Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Missional Living

A new word has popped up in our theological vocabulary: missional. Some have claimed this was an invention of the emergent church and is associated with conformity to culture and liberal theology; however, the word missional was coined by Baptist theologian Elmer Towns years ago. What it means is living like a missionary where you are. Missional is an attitude that we are on mission for Christ whether we are going to a foreign country or going across the street. I think this is the kind of attitude that we need as our country takes on a new look and adopts a new culture. Let's face it the country that we grew up with is totally different than what it is today; even the culture has shifted to a post-christian world view, although remarkably 85% of people polled still claim Christianity. As missionaries to our culture, we need to adapt and be flexible in our approaches without compromising the truth of God's Word and the Gospel message. The missional person, family, church will look for new ways to reach people, will be constantly taking on the new norms while adopting the new culture. It sounds impossible but it is not. Missionaries have been doing it for years. "Being in the world but not of the world." When you get out today, think of yourself as a missionary in a foreign land, then see how God can use you as you live missionally.

3 comments:

Sofija Burton said...

Missionaries in recent years learned that they had to let go of their ways to do church, and let the culture's they were in decide how they structured their church service, often very uncomfortable for the missionary's taste and sensibilities. For example the church might sit in circles and play music that sounds nothing like hyms or praise music. Are we willing to let go of the way we do church in order to reach this new generation? The recent Mission's Frontiers magazine has an article talking about how the most successful church movements have been spreading around the world and even in Europe. It has nothing to do with classes, and programs, it looks very different from how we do church around here. I highly recommend reading it.

Unknown said...

Interesting Sofija do they also have a website?

Hearmeout said...

Orthodox Christianity is New Testament Christianity 2000 years later
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fuuWZU3bZ7kb6uHgKlFbRYZAthqAUX-OCtauFAQpq30/pub
About the pretrib rapture, The Orthodox Faith [the original apostolic faith, dogmatically unaltered and historically uninterrupted in worshipping “18 […]and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (The Gospel according to Saint Matthew The Apostle, chapter 16)], the miracle of The Holy Fire (that doesn’t burn people in the first few minutes), modern NDEs, life after death and spiritual delusion, The Holy Trinity (What the Father is, the Son and the Spirit are also. This is the Church’s teaching. The Son, born of the Father, and the Spirit, proceeding from Him, share the divine nature with God, being “of one essence” with Him. Thus, as the Father is “ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same” (Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom), so the Son and the Spirit are exactly the same.) on the intercession of Saints, why do we need clergy, why do we celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December, The Passover (not Easter), on wearing The Holy Cross, The Holy Water miracle [astonishing pictures -The presence of Holy Spirit invoked through reading of special prayers totally changes the water structure itself. Here's crystals of water from the same sources (as shown above) after it was blessed.]
For the purpose of preventing the loss of some parts of this message due to unexpected technical difficulties, or if you just want to bookmark this document in order to peruse it whenever you have the time and will, everything that is written below can be found here : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fuuWZU3bZ7kb6uHgKlFbRYZAthqAUX-OCtauFAQpq30/pub