also misses the point. 

First, Adams misses the point, because he expresses an understanding of missional that is more shaped by a paradigm rooted in Church Growth, than one rooted in God’s activity in the world, God’s sending of Jesus into the world, and the Spirit of God being sent into the world to indwell and empower the ongoing mission of God through the church.  Adams expresses a way of appropriating missional language that he defines as “works righteousness” (p. 17).  By this he does not mean that “we will be saved by virtue of [our] goodness” (p. 17), but it has more to do with the Mennonite penchant of needing to keep busy:

“We like to keep busy.  We like to keep prodding things along, making the world a better place.  We work to build the kingdom of God.  We say we are Christ’s hands and feet.  None of this is necessarily problematic.  We have done much good in our pursuit of such goals.

            But underneath it all is a pervasive anxiety.  This anxiety springs from the fact that we are not entirely sure God is willing and able to make all things new.  We do not believe what we pray, that God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  So we seek to take control.  We apply the word missional to ourselves.  We presume to lend God a hand, calling ourselves God’s missional partners, by which we really mean we are the ones on whom the work depends” (p. 17).

Adams continues:

“The word missional feeds our anxiety.  It tells us we must find out where God is and what God is doing and lend a hand.  Though missional language [Adams concedes] can teach us to recognize that God is the prime mover, when applied to the church it implies that we are equal partners in God’s work.  Without us the whole project crumbles.  If we don’t do something and quick, the church will fade away, and all will be lost.  The pressure is on, just like it always has been.  We’ve changed the prescription, but the same sick feeling remains” (p. 17-18).

I think Adams’ assessment in one way is correct about how some of us as Mennonites “live out our faith” – it is “our work.”  But that reveals something about us, rather than God’s intention in being a missional God and sending a missional people. 

For some Mennonites, it is about following the teachings of Jesus and it is our responsibility to enact these teachings – yet, there seems to be very little participation with the living Christ – as if Jesus is a “dead” teacher.  Stanley Hauerwas has made the observation that too many Mennonites are not Christocentric enough, seeking to rely upon concepts of peace and justice and upon ourselves, rather than the One who is peace and justice.  Rather, in being Christ-centered we are called to rely on the leading of the living Spirit of Christ in our lives. 

Adams’ befuddlement betrays that he is seeking to understand the term missional through a Church Growth mindset which is all about taking control, shaping our future, shaping the church, making things happen for God.  Church Growth develops vision and mission statements, develops five and ten year strategic plans, because it believes that the church has a mission to fulfill – to somehow advance the purposes of God in the world.  Without the church, Church Growth expresses, God’s purposes will not be accomplished.  It is indeed a “works righteousness.”

In our congregation, being missional is not about our being anxious, not about our taking charge, not even about setting goals; it is about discerning where God is active in us, in our community, in our ministry context and growing in being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit so that we may participate with God in what God is already accomplishing all around us.  As numerous proponents of missional church have expressed, “it is not that the church has a mission, it is that God’s mission has a church.”

And here is where Adams has a point.  In proposing the term bearing witness he is expressing what it means to be missional – but being missional embraces something more than the term bearing witness is able to express.  Missional expresses that the church is part of something larger than itself.  Church Growth has made the ministry of the church about itself, but understanding the missional character of God is to see that the church is part of God and God’s mission.  The church is part of the same sending of Jesus into the world, the same sending of the Spirit into the world, because God is a self-sending God in order to make all things new. 

“To send” is what missional means – and is reminiscent of Isaiah’s vision in which he responds to God’s call of “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” by declaring “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8).  Also, Christ Jesus before his ascension, declared to his disciples: “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21).

And though bearing witness is a key part of being missional, it does not fully embrace the church’s participation with the sending or missional character of God.  There is no bearing witness without being sent.  Bearing witness, as Adams rightly expresses, is an aspect of our being missional:

“In fact, bearing witness . . . . means keeping awake to the movement of God in the world.  It means having eyes to see the redemptive work of Christ all around us.  It means keeping watch for the always active Holy Spirit.  It means being witnesses to what we have seen” (p. 18).  But bearing witness is only one aspect that reveals that God is missionally active in the world.

As Alan Roxburgh expresses, the church is called to be “. . . a sign, witness, and foretaste of God’s dream” for the world (Introducing the Missional Church, p. 103).  He states that God’s “people were to be that sign” of God’s dream in the world for all humanity to see (cf. p. 102).  Similarly, Lesslie Newbigin and others have expressed that the church is “a sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign.” 

None of this suggests that the church wrests or takes control of God’s mission away from God.  God is the sole initiator and completer of God’s mission in the world in which God is making all new.  Yet, in being a sending, a missional God, God seeks to demonstrate God’s mission through a chosen people – first Israel, and then the church – what God purposes for the making whole of humanity and creation (cf. God’s promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through his being chosen and sent – Genesis 12:2-3). 

The church never has the right to usurp God’s mission – and to the extent it does (perhaps as it has done through the Church Growth paradigm), it ceases to be the church of Jesus Christ; the church can only participate in God’s mission which God has initiated and which God is bringing to completion – “the church does not have a mission, God’s mission has a church.”

Also, that more than bearing witness is necessary for understanding our participation with God in God’s mission, has much to do with understanding the perichoretic nature of the Trinity.  Perichoresis is similar to the Greek word for dance, and it well describes the Easter Orthodox notion of the divine relationship within the Trinitarian community.  Rather than the Trinitarian relationship being hierarchical (as in Western theology), it is more representative of a dynamic relationship within the Trinity – as if God were engaged in a dance.  This is a relationship for which God intended humanity to participate in (not in becoming divine, but to partner with God in exercising stewardship of the gift of the earth) (cf. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 44-45). 

Therefore, in light of the perichorectic nature of the Trinity, the church as the new humanity in Christ, is invited to participate in the self-sending of God to participate with God in God’s mission as collaborators (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:9) with God in being a sign, witness, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign. 

So, rather, than replacing the term missional, we need to uncover the masks and lenses that lead us to think that ministry is about us and our efforts, our anxiety to wrest away from God what we think God is unable to do.  It is not first and foremost about what we are doing in the world, which diminish our seeing and witnessing to God’s mission in the world. 

Instead, we need a greater understanding of what it means for us to be a missional people who participate with God in God’s mission.  In so doing, we come to recognize it is not about us, it is about God and what God is doing and completing.  As we do, we will come to a better understanding of our calling and our participation with God as a sign, witness, foretaste, and instrument of God’s present and coming reign – with what God is doing in the world in order to make all things new.