Missional Church

Missional has become such a buzz word in recent years that it has almost become diluted.  For instance, a church I know in the Birmingham, Alabama area was labelled a missional church by its pastor simply because the church goes on mission trips.  However, this church is far from missional in either theology, thought or practice.  Going on a mission trip does not make a church missional.  The publishing and resourcing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention is sponsoring conferences this year on Missional Sunday School.  Now I have no doubt that Sunday School can be missional, but I have to believe that they are using this term to attract people to the conference; I personally doubt you are going to see many churches adopting a missional theology and practice out of this.

I own a publishing company, Missional Press.  Because we were getting proposals on a variety of topics, we started a separate imprint called MORFX Press.  I did not want to dilute the missional brand, and we have limited the books we will publish under the Missional Press label.

So we really need to begin to look at a healthy understanding of missional theology.  I want to do this through an upcoming a series of posts.

In this series we will:

1. Look at the theological basis for missional thought, theology and practice.
2. Examine the importance of a Trinitarian theology and its relevance to missional theology.
3. Examine some practical implications of Trinitarian theology.
4. Look at each member of the Trinity and how each demonstrate an aspect of missional theology.
5. Look at the importance of reproduction within missional theology.

I will contend that missional theology is found in the character of God, but specifically it is an aspect of Trinitarian theology.  The unfortunate issue is that few understand the Trinity and even fewer sermons are preached on the Trinity.

This all starting sloshing in my brain when, over a lunch meeting two years ago, theologian John Franke posed to me this question:  What are the practical implications of a Trinitarian theology?  I will explore some of those in this series as well, while maintaining the focus on missional thought, theology and practice. The first post should arrive tomorrow.

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