Flowing naturally from the idea that God has an overarching mission for mankind, thus rendering that mission God-centered, is the assertion that the church, as one component of that mission, is sent by God to help accomplish the mission. Newbigin saw a natural flow from the idea that mission begins with God’s purpose of reconciling… Continue Reading
The first principle that drives the missional church is what it considers the biblically-mandated missionary imperative. But while the evangelical church has traditionally considered evangelism and missions a critical reason for its existence, the missional church understands such an emphasis as not just one ministry among many but as the overarching idea of what it… Continue Reading
In order to understand the driving impulses behind the North American evangelical missional church movement and its impact on worship, I will begin with a brief survey of the history of ideas embedded in missional. Contemporary missional thinking began within the larger ecumenical missions debates in the early twentieth century. Critics of standard missionary methods… Continue Reading
Most church leaders readily recognize that God has tasked the church with several different purposes, yet how those purposes work together has equally mystified them. One of the most potentially difficult ministry relationships to reconcile has been of that between worship and evangelism. The church growth movement answered the question by insisting that the church’s… Continue Reading
I’ve been doing some reading on the missional movement, and one of their big arguments is that we live in a post-Christendom West, and therefore the barriers between the culture of the church and the culture around has grown significantly. Now there’s a whole lot of baggage with what they’re trying to prove, but I… Continue Reading
A missionary cannot properly evaluate the differences among cultural expressions until he has understood their universals. At the root of the most thoughtful defenses of contemporary worship today is an appeal based on a missions philosophy that stresses indigenous ministry. If, as the International Missionary Council asserted as far back 1938, an indigenous church is… Continue Reading
In my handful of posts this month, I want to give some anecdotes from church history to inform us as to how missionaries, attempting to plant indigenous church, should approach the issue of music in the culture in which they minister. My posts will not always touch on music per se, but instead explore the… Continue Reading
I thought I’d post a helpful discourse by Dave Doran in his journal article on “Market-Driven Ministry,” which answers well recent justification of a neutral view of culture and music by a claim to being “missional.” Doran describes the market-driven philosophy as one that is pragmatic in several crucial areas, one of which is their view… Continue Reading