A missionary thinks about missional

I thought that I was still “in the loop,” even after four years overseas. After all, with the internet, blogs, webcams, and amazon.com, there should be no shortage of information no matter where you are. Right? Wrong!

I’ve missed out on “missional.”

In the spring of 2001, I was working through an independent study on church planting with then Southern Seminary professor Ed Stetzer. I can remember sitting at my desk, looking out at the small town where I was pastor of a Southern Baptist church, and thinking, “how is Smyrna Baptist Church going to reach all of these people who are moving here?” At that same time, we were preparing to go overseas, so I was reading everything I could get my hands on about people groups, cross-cultural ministry, strategy coordinators, international church planting, and anything else the IMB would send me. The thought struck me, why don’t we look at our town like I would look at Paris or Rio or Jakarta? Why not consider the truth that autoworkers from Michigan, dairy farmers from Tennessee, and young families fleeing the city are as much people group segments as Chinese students and Parisians? As I thought about planting a church in our small town, I wondered, what will church look like for these families? What will evangelism look like? I was teaching on living out our lives in worship because I was also asking, how can we share the gospel across our own lives in our own neighborhoods?

These next couple of weeks, I really want to think about this thing, “missional.” I know I’m behind. I know that Stetzer is now, as Darrin Patrick said on this excellent presentation, “freaky smart” and the “yoda missiologist” of the movement. He’s writing on his blog about what “missional” means, and I want to interact with that, with Patrick’s presentation, and with anything else I come across.

I’ll look forward to both of you who read this blog joining me…