There has been an ongoing discussion among Christian leaders about the relationship of the church and the mission of God. On one side, you’ve got those who say that ecclesiology (theology of church) should come before our missiology (theology of mission). In other words, the church is the most important thing in terms of how believers organize themselves, and that mission is a function of the church. If you get church right, these leaders say, then mission, along with the other functions of the church, will happen. If the church isn’t doing mission, it’s because the church isn’t healthy, obedient, and gospel-centered.
On the other side of the discussion are those would would flip that perspective around, making ecclesiology serve our missiology. My friend Alan Hirsch is an articulate advocate for this take on missional thinking, and he says, “Rather than say that the church has a mission, we should say that the mission has a church.” Believers have a mission, and what we know as “church” is meant to organize us to do that mission. From this perspective, our health, obedience, and gospel-centeredness are measured not by our leadership structure, but by our ownership of and involvement in God’s mission.
I believe that the two sides of this conversation represent the difference between pastors and missionaries. On the one hand, we’ve got pastors who major on church and minor on missions. On the other hand, we have missionaries who major in mission and minor on church.
I’ll share more of my thoughts on this topic soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out this series by David Fitch and this post and comments from Jonathan Dodson, and this Next Wave article on the topic.
Unless writing a lot makes one a "writer," Ernest is a former missionary. After more than six years in Western Europe, he moved to Portland, where he drinks too much coffee and over-analyzes human behavior. For more about Ernest, visit the About page where you can read a long-time reader's interview with him. Or, if you don't mind waiting a very, very long time, send him an email.
Chicken or the egg. I like them both. Most of the time I prefer the old fashioned fried chicken as opposed to the fast food chain brand. My eggs – I like them fresh and I am not sure there is a way I don’t like them cooked. Yes, that includes poached.
Ernest, is this not a black hole devised to pit pastors and missionaries against one another. Seems to me we could synthesize this a bit better. I really think that is where David Fitch is headed.
Is the church a sign and a foretaste of the coming, fulfilled Kingdom of God? Is the church a consequence of the mission of God embodied in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus? Is there any relationship between the vision of God forging a people in the Hebrew Scriptures and the formation of a Kingdom community in the New Testament? Does the church organize around the Way of Jesus, the mission of God, its witness to the grace and mercy of God?
Maybe part of the problem is what you have noted in a variety of posts along the way. The modern church in your particular denomination professionalized the mission force creating an independent ethos from the local Christian community of faith. Is the problem traceable to where we locate mission or the church? Or, is the matter the result of other forces that tend to the more pragmatic rather than the theological.
I look forward to your continued writing on this subject.
Come on, that’s gotta be a straw man. Who says ecclesiology comes before our missiology? No pastor I’ve ever heard.
Todd,
I agree. I’d really hate for missionaries to defer to pastors in areas of ecclesiology and for pastors to depend totally on missionaries for missiology.
Micah,
You’d think this is just a straw man, but a recent Jet Set vision trip with the Upstream Collective showed that this is, in fact, an actual discussion. Several pastors on the trip were convinced that the reason the missionaries on the field in W. Europe hadn’t seen churches planted was their low ecclesiology. They were convinced that their success in the U.S. was due to their obedience in organizing the body of Christ around a biblical leadership structure. The implication was that the missionaries would be more successful if they were to do the same.
For other thoughts on the topic, check out Fitch (linked above), Jonathan Dodson’s post on the order of ecclesiology and missiology, this guy’s post from way back in 2007, or here.
Most pastors probably wouldn’t say that their ecclesiology comes “before” their missiology, but, as Hirsch says, many act as though it does.
Ernest,
What does Hirsch point to that illustrates his, “many act as though it does?”
Todd,
In The Shaping of Things to Come, Hirsch and Frost write:
“Our Christology informs our missiology, which in turn determines our ecclesiology. If we get this the wrong way around and allow our notions of the church to qualify our sense of purpose and mission, we can never be disciples of Jesus, and we will never be an authentic missional church. Churches that have got this basic formula wrong never really engage in mission and so lose touch with Jesus. These churches spend all their time discussing (or arguing) about the forms of worship, the church furniture, and the timing of services and programs, and fail to recognize that our ecclesiology flows more naturally out of our sense of mission. These churches become closed sets as a result, and their experience of Jesus at the center fades into a memory of the time when they were really doing something. It becomes a matter of history rather than an experience of mission now. It is important to recover the idea that the church connects with Jesus through mission, not through getting church meetings right!”
I think churches act as through their ecclesiology precedes their missiology when they make missions a program that the church does. Instead, missions should be what Christians do, and church is how we do it.
Ok, so by your (and Allen Hirsch’s) definition, Willow Creek is a missional church.
Is that accurate?
Micah,
Sorry, I don’t get what you mean. I haven’t attempted to define the word “missional” here. I don’t actually know Willow Creek well enough to say whether they’re missional or not, but I imagine their size and seeker mentality would make it difficult for them to take a missional approach to ministry on a corporate level. Alan’s quote would actually put churches like Williow Creek (or so I’d imagine) in a different category because so much emphasis is put on the Sunday morning worship gathering(s).
Since you brought it up, though, megachurches are a great case study. If we Christians see ourselves first as being on mission and see the church as the way to do just that, would we build giant stadiums for worship? But if church is the main thing, and mission is what the church does, then it makes sense for us to want to grow big- programs require resources and a Christian subculture can facilitate the administration of those resources.
Any particular reason you ask about Willow Creek?
Ernest,
I get what Hirsch and Frost note. My concern at this point woud be the use of these illustrations as pejorative. That is, it presumes the lion share of churches have the quibbles they describe. We tend to hear about them more than they actually occur. Now if we are talking about fleshing out the role of the church in the world, then I would think that issue is the deep seed that presents the most internal conflict for a local congregation. At that point, it seems the church is wrestling with mission. Now how that question gets answered is more to your point – and I would agree.
It just seems to easy to take the argument from the absurd and then make it the “case” for one’s argument.
I think I will stay with the assertion that it makes little sense to see this in linear fashion when mission and church seem more like weaving dna strands expressing the “manifold wisdom of God.”
I am sure by now you have seen Fitch’s most recent post.
Because most missional folks I know see Willow Creek as the embodiment of all that is not missional. It’s pretty much the least missional church ever, by most folks’ standards.
But if the issue is “does the structure of the church follow the mission of the church instead of the other way around” then Willow Creek is HIGHLY missional. Their ecclesiology definitely derives from their missiology, not the other way around.
I’ve got no interest in holding up Willow Creek as the gold standard of churches. I just don’t think this is a false dichotomy.
Bill Hybels, seeker-dude that he is, would whole-heartedly agree with the statement “our health, obedience, and gospel-centeredness are measured not by our leadership structure, but by our ownership of and involvement in God’s mission.”
EDIT: Whoops, typo. I meant to say “I just think this is a false dichotomy.”
And in case I’m not being clear, I’m not Willow’s biggest fan. I haven’t really even interacted with those type of folks in years. They’re just a nice example.
Micah,
I get what you’re saying. Most megachurches seem to run everything they do through the filter of their “mission,” which is usually something like, “Get people in the pews.” But I’d like to differentiate between that sort of pragmatic approach and what Hirsch ( and others- it’s not just him!) would consider to be a foundational understanding of the function of the church.
I don’t think this is a false dichotomy to categorize two common perspectives (one that says that the body of Christ should be the “main thing” for believers, and another, which holds that the reason God established the church at all was to organize us to do mission) and compare and contrast them. I agree with Todd- it’s not helpful to see them as linear, “Which comes first?” sorts of things, but should one, in fact, serve the other?
Of course we’re all on the same team here, and of course no one is “against” anyone else in the conversation and of course, no one would put themselves into one extreme or another. Nevertheless, I’ve interacted with several godly leaders who seem to fall toward one side or the other.
Most of my reformed and Acts 29 friends tend toward the ecclesiology side. They tend to say that we can’t do missions well (effectively, obediently, successfully, biblically) until we do church right. A plurality of (male) elders, gospel-centered preaching, discipleship, accountability, discipline, etc.
Most of my “missional” friends would fall on the other side, saying that getting all the church stuff “right” won’t necessarily make us effective as incarnational witnesses. They usually go on to say that mission should be the organizing concept behind all that we do.
By the way, my next post will show that I think we need to come at it from both sides. I’m a little bit behind David Fitch’s posts on the same topic, but I think each “side” needs to hear from the “other side.”
Thankfully, all parties involved in the discussion claim that both ecclesiology and missiology follow after (or serve) christology.