All right, I’ve been doing some more thinking since posting my original response to Dan Kimball’ criticisms of missional church. I figured out why it bugs me even as I agree with much of what he said.
Here’s the thing: All churches should be missional.
There, I said it. 
Missional is not the latest “movement” or “method” or “structure”. Missional churches are not necessarily small or organic or defined by an urban context or being a house church. It’s not a matter of using a “model” like “seeker-sensitive” or “traditional”. It’s not defined by the kind of music you do or how much you care about your community or who you read or whether or not you care about social justice.
What does it mean to be missional? It means to be on mission. So what is the mission of the church? Quite simply, it is the mission of God (often referred to as the missio dei). Because the mission of God is about redemption and reconciliation, embrace and inclusion. Simply put, it’s love.
Mission should not be reduced to an activity or function of the church (like when we send people to Mexico to help build orphanages – worthy work but just one facet of mission), but understood as something that constitutes its very nature. The church is sent, by the Father and the Son through the Spirit, as the continuation of Jesus’ ministry of the Kingdom. The church is not identical with the Kingdom of God, but rather, its “sign,” “sacrament,” and “foretaste” in anticipation for its full eschatological culmination.[1]God continues his mission with the church as the community, servant, and messenger of the Kingdom of God.[2]
Basically, being missional is not a movement or a method which is what Kimball and other critics reduce it towards. Rather, it is understanding that the true essence of the Church derives from the nature of God and His mission to the world rather than trying to define itself on its own terms or independent from that.
Missional churches and scholars therefore seek to see that the church reflects a theo-centric view rather than an ecclesial-centric view. Basically, is our church centered on the mission of God or is it centred on the church itself?
When a church is focused on the church and it’s pet projects, it often degenerates into a self-propogating machine. Where the entire purpose of church is to keep the church going. We preach sermons, have programs and do light-shows or music because that is what will keep the budget and attendance up. The purpose of church becomes the church itself. This is rarely blatantly stated and is therefore a subtle trap that many churches fall into, not just big attractional churches. We say we are on the mission of God but everything – from our music to our staffing to how we allocate our budget – all say that our purpose is the church itself. Some people criticise attractional churches as being “more guilty” of this than the rest of us but they’re simply a larger, easier target. We are all guilty of this.
There is no exclusion in the mission of God. God, in his love, demonstrates towards humanity an “indisputable and indiscriminate will to embrace“. Missional ecclesiology seeks to continue that mission and representation, to act as a foretaste of the Kingdom of God by also demonstrating that mission towards humanity. After all, we’ve all heard the saying that the Christian church is one of the few institutions that exists partly for those that are not yet a part of it.
I think that what Kimball was trying to do (if I’m being generous) was to criticize a “type” of church – the small, organic, community driven groups that he anecdotally shares about in the article. I think that his biggest error is that he classifies them as “missional”. They may or may not be (because my original comment stands – you can’t judge success by budget or numbers or butts in the pew) but this is not missional as scholars and theologians understand the definition.
Missional churches cross all boundaries, denominations, sizes, contexts.
As a sidenote, I find Kimball’s article surprisingly modernist. After all, the thrust of modernity is “What works?” And if it doesn’t look like it’s “working”, then it must be wrong/bad. Postmodernity can embrace success beyond these tired definitions and restrictions.
As I’ve mentioned before, my husband has done most of his grad work on this subject. I uploaded one of his most recent papers, “The Deepest Source of Mission: God’s Immutable and Indiscriminate Will to Embrace“, on the subject if you’d like to read more about this, you can click here. He’s rather modest but I’m convinced of its brilliance. 
