Well said, Ed... It is long time for young, "missional" church plants to invest globally in both church planting and in traditional missionary ventures. Young men and women must continue to pursue the call God has for the nations, even those that would be tempted to plant churches in the States in sometimes more comfortable environments. (Should I plant in Tennessee or take my family to Poland?) Even some of the strongest candidates to plant churches here in the states should be moving to global cities to plant churches, where English is the common language and gospel contextualization is not greatly different than moving to a large American city.

My wife & I are personally taking this adventure by moving to Brazil to help advance church planting there through leadership development and working among the poor. (www.restorebrazil.com)

In many church planting circles, including those I am familiar with (reformed/missional) I'm afraid for some, the pendulum has swung so far from the model of supporting traditional missionaries that a sort of arrogance has set in that missionaries are not even really necessary, and that nationals only are worth supporting. The interesting thing is few churches actually support the nationals. Many churches use their missions budget to support their own programs rather than to really support work overseas, be it church planting, with nationals or a western missionary.

I think the next generation of churches need to consider not only the definition of missions, missional, evangelism, etc. but how they can be truly sacrificial to see the Gospel advanced overseas.

Ed,

I have read everything you have written (blogs and books) the last two years. This is by far the best work you have ever produced. Well done and thanks for being a gift to the church. I plan to share this with my staff and leaders. (I am sure they will think 'Oh great- more Ed Stetzer stuff...' lol)

Awesome content. I found your blog via Twitter from Tony Morgan.
Thank you for the value you bring to ministry with your wisdom and insight.
Have a safe trip back home!!!

Fabulous stuff, Ed. Thanks for calling us to account and reminding us what the Missio Dei really is - and now I know what the focus of the interview will be next week in Toronto. :-)

this is fantastic, thank you Good Doctor!

Love this article, and it speaks to issues that I've been wrestling with over the past days. Thanks for your keen insights.

Ed

Great insight into an omission I have been observing in many "missional" discussions. God's heart for the nations remains and as the pendulum has swung for us to be on mission in actions and words at home in our communities, we must not forget or neglect our call to reach the nations.

May we navigate a both/and missional living rather than an either/or stance when we think of where our mission as followers of Christ leads us to share and live the good news.

Amen. We must remember that cross-cultural missions is an integral part of being missional. The church that is not a Great Commission church cannot truly be a missional church. I pray that missional churches will become birthplaces and training grounds for the greatest generation of cross-cultural missionaries that our world has ever seen!

Hey Ed, those are really awesome thoughts, and very well-ariculated. It seems you want to really see a change in the church, not just create some new vein of preaching for everyone to nod their heads at and leave unchanged.

Here's how you can help me leave changed instead of just nodding my head and agreeing everyone else should change: Could you answer the question of why you personally stuggle to preach the gospel to others relationally, rather than just "living it"?

I think that will help me (and possibly others) to understand why we do the same thing and why this problem in the church exists in the first place. It's obviously more comfortable, but perhaps you could shed some light on as to why, with evidence from your own life.

Mike,

Be glad to do so in a future blog post. Or listen to my messages online as I try to share such examples regularly.

Thanks for asking!

Ed

Thank You, Ed!! You have articulated exactly my frustration with the more "missional" churches in my home city (not US)-cross cultural missions seems to have fallen off the agenda! In contrast the more mainstream churches, in my experience, still feel that they have a role in missions to the unreached and particularly emphasize proclamation and discipleship. It has been incredibly difficult to interest people to come to a place like Taiwan, learn language (preferably Taiwanese as this is the heart language of most) and knuckle down to living in a Taiwanese community, build strategic relationships, share about the creator God who is greater than the plethora of gods here and disciple converts. No shortage of people wanting to teach English or work with the ministries of "helps" but the people we really need to see Taiwan won for Christ are the those willing to put the "hard yakka" in as we say down under.

Ed, the most exciting part of ministry (for me) today is being involved in a church that is moving into a focus on global missions.

Thanks for continuing to push this truth to the top of our consciousness.

Thanks for all your help. We were deeply burdened when you showed us the brothels. And, I love that you showed the Jesus film right in the middle of it all-- bring the light!

Bill, you guys are doing some good work. Keep it up. And, tell David I am waiting for my preaching invite. ;-)

Ed

Thank you Ed, you nailed it. Most of us (missional churches) struggle with being part of God's global mission because we are so enamored with our own agenda. Joining God on His mission requires sacrifice and is never convenient. Could it be that we don't emphasize discipling the nations because we don't see a return on our money and it doesn't conform to our image?

Isn't it normal that any new thing starts by distinguishing itself from what has gone before? Isn't it normal that the early days of any effort are focused more locally and internally. So isn't it normal that the "missional" movement might initially lag in global cross-cultural vision.

On the other hand, what a wonderful ritual of "coming of age" to have the energy and heart to look farther away, like Taiwan. And what new relevance will thoroughly city people bring to the great cities of the world that the rural and suburban ambassadors found it harder to bring as the world went uber-urban while we were looking the other way.

hi ed!
it was great meeting all of y'all at the temple this week! had a good time dialoguing with y'all about your ministries and being able to share a bit on how i ended up here as well.
thanks for this posting - as someone who's grown up in church and seen the changes it has gone through in just the past few years, i've realized that i'm always at a standstill when it comes to responding to Christians or churches who simply want to be "missional" by focusing solely on the needs of their local communities. i guess people have learned so quickly how to turn everything into "that's-being-a-missionary-too", that it's difficult to argue against. and not just at home in the states, but even in the foreign communities here in taiwan as well. a lot of this same mentality is brought with them from the western church, and it's become so comfortable living here that there is less of an urgency to reach the local people. simply living here is not enough - there needs to be action - and not just action, but using our mouths. now having been here in taiwan for almost 3 years, i'm definitely surprised at how differently people view global missions back at home. i don't even know how to respond anymore, to be honest...but thank you for all these reminders!

...interesting note, though, i now realize that on the flip side, there are a quite a number of young taiwanese christians who think that being a missionary means leaving taiwan and going elsewhere...

Good thoughts on a common struggle, Ed. It is easy to become consumed with doing while telling takes a back seat, because telling is the difficult part. Doing something (read: social justice) is rarely negatively received, but evangelistic words often cause a negative response. So, we too often avoid words all together and settle for good work, and the Gospel goes unspoken. It is unfortunate and irresponsible. So, thanks for the reminder and the encouragement to balance the two.

Ed, Thanks for writing this. As I see it the great commission is to "make disciples among ethnic groups" (Nations) of which there are 5-6 K with little to no gospel witness.

I guess in my experience as an M pastor I have see few, at least SB pastors, who understand the weight of scripture showing God's heart for all the ethnos leading to Rev. 5:9 and 7:9. I thank you so much for writing this post.

Ed:
Great corrective and reminder.

One way we try to keep this front and center in our very small church is to take as our model that mission is to be extended to our "Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and uttermost parts of the world." Jerusalem: our own community. Judea: our region/nation. Samaria: the "thems" we usually overlook or avoid wherever they are and the "uttermost" ...the nations. We work to have at least one ministry going in each area.

Second, a rich understanding of "blessing" as applies to mission would cover a multitude of sins. (I highly recommend Claus Westermann's book "Blesssing in the Bible and the Life of the Church" on that score)

Ed, Great missional insights. Here is quote from Michael Horton that I believe echo's some of the concerns you raise in points three and four: "When the focus of mission and ministry is on our kingdom living rather than on the one who brought and brings his own kingdom, ushering us and our hearers into it through the gospel, Christ-as-example can just as effectively replace Christ-as-Savior at least in practice." Christian praxis--yes (Matt 5:16), but also Christian preaching (1 Cor 9:16). No dichotomy- with the target being both locally and globally or what we refer to in our missional context as Lake Country and Beyond. Thanks for your missional admonishment for Jesus' fame around the globe.

Based upon some of the most recent research, I'm not sure most otherwise-missional churches (or certainly others) are much into evangelism domestically, either (see LifeWay's research regarding the evangelism focus of congregations primarily "small group" and those primarily "traditional Sunday School"--neither type appears to keep evangelism as its groups' highest priority, or even close to it).

The congregation I serve is seeking to take the suggestions of NAMB and IMB in their "Acts 1:8 Challenge" as seriously as possible, with distinct mission teams in partnership (for 3-5 years) with other groups of passionate believers local, state, national, and international beginning in 2010. Members will follow their hearts in joining a team, raising the overall motivation to do missions. Our teams' only reason for existing as teams: evangelism. Our approach evangelistically, though, will be Hybel/et al's "Contagious Christian" one, as we agree that God distributes (at least) six evangelism styles across Christendom (and probably does so fairly evenly)--again, raising the motivation level of the teams (no "square pegs forced into round holes" kind of thing happening in relation to them). However, we simply will come in alongside the groups of passionate believers elsewhere to do as they direct us in terms of missions aid to them--because, when our partnerships are concluded, we're likely going elsewhere to leave the indigenous groups to continue the good things begun (thus requiring that those passionate believers also prayerfully function strategically in their locales). Also, for the partnerships truly to be "partnerships," members of the passionate believer groups elsewhere will be aided to travel to our city to assist us in our evangelism ministries here.

We believe that members of other U.S. churches must be functioning in the ways described above, as well (and would like to hear from them about their progress so as not to re-invent the wheel).

David Troublefield
Wichita Falls, TX

Thanks for this post. The word "Missional" has become a cliche that at least attempts to cover a multitude of sins. People send their kids to public school instead of Christian school or home school and say it's because they are "missional". People recycle their garbage and install flourescent bulbs in their home "to be the good news" and call it "missional".

Sadly the word has become meaningless in so many instances precisely because it has been separated from the Great Commission. Thanks for putting the Great Commission back in Missional. I hope people hear you!

Ed,

Thanks so much for joining us on another Upstream Collective vision trip. We really enjoy having you along and adding to the conversation about keeping mission in missional.

Ed,

Thanks for that! I must say I have noticed this trend myself, but had not been able to put my finger on why so much of the missional church vision (which seems a big vision, or at least speaks about big vision) is actually small in that it is often only concerned with their own locale.

I want to have a greater vision for the work of Jesus in my town, and on the globe!

Thanks for the reminder!

I do not understand how any pastor in a missional or non-missional church setting can read Acts 1:8 and not know what we are called to do?

Between Matt. 28:19 and the above, the call is clear for us to make Disciples of all the world and we are empowered to do so. The key as in anything is balance!

Very good thoughts.

One thing I see in many churches is that they "outsource" missions by saying they only support national workers. I have been told by pastors that they can "plant" a church in India for $12 by giving to a national worker, why should they support a Western missionary. I see this as a trivialization of missions, and willingness to have no commitment to personal involvement in reaching the least evangelized.

Right on! I still like the words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, "Preach the Gospel at all times & if necessary, use words." It doesn't read, "Live the Gospel;" it says, "Preach." (We all should be 'living letters' & 'live sent' (to use a buzz word.)

It seems it is all to easy to lose focus from the Great Commission of 'making disciples' & 'teaching them to observe...' to the methods themselves. Whether the concentration is shifted to actual preaching, worship style, community action, mercy ministries, liturgy or even 'evangelism' itself.

When St. John the Forerunner (Baptist) sent two of his disciples to Jesus asking, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” Jesus answered, “Go & tell John the things you HEAR & SEE: The blind see & the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed & the deaf hear; the dead are raised up & the poor have the gospel preached to them."

Are all prophets, apostles? No. We all have a mission. Am I fulfilling His commission or someone else's?

I'll probably get flamed for being the only person so far to add a hint of disagreement, but I'll be honest; I'm not sure I can get behind this 100%. In my last 19 years of ministry I've witnessed way too many church goers and church communities that also considered themselves "missional" because they sent missionaries, or had gone to a foreign country on a "mission" trip for two weeks to build a church and play with poor kids. Then they came home "on-fire" for Jesus telling all of their Christian friends how much more consistently they were reading their bible but still never really taking a step beyond that to start caring about the homeless teenagers in the community, or the drug addicts, or the hungry, or the single moms who couldn't manage to pay the rent month after month.

I for one am happy to see the shift toward embracing "as you are going, be making disciples in all nations as part of your normal life" as opposed to the overwhelming "go far away and make disciples" which happens usually rarely or not at all for most.

Balance is likely the key, but if we were too focused on overseas missions in the 50s and now we're too focused on domestic social justice in the name of "being jesus to our community" then my hope is that the pendulum will swing back a bit and we'll learn to do both. My heart breaks at the perfect Christian family that goes to church, supports "missions," and even supports a child but will drive right on by the broken, out of work, drug addict on the corner on their way to church or will say "I'll pray for you" to their coworkers who are struggling in their marriage rather than invite them to dinner and pour into their lives.

Sorry, long reply, here's to praying for genuine caring among all of us and a return to constant mission with big international goals that start next door.

Ed:
Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I'm the Canadian Director for Envoy International Canada our organization is involved in training churches in World Missions, we have had great success and hunger for the global missions for our Latin and south American churches to the point of several SENDING missionaries from some very impoverished churches, and yet when we held our first North American seminar we had three dear saints (one was my dad). We in North America are on the receiving end of world missions not the sending. I seen this first hand and cannot agree more.

Another gr8 post Ed.
If the whole missional thing was God trying to kick us out of our buildings and get us to see our own communities as unreached mission fields, why do we complicate it?
Why can't we just leave the building and win the neighborhood using "whatever means necessary"?
Not that complicated to me.

Ed. It was great spending the week with you in Taiwan. I think this piece is a much needed corrective in our current dialogue with the "emerging" church movement. If missional is about being cool, hip, white, suburban, angry, reformed, soul-patch pastor, then we are missing the boat. While we need to reach all kinds of people, we need to constantly remind ourselves to reach the world. This is a needed balance and corrective.

Wow, what a poignant analysis. I fear that so often, churches in our denomination react to a reaction (e.g. seeker sensitivity). I fully support the GCR and its heart is to do mission not for the sake of mission, but to honor God by effectively reaching the lost. Thanks for your writing ministry Ed.

Perfectly timed analysis; It is amazing how your insight has pointed out the blind spots of missional balancing. I think one thing that helps our church plants is to to stay focused on Acts 1:8 as a strategy. It helps keep us in tune with Christ's heart for the nations beginning at home and reaching to the uttermost parts. Thanks for reminding us all of how easy it is to slip into cruise control and allow our preferences and fears to become more important than the heartbeat of our Savior!

Ed, Glad to see you are still getting out of the house. :-) Good words. I would add (or tweak) one of your correctives. I think we're missing an element in what is "missional." Your corrective, "share God's deep concern about His mission to the nations" is a must. Yes, we must. But I wonder when we say "share about His mission to the nations" are we thinking share with us (those sharing) or share with them (those hearing)? Until we build into our DNA the need to share the mission of God (the rest of the gospel) with seekers and new believers (even unbelievers!), I doubt we will activate movements. It's a sad reflection that we do not understand another one of your correctives--that it is truly God's mission, not ours. If we want to catalyze movements, we must hand off the mission of God. That will prepare new believers to be moved to movements by His Spirit. At least that's how I'm seeing it these days. Thanks for the words. I am in your town on 9 Oct. Coffee?

Hey Ed! Thanks for this! It's good stuff! Do you know where the St Francis quote got misquoted? A lot of my friends use that one. Would be good to know where it originated. Or perhaps, where did you get the source that he didn't say it. Thanks brother, keep up the great work!

Ed,
The missional church needs you. Keep up the good work.
David

Ed,

I am interested to know your thoughts on how we are to understand different types of churches (missional & traditional) in light of the larger (universal) movement of the church. If we have veins of churches in the US that are decidedly more focused on global missions, does it not make sense that a natural reaction to this would be for yet another vein to appear that would focus themselves on local mission.

To me it seems that this is the beauty & diversity of the global church.

In any light - this is an interesting and important conversation,

Zack

as they seek to "own" the mission by adapting their church into a missional movement in their local community, some inadvertently localize God's mission itself and lose the vital connection all believers share together. A hyper-focus on our own community results in a, have lost vision for the communion of the saints.

Our Global association of Christians in higher ed took notice of the tendency to "overcontextualize" at our conference in Taipei last year. You can read an excellent and highly readable paper on this by the Dutch philosopher Sander Griffieon "Overcoming Diversity" posted on our website at: http://iapche.org/insert201.pdf

Clear and articlate discription of what is infecting the churches today. When the "Missional" concept was first taking hold, I was encouraged that finally a bridge was being established that would bring Pastors to a greater prioritiy for PEOPLES (without the Gospel) instead of just the people in their church and their community (potential to be in their church). Unfortunately, what I am increasingly witnessing is more and more church leadership are using "Missional" as purpose for minimising attention and resources from what used to be called "Missions". Just ask them, "What is more important, Church Growth or Kingdom Advancement?' You will find their answers telling.

While I definitely agree with the overall thought behind the article, I would add a caveat.

I'm in my 20s, and in college, my campus church was so focused on "using" overseas mission trips to provide college students with a mountaintop experience that it lost a sense of true mission.

Since we've left, they've begun sending missionaries overseas and reclaiming some of that missional mindset -- but I've seen a lot in younger people that they separate out overseas missions as being MORE holy than local evangelism, or ignore local evangelism and ministry because they do a once-a-year trip.

Ed,

Thanks for bringing this up. We often see our friends allowing this to be decided by trends or budgets. We also sometimes hear a statement that indicates that "missional and global" should be "balanced." I'd like to submit that they should be not be considered as separate things on a scale, but all on one continuum. Certainly there must be a well rounded approach to this. Sometimes tough decisions will have to be made. Timing will also have to be considered. But, you have brought it back to our hearts that it is HIS mission, and, it is our place to obey. Still yet, the biggest hurdle is for us all to work together and partner well to make the most of our efforts. PS. I work with Larry and the company.

I always regarded the deemphasis on overseas missions as developing from a sort of post-colonial reluctance to export Western values. When this reluctance is coupled with a relativisation of Western theology as well, emerging church types find themselves in a very troubling conundrum: people need Jesus, but I can't tell them about him.

Great article! It's interesting to see new definitions for "how to do church" popping up all over the place. From one fad to the next I suppose.

I wonder how much of this is driven by the fear of man. Or the fear of knowing that most Americans "know" about Christianity and have already "rejected" it per se (and we could list a thousand "forms" of Christianity that they've rejected, like legalism, etc...). If so... then I would think that it's all the more reason to do missions God's way because maybe they don't know the real TRUTH, but only a vague form of Christianity that makes them justify their current lifestyle.

I hope that makes sense.

Thank you dr.Setzer, your thoughts are stimulating. I long suspected that someone have misquoted St. Francis. Two days ago (in Germany) a preacher used St.Francis's quote to tell us how important to not to use words! Preach the Gospel is the Command.

Ed I've appreciated much of what you have written on the missional church and missional church planting in the past. Thank you for your continued reflections and for engaging so many valuable issues that are relevant to the nature and mission of the church here on your blog.

As I read this post a few thoughts came to my mind almost immediately. Perhaps because I read it after just finishing Lesslie Newbigin's short book "Mission in Christ's Way." I found myself saying Ed is discussing a trend among 'some' self-labeled missional churches but he's not talking about the vision and philosophy behind missional ecclesiology in people like Newbigin, Bosch, Guder, and Goheen. As I read your description of these so-called 'missional churches' I found myself saying I don't recognize them as being 'missional'.

I think some people may read this post and walk away with an unhelpful stereotype of what missional churches are like, and not have the historical awareness to realize that the missional church conversation was begun by global cross-cultural missionaries who would have never created an artificial tension - like Newbigin.

Another a thought I had while reading your piece was where's the discussion of global city mission's and how our world in at least some ways is becoming more flat. I know several churches who spend boatloads of money sending a few people overseas to people groups while there are 1st generation representations of those people groups in nearby global cities. People they could reach much more effectively and then help send back to their own culture. (I don't think its an either or here, but that is a problem).

I think your piece is a timely one Ed. It does however worry me that it may increase faulty stereotypes and is leaving out significant discussions like global city missions and how they change the west east, home overseas paradigm of going to the nations (here I'm reliant upon Harvie Conn, Mani Ortiz, and Sue Baker of WTS).

One friend send me this to read.

Long and good article!
Will share my 3 Reasons Missional Churches Don't Do Global Missions?

1. Pastor it self does not understand what means mission. How should it look like. Probably he has not seen it!
2. Easier is to sit read smart books than go out and talk with people. Specially when they say FY with your Christ. Because they see tons of so called Christian NOT LIVING as Christ have told. DISCOMFORT.
3. We love to talk about mission. But no do mission. I don't think that it was easy going time for disciples of Christ - doing mission.

Mission is not, what I want.
Mission is what God wants. All nations praise HIS name! How? By making disciples, who make disciples!

Church does not understand mission, because I don't show it!