If It’s Not Missional, It’s Not Church

“When God set about his great project of world redemption in the wake of Genesis 12, he chose to do so not by whisking individuals off to heaven, but by calling into existence a community of blessing. Starting with one man and his barren wife, then miraculously transforming them into a large family within several generations, then into a nation called Israel, and then, through Christ, into a multinational community of believers from every nation–all through the story God has been moulding a people for himself. But also a people for others. ‘Through you … all nations.’”

“In other words, the missional thrust of Genesis 12:1-3 is also ecclesiological. The origins of the church go back, not just to Pentecost, but to Abraham. And the missionary impulse that we find in Acts was no sudden change, but the outworking of the logic of biblical faith and history. The command of Jesus and the leading of the Holy Spirit combined to send the church out in mission to the ends of the earth, as those who, having received the blessing of Abraham, must now be the means of passing it on. That was now the story worked, and that was the story they knew they were in.”

“So the idea of ‘missional church’ is far from a new idea. It may have taken on a particular cultural form in recent years in reaction to the institutionalized church that has lost touch with its own raison d’être [reason for existence]. But really, if we understand the church from our biblical theology as that community of people chosen and called since Abraham to be the vehicle of God’s blessing to the nations, what else can the church be but missional? This is who we are and what we are here for.”

“Indeed, as a friend of mine said recently, ‘All this talk of “missional church” sounds to me like talking about a “female woman.” If it’s not missional, it’s not church.’”

From Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Zondervan 2010), 73. Emphasis his.