Opinion: Perspectives from readers

In the June issue, Ron Adams makes the proposal to replace the word “missional” with “bearing witness.” He argues that a new term is needed because we are befuddled by the word missional. Adams has a point but also misses the point that bearing witness is an essential aspect of being missional and helps us understand the concept of missional more clearly. And there is more to being missional than bearing witness.

Adams has a point. The word missional has been misused and misunderstood. Anyone who seeks to shape the church in being a missional community—discerning where God is active and participating with God in God’s mission—is aware how many have molded the concept into their own image of ministry.

And it is likely we Mennonites think our being busy is about being missional, which he describes as a “pervasive anxiety.” But what he in fact reveals is that we have a tendency to misuse the term and misunderstand our participation with God in God’s mission.

Adams proposes we use another term. I propose we not give up trying to understand what it means for us to be a missional people God is inviting to participate in God’s mission.

We need to explore more the missional character of God, God’s missional calling upon God’s people in order to develop a more integrated understanding of who we are to be as a sign, witness, foretaste and instrument of God’s present and coming reign.

In the congregation I serve as pastor, discovering our missional identity has not been easy. One board member said, “Won’t this be too chaotic, don’t we have to take control?” But over the past two years we have discovered that being missional is not about being anxious or about taking charge or even about setting goals; it is about discerning where God is active in us, our community, our ministry context and our growing in being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit so that we may participate with what and with whom God is already engaged. As proponents of missional church have said, “It is not that the church has a mission, it is that God’s mission has a church.”

In our community, there is a developing non-anxious presence as we grow in participating with God in God’s mission. Ministry or mission is not primarily about our actions or about the church but of what God is actively doing in the world, and we are discovering how the Spirit of God is inviting us as a community of God’s people to participate with God in God’s redemptive mission in which God is making all things new.

Bearing witness is a key aspect of being missional. However, there is more to being missional than simply bearing witness. Missional means “to send” and is reminiscent of the vision in Isaiah 6:8. And Jesus, before his ascension, said to his disciples: “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21).

Still, bearing witness does not fully embrace the church’s participation with the sending or missional character of God. There is no bearing witness without being sent.

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 things new. Yet, in being missional, God seeks to demonstrate God’s mission through a chosen people—first Israel, then the church. God demonstrates God’s purpose for the whole of humanity and creation through the church. The church is a demonstration community (cf. God’s promise in Genesis 12:2-3 to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through his being chosen and sent).

The church never has the right to usurp God’s mission, and to the extent it does, it ceases to be the church of Jesus Christ. The church can only be church as it participates in God’s mission, which God has initiated and which God is bringing to completion.

Rather than replace the term missional, we should develop a clearer understanding. We need correction and further insight into the character of God; we need to uncover the lenses that lead us to think ministry is about us and our efforts; we need to confess our anxiety and mistrust of God, which wrests away from God what we think God is unable to do; 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 learn to recognize that mission is not about us but about God and what God is doing and completing. We need the term missional to understand our being sent by God to participate with God in God’s mission of making all things new.

Roland G. Kuhl is lead pastor at North Suburban Mennonite Church, Libertyville, Ill.