Jonathan Leeman - Four Views on the Churchs Mission

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

S o it goes with the church and its mission. Evangelicals especially use the word church with great frequency, yet exhibit very little critical reflection on what this word means. For quite some time it has been said that evangelicalism has had no ecclesiology (doctrine of the church), with Stanley Grenz concluding over a decade ago that evangelicals have never developed or worked from a thoroughgoing ecclesiology. This lack of developed ecclesiology largely springs from evangelicals participation in a wider movementof the Holy Spirit, of people, of denominations, organizations, and churches, etc.where in fact many ecclesiologies have been represented. None were industrial strength, developed as robustly as they might have been, and yet this may have been because any stronger representative ecclesiologies might have actually threatened the unity and momentum of the evangelical movement and its wider ministries.

This leads to the second word, mission. Amid efforts to sustain the momentum of the evangelical movement, whether as a whole or in its various parts, somewhere along the way mission became fuzzy. Local organizations emerged together with national and global ones displaying ecclesial hybridity whilst focusing on carrying out the mission of the church in its various forms and varieties. This included strong activities such as evangelism, preaching, pastoral care, justice ministry, and others. Somewhere amid this vibrant activityfunded in large part by the postwar moment of American affluence and evangelical expansionchurches began to farm out their work to other groups and gurus, making way for all sorts of innovative churches and Christian activity.

Corporatized and Colonialized Missions

Evangelicalisms expansion and the centralization of its activity often outside of local churches contributed to a corporatization of Christian activity within the evangelical movement. Despite a rich and lengthy Christian tradition of reflection on the subjects of the church and mission, mission in many ways was often reduced to a trope of orientation. In practical use it became not much different than what corporations use to focus their organizational strategies. Mission displayed particular and catchy approaches to the churchs primary work, expressed in a mission statement that took primacy of place for articulating goals and a clear sense of purpose for Christian organizations or ministries. One young church planter within a mainstream evangelical organization spoke of his experience preparing materials to display readiness for the church planting task, which would in turn help secure denominational support for the effort. Within the process of preparation, the organizations director of church planting emphasized that it was not the theology of the church (or a theology of mission for that matter) that needed to be emphasized; instead the entrepreneurial church planters