"If the Church is not about the business of transforming defective humanity into true humanity in the image of God, we are in no wise “missional” or “Incarnational.”...Sure, the community is nice, but you can’t have true community without intimate communion with the all-Holy Trinity (and this does not and cannot occur through mere ideas or devotionals)."
+ SubDeacon Vincent Martini
Is the Orthodox Church Missional?
By SubDeacon Vincent Martini
Protestant Christianity in north America is notorious — especially as of late — for both creating and harping on certain, key “buzz words” when it comes to promoting their individual churches and/or pan-church organizations.
Buzz words/phrases such as “relevant,” “contemporary,” “Gospel-centered” and more have all become commonplace among such churches, making distinguishing between any two given evangelical churches a tall order. Even if one can truly find the marked difference between one “mega-church” over the other, trying to understand what underlies their different interpretations of such “buzz words” — not to mention the deeper things of actual doctrine or piety — is nearly impossible.
At the end of the day, however, do these words or phrases actually mean anything? Or are they simply being used in the same way a corporate marketer would harp on a phrase such as “New” and “Free” or Apple’s infamous “amazing” and “magical?” I would contend strongly that the latter is, sadly, mostly the case.
For example, one such phrase that is currently popular among (broadly-speaking) evangelical churches is “missional.” So what does “missional” mean? Prepare to be frustrated.
In May of this year, Steve Knight wrote a blog post on the Patheos website called What Does Missional Mean? This seemed like a reasonably good place to start, but I was quickly disappointed. Mr. Knight self-identifies himself as Minister for Missional Initiatives for Hope Partnership for Missional Transformation. Despite being a mouthful, this didn’t really tell me much. As I read Steve’s blog post on being “missional,” even less became clear. For example, Steve writes:
Missional means participating with God in what God is doing in the world.
Thankfully, Mr. Knight admitted to the openness (and uselessness – at the onset, at least) of such a definition. He further explains:
I believe the necessary broadness of the definition and application of missional is one of the reasons why it’s being adopted and used by everyone from Southern Baptists to Unitarian Universalists.
Hmm. So, in other words, “missional” is an intentionally pointless word? I’m failing to understand something, I think. I always assumed that if one wished to “rally around” an idea or concept (and I’m adopting Modern/Western thinking here, for the sake of argument — ideas are nothing, and one can only be united in Personhood, not “concepts”), it would be beneficial for all involved to actually determine a meaning for said idea or concept. Any time Southern Baptists and Unitarian Universalists find that they share an idea in common, bothgroups should pause to reconsider their “buzz words.”
Mr. Knight concludes:
What is God doing in the world? It takes discernment to really answer that question, and even then, the answers we come up with will be heavily biased based on your own theological positions.As my friend Tripp Fuller has suggested, the answer you give to that question will probably indicate what you believe God cares about. If you believe God cares about saving individual souls for eternity, then you’ll probably describe your latest evangelistic outreaches as “missional.” But if you believe God really cares about social justice, then you’ll probably point to the church soup kitchen for the homeless or your faith community’s advocacy on behalf of the LGBT community as being “missional.” (Those are just two broad brush-stroaked examples.)That’s how big and how broad the missional church conversation has become in 2012. It’s an expansive and exciting place to be, as far as I’m concerned.
Mr. Knight is certainly correct that one’s theological biases or presuppositions will influence one’s opinions about what God is “doing in the world,” as he puts it. However, he outlines no way to effectively discern the answer. He calls for discernment, but with no explanation or indication as to what discernment either is or requires. He mentions some varying viewpoints (e.g. the “social gospel” vs. evangelistic outreach), but makes no conclusions based upon either. He simply concludes that this “buzz word” — with no actual definition or meaning, beyond being involved with what God’s “doing” — is both “expansive” and “exciting.”
Again, I’m sure anyone hoping to actually figure out what “missional” means would be resolutely disappointed by this blog post. For Mr. Knight, it seems to be little more than an over-arching excuse to do whatever you want in the name of Jesus. Sadly, this is “par for the course” in many present-day evangelical circles. This attitude is one step removed from calling the act of sitting on a mountain top at sunset “worship.”
Thankfully, I was able to find a more detailed and reasonable answer to the question of “What does missional mean?,” this time from the Missional Church Network website.
This article mentions (proudly) that “missional” is a concept that has been around for nearly a quarter of a century, being coined in the 1983 book God Who Sends by Dr. Francis DuBose, a former professor at the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention). Unlike Mr. Knight, this article (and website) takes a posture regarding “being missional” that is far more grounded in concrete purpose and absolutes. The “missional” purpose is broken down into three specific tenets (as follows):
1. Missional Church is about the missionary nature of God and His Church.2. Missional Church is about incarnational ministry (versus attractional/extractional) in a post-Christendom context.3. Missional Church is about actively participating in the missio Dei, or mission of God.
Therefore, it would make sense to examine the first point in detail, and move forward from there.
Under the idea that the Church should be focused on the “missionary nature of God and His Church,” the article states:
God is a missionary God who sends a missionary church. In fact, a survey of the term “sending” in its various forms in Scripture reveals the missionary nature of the Triune God, as well as the very essence of the church. The redemptive activity of God, his relationship to the world, and his dealing with mankind is described in Scripture by the word “sending.” The word “sending” is the “sum and substance of God’s creativity and activity” (Georg F. Vicedom, The Mission of God, 9).Scripture is replete with sending language that speaks to the missionary nature of a Triune God … In the final climatic sending passage in John’s Gospel, Jesus sees himself not only as one sent but also as one who is sending: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21).It is important to make clear that the church is a vital part of the missional conversation. However, the church must not be seen simply as an entity that sends missionaries; as admirable as sending and supporting missionary activity might be. Instead, we must recognize that the purpose of the church is derived from the very nature of a sending, missionary God, which in turn compels it to be sent as a missionary people, both individually and collectively.
While I believe that this article is correct in stating that “being sent” by God is, in some sense, part of the “essence” of the Church, I don’t believe this evangelical group understands the full extent of this implication (nor can they even enact what it proposes).
Forgetting for a moment that it is mere anthropomorphism and — perhaps worse — deeplyinaccurate to “summarize” the “substance” of God’s “creativity and activity” (I’m not sure how these terms are being understood and/or employed here), I think it would be helpful to both point out and examine the monumental oversight in this article (with regards to “being sent” as an identity of “missional” church activity).
First, the απεσταλκεν of St John 20:21 (“sending”) is, of course, closely related to the word “apostle” or ἀπόστολος. These commandments of Christ are given directly to the eleven apostles, and not to every Christian indiscriminately. Before I’m accused of “splitting hairs” or trying to skirt around the issue, the context makes it plain that these are instructions for ἀπόστολος alone (e.g. v. 23 — Would every individual Christian claim the authority to forgive and retain sins? Would these evangelicals?).
Secondly, the Church itself is authoritative and capable of being “sent” only insofar as it is founded upon the work of the apostles and their successors (e.g. Eph. 2:20). As a result, given the lack of apostolic succession (or even an acknowledgement that this matters and/or exists) within evangelical churches, there is no actual way that an evangelical church can be “missional,” even according to just the first point as expressed above (i.e. that the Church is “sent” and that this is of the essence of the Church itself). Being “sent” is truly at the heart or essence of the Church, but this “heart” is the apostles themselves, and their appointed successors (i.e. apostolic bishops, along with presbyters and deacons).
Finally, while I agree that sending “missionaries” is not the exclusive (or even most important) means by which the Church is “missional” or “being sent” by God, I would have to still disagree with the idea that every Christian individually is called to be “missional” in the sense that this group probably means it. I could be wrong, however, as they don’t really go into this in great detail on the website.
The second point (being “incarnational” rather than “attractional/extractional”) is then explained as such:
Those with a missional perspective no longer see the church service as the primary connecting point for those outside the church … the missional church is more concerned about sending the people in the church out among the people of the world, rather than getting the people of the world in among the people of the church. Some have described this missional-attractional distinction as a challenge to “go and be” as opposed to “come and see.”
While admittedly being snarky, I would agree with this statement if my worship was a poorly-done pop concert and a lecture. However, the worship of the Orthodox Church is nothing of the sort, and I would therefore find it hard to imagine not encouraging someone to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” That even sounds Scriptural, now that I mention it!
Beyond this, statements such as this (“go and be” as opposed to “come and see”) ironically highlight a rather non-Incarnational (and non-Mysteriological/non-Sacramental) theology that believes people can be transformed into true images of God by “behavior change” (moralism) or belief (“even the demons believe, and shudder”), rather than an actual unionwith the all-Holy Trinity through the one, true Body of Christ. Without a theology that either understands or appreciates the necessity of such Incarnational worship and communal experience (that leads to an actual transformation of a person, and not “mere externals”), it is easy to understand how evangelicals would promote simply “being” the Church rather than actually being part of the one, true Church.
Continuing:
The attractional model, which has dominated the church in the West for the past several decades, seeks to reach out to the culture and draw people into the church. However, this approach only works when there are no significant cultural barriers to overcome when making the required move from outside to inside the church. “And as Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian, the attractional model has lost its effectiveness. The West looks more like a cross-cultural missionary context in which attractional church models are self-defeating. Furthermore, the process of extracting people from the culture and assimilating them into the church diminishes their ability to speak to those outside.” (Alan Hirsch, Defining Missional, Christianity Today)
I agree wholeheartedly that “the West” (speaking primarily here of north America, and especially the United States) is “post-Christian” (although I would argue this was part of its very foundation), it is rather disappointing to see this group promoting an avoidance of cultural transformation on the part of the Church. Instead, they presumably are interested in “tucking tail” and doing their best to influence from within the admittedly “post-Christian” culture.
This, of course, doesn’t work, and it is simply another failure on the part of the evangelicals to bring about any significant change or transformation in a person’s life beyond moralism, pietism, regular church attendance or voting Republican. Cultural barriers be damned. There is no true culture outside of the Church, and it is in the context of the Body of Christ that we find our true identity as true humanity — imaging the first, true Man: the God-Man, Jesus Christ.
If the Church is not about the business of transforming defective humanity into true humanity in the image of God, we are in no wise “missional” or “Incarnational.” We would instead be a fraud and a counterfeit, at best. Efforts to transform people within the Church (on the part of these evangelicals) have only been “self-defeating,” as they put it, because they offer no means by which to be transformed and Deified into a true Icon of the God-Man. They offer self-help lectures (loosely based upon Scriptural principles) and a shoddy concert. Sure, the community is nice, but you can’t have true community without intimate communion with the all-Holy Trinity (and this does not and cannot occur through mere ideas or devotionals).
And finally, on this point, the article states:
On the other hand, missional churches see their primary function as one of actively moving into a community to embody and enflesh the word, deed, and life of Jesus into every nook and cranny. Alan Hirsch speaks of the “missional-incarnational impulse,” where the word “missional” expresses the sending nature of the church, while “incarnational” represents the “embedding” of the gospel into a local context. In other words, “missional” speaks to our direction – we are sent; while being “incarnational” is more about how we go, and what we do as we go. Eugene Peterson’s “incarnational” rendering of John 1:14 in the Message paraphrase illustrates this well when it states, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”
Again, it is not enough for the Church to simply “hang out” and “do our thing” among the people of this world. Transformation does not happen by observation, ideas, strong indications or even being good neighbors. Mowing someone’s lawn for them is a morally right and admirable thing to do, but it does not bring about cultural transformation, nor does it have the power to Deify corrupted flesh.
And honestly, I can’t think of many worse butcherings of the sacred Scriptures than how St John 1:14 is “translated” in the Message. I realize that this butchering of the Scriptures justifies a theology of “being the Church” among the lost peoples of our culture (rather than actually seeking to be united to or to unite others to the apostolic Church and the Life-Giving Trinity through Her Mysteries), but that is no excuse to hold one’s “traditions of men” over the Scriptures. (And make no mistake, we are talking about man-made traditions being held over and against the Scriptures here.)
The apostle John is actually saying that God has tabernacled (σκηνόω) among us, using the same word for the tabernacle of the Old Testament (prior to the construction of the first Temple in Jerusalem). This is not God moving into a neighborhood and helping someone with their groceries and lawn care; this is God both covenantally and mystically dwelling among His people — who are the new temple of God, being united to the true temple (Jesus Christ) — in very much the same way He dwelt with the faithful people in the wilderness. “And I will place my tabernacle (tent) among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk about among you, and will be your God, and you shall be for me a nation (Leviticus/Leutikon 26:11-12 LXX).”
The third and final point in this article is related to what they call the missio Dei (being faithful to their Latin roots) or, the “mission of God.” They write:
Many times we wrongly assume that the primary activity of God is in the church, rather than recognizing that God’s primary activity is in the world, and the church is God’s instrument sent into the world to participate in His redemptive mission.This key distinction clarifies the difference between a church with a missions program and a missional church. A church with a missions program usually sees missions as one activity alongside many other equally important programs of the church. A missional church, on the other hand, focuses all of its activities around its participation in God’s agenda for the world. God’s mission must form and inform everything we do. All activities of the church must be catalyzed by and organized around the missio Dei.As the sent, missionary people of God, the missional church understands its fundamental purpose as being rooted in God’s mission to restore and heal creation and to call people into a reconciled relationship with Himself. It is God’s mission that calls the church into existence. In other words, we can no longer see the church as the starting point when thinking about mission. Instead, the church must be seen as the result of God’s mission. In the words of South African missiologist David Bosch: “It is not the church which undertakes mission; it is the missio Dei which constitutes the church.” Or stated in a slightly different manner; “it is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God has a church for his mission in the world” (Christopher Wright 2006, 62).
This is somewhat confusing for me, from an Orthodox perspective, but I think I understand what they’re trying to get at. Honestly, if I read this with a certain spin, I wouldn’t have much to disagree with. However, there are a few statements that cause me to think twice and raise a few points.
By saying that the “primary activity” of God is “in the world” — rather than “in the church” — I believe the “missional” folks are positing a false dichotomy. The Church is no doubt the result of God’s “mission” of religion (which simply means to re-connect, and nothing sinister); that is, to reconnect mankind with God and to thereby transform mankind into the true image of the God-Man, Jesus Christ (where death and corruption are no more). This “activity of God” occurs only within the Church, however, so far as we can comprehend it — or speak to it intelligently — on this side of the resurrection.
It makes no sense to say that we must focus on “God’s agenda for the world” to “restore and heal creation and to call people into a reconciled relationship with Himself” if we are to then neither bring people into the Church for that reconciliation, nor see the Church as the primary means by which that agenda will be fulfilled. To speak of God’s activity in a vacuum is no doubt the result of a defective, evangelical ecclesiology that has no room for the Mysteries or for the role the apostolic (“sent”) Church has in the fulfillment of God’senergizing (“activity”) within creation. It is patently anti-Incarnational, contrary to the claims of being such.
In the end, what I take away most from these descriptions of what it means to be “missional” or a “missional church” is that — given a most basic definition of “being sent” by God to participate in His “mission” to “restore and heal creation, etc.” — one can only point to the Orthodox Church as being capable of filling these shoes.
Without a foundation of the apostles and their successors, along with a preservation of the apostolic deposit and Tradition, evangelical groups are incapable of being “missional,” as they have emphatically not been “sent” by God. This is clear not only from the beliefs and Traditions of the Orthodox-Catholic Church, but also from the various places in Scripture where we see these charges being given directly to the apostles and their successors — not to every individual Christian indiscriminately. This is, again, most easily seen by asking the average evangelical when was the last time they forgave (or refused to forgive) another person’s sins. You can’t accept one charge, but refuse the other. Context is king, as usual.
Many people throughout post-reformation history have been critical of the Orthodox Church for being somehow opposed to missions or missionary work. Many would further argue that our faithfulness to “old” Traditions and stodgy, “boring” worship is little more than a stumbling block for the spread of the Gospel. However — and as I hope I’ve outlined rather basically in the above writing — nothing could be further from the truth.
As the true Body of Christ, the Orthodox Church is in-and-of-itself the “fullness” (pleroma) of God in this world (Eph. 1), and is the true “pillar and ground of truth” (2 Tim. 3). As Christ’s Body, it is within the Church that one can find true re-union, restoration and healing from the one, true God. There is nothing more “missional” than being willing to preserve the Gospel and the very traditions and beliefs of Christ’s apostles and their successors, for the sake (and life) of the world.
We are to do this not because we are incapable of transforming culture from within, but because we have been given the only true culture available to humanity — a culture that is capable of transforming sinners into Saints and healing one from all their afflictions. Unlike the insinuations of the articles cited above, the Church is not a club for the perfect and redeemed, but a hospital for the sick and a shelter for the poor. There is no better place to be “bringing the world” as we go about our mission of “being the Church.”
So is the Orthodox Church “missional?” Yes, I believe it is (properly understood).
And it’s the only one that can be. So “come and see.”
