Here are excerpts from a paper I wrote recently regarding the 'missional' movement:
The movement seems to be a deliberate attempt to repent of failures in one particular area: evangelism - led by those whose personal gifts and passions are more outreach-oriented. Who can deny that American evangelicals aren’t guilty of this? I’m all for Christian repentance. I want to encourage it wherever it may be found. The questions arise when we consider the overall balance that maybe lacking when our entire church life is arranged around an emphasis on one thing before we establish that this one thing is, in fact, the central tenet of the faith. ...
If the movement is built upon repentance in one necessary area [failure to be faithful in evangelism], what about the other pressing areas in which the Church generally needs to repent [God-centered worship, Personal Holiness, Biblical Literacy, Biblically-regulated Church and Personal Standards, etc.]? I don’t sense as much earnest focus on these other failures, for whatever reasons, and suspect that where they are not addressed with equal fervor, an imbalance is inevitable. ...
I still have major reservations about an approach that turns the chief business of the assembly of God’s people on the Lord’s Day into outreach and seeks to order the details [forms] of that day toward that end. [Tradition is out of the question, and your preferences don’t count, unless you’re an unbeliever – then we’ll bend over backward to design our assembly to suit your preferences.] ...
I agree with the historic confessions and John Piper’s often quoted saying, ‘Missions exists because worship does not; worship, not missions, is the highest priority of the Church.’ It concerns me when folks seem to be dismissing a lofty view of worship in order to focus on missions. To me, this diminishes the faith into some form of spiritual multi-level marketing. Certainly, I'm concerned with only those ‘missional’ churches where real deficiencies are present ...
The movement seems to be a deliberate attempt to repent of failures in one particular area: evangelism - led by those whose personal gifts and passions are more outreach-oriented. Who can deny that American evangelicals aren’t guilty of this? I’m all for Christian repentance. I want to encourage it wherever it may be found. The questions arise when we consider the overall balance that maybe lacking when our entire church life is arranged around an emphasis on one thing before we establish that this one thing is, in fact, the central tenet of the faith. ...
If the movement is built upon repentance in one necessary area [failure to be faithful in evangelism], what about the other pressing areas in which the Church generally needs to repent [God-centered worship, Personal Holiness, Biblical Literacy, Biblically-regulated Church and Personal Standards, etc.]? I don’t sense as much earnest focus on these other failures, for whatever reasons, and suspect that where they are not addressed with equal fervor, an imbalance is inevitable. ...
I still have major reservations about an approach that turns the chief business of the assembly of God’s people on the Lord’s Day into outreach and seeks to order the details [forms] of that day toward that end. [Tradition is out of the question, and your preferences don’t count, unless you’re an unbeliever – then we’ll bend over backward to design our assembly to suit your preferences.] ...
I agree with the historic confessions and John Piper’s often quoted saying, ‘Missions exists because worship does not; worship, not missions, is the highest priority of the Church.’ It concerns me when folks seem to be dismissing a lofty view of worship in order to focus on missions. To me, this diminishes the faith into some form of spiritual multi-level marketing. Certainly, I'm concerned with only those ‘missional’ churches where real deficiencies are present ...
