Is there any difference between being 'missional' and being 'evangelistic'?
My hunch is that evangelism is a more a person to person thing, but missional is a how-you-do-church-to-facilitate-large-scale-evangelism thing. Am I right?
In this post below, Phil Nicholson comments
"I think the danger of the church planting buzz is that we all want to be involved and will claim that we are doing it but without actually doing more evangelism than at present."What do you think?
I think the whole missional thing recognises that evangelism can (should?) be done corporately, rather than individually.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a positive move because, frankly, I think the old approach to evangelism (emphasising individual 1-on-1) was pretty ineffective.
The way I see it, mission is a sub-category of corporate evangelism.
ReplyDeleteThere are two important approaches to corporate evangelism: I want to be attractional (invite them onto my turf - to church or an event and preach the gospel to them), and I want to be missional (take the gospel into the contexts where unbelievers are - go to their city, their subculture, their playgroup etc). In both of these approaches however, there must be a matrix of personal relationships and evangelism undergirding it all - people loving their neighbours and preaching Christ to them.
In an ideal world this kind of corporate evangelism should encourage personal evangelism - which I reckon can be attractional and missional as well.
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I see it all!
I agree with the spirit of your post, Simone. There is great danger in reading lots of ecclesiology and statistics and design a trendy church, but still not have the guts to invite a non-Christian to church!
ReplyDeleteThis might be slightly unrelated, but I'm not afraid of being out there!
ReplyDeleteI had noticed that mission and missionary had broadened to a more local meaning. For example, Student Life calls their workers "missionaries". Where does that leave people like us, who leave their home culture to go overseas? Just wondering. Interestingly, not all missionaries are evangelists, either.
Wendy - the 'everyone's a missio' thing is a clever bit of rhetoric that is pretty unhelpful, i reckon. It's a discussion worth having!
ReplyDelete"My hunch is that evangelism is a more a person to person thing, but missional is a how-you-do-church-to-facilitate-large-scale-evangelism thing. Am I right?"
ReplyDeleteDriscoll's definition of Missional is precisely the opposite of that. Yes, a missional view of church will affect 'how you do church', but the key shift is actually that the mission is done by church members (and the church) to the local culture.
See Question 2 in the first chapter of his book Confessions of a Reformission Rev.
Doesn't seem like evangelism's the thing to talk about anymore. 'Missional' is the hip word now.
ReplyDeleteGuilty as charged! Not sure how this fits with everyone else's comments, but when I use the word "missional", I encompass everything that surrounds evangelism - befriending non christians, understanding where they're coming from, bringing them to church, etc. To me, evangelism is the bare bones bit - the telling of the gospel. Being missional requires evangelism. But sometimes evangelism can be executed without a thought to being missional.
Also what sam said - missional is about going out with the gospel, rather than waiting for people to come into the church before delivering The Talk.
I don't think of it as a corporate/individual thing.
Or maybe I just use the word because I'm faddish, fickle Gen Y ;)