Missional Church

Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America
Darrell L. Guder
Eerdmans Publishing Company (1998)
This book examines problems within the North American church from a spiritual and theological perspective. Central to this focus is mission, or sending, which the authors describe as “the central biblical theme describing the purpose of God’s action in human history.” (4) The authors argue that the Western church has lost sight of this missional focus, and the only way it can be rediscovered is through reshaping our theology.
While the first chapter gives a general overview of the main thesis, chapters two and three give an absolutely amazing historical portrait of the North American church and Western culture since the Enlightenment period. I would highly recommend this book to any person because these two chapters alone are so significant to understanding the nuances of the make-up of the modern, and now postmodern, church. The authors point out that “the churches in both the United States and Candad have developed a type of functional Christendom in the form of a churched culture… Therefore today we find churches seeking a public voice but finding that they are no longer taken seriously. There voice in the United States has been marginalized into a highly personalized and privatized practice of faith.” (60)
Since the second and third chapters provide such a great context, chapters four through six focus on how the church should express itself in terms of evangelization and missional efforts. The remaining chapters focus on framing this vocation of the church in tangible terms. As such, leadership and structures are listed as important components of a modern missional church. The section on contextual leadership was of particular importance to me. The authors describe how Christendom and modernity have shaped current leadership efforts in the church, and they argue that “the shape of leadership in any particular location is a matter of historical antecedents and deep cultural values.” (190)
I feel as though I am unable to describe in words the powerful impact of this book on my worldview. Modern Christian leaders really need to have a solid understanding of historical understanding and a grasp of the modern context. God is always moving, and He really desires for his church to be fully immersed in a missional vocation. The great surprise for many North Americans is that due to the influences of modernism and postmodernism, massive missional efforts are now needed in our own areas. This is a shift away from the sending model of previous generations, which focused on sustaining church health at home while sending missionaries over sees.
As a person who is involved in mobilizing a large North American church out into the local community through efforts aimed at impacting troubled youth, orphans, seniors, and the homeless population in Pittsburgh, this book helped me to grasp that the problems faced in these mobilization efforts might have less to due with strategic program planning or implementation and more to do with the spiritual and theological base of our congregation. This is due in part to the larger cultural phenomenon known as postmodernism which has a grip on contemporary culture, but church leaders should be aware and ready to meet this challenge within an effective theological framework.