Missional vs. Emerging

Recently there has been a lot of conversation around the topic of missional vs. emergent/ing churches. A missional synchroblog was hosted last month by The Blind Beggar, which triggered many great posts and discussions about the differences between what people consider to be missional communities and the emerging church. I have only barely started reading some of the posts, but I would encourage anyone who feels part of either or both, or if you're just curious about what all the fuss is about, to spend some time reading these. Start here and follow the links.

In particular, I wanted to re-post part of Alan Hirsch's contribution to the conversation. In this post, he describes his view of being missional, taken from his recent book, The Forgotten Ways:

Missional church is a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission. When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people. [82]

He continues by writing:

In my opinion what is expressed through Emergent, the Alt-Worship movement, and what has been called Post-Evangelicalism, is not by-and-large a missionary movement, but is rather what I would call a renewal movement. That is, as far as I can discern, its primary concerns lie largely in interpreting theology and worship for the post-modern situation.

I think he is absolutely right on. Thank you, Alan, for stating so succinctly what (I believe) is the key aspect of being "missional" and the main difference between "missional" and "emerging." I am reminded of the quote from Alan's and Michael Frost's book, The Shaping of Things to Come:

Christology determines missiology, and missiology determines ecclesiology. (p. 16)

The more I read, the more I pray, the more I search for direction from God, the clearer and clearer this becomes to me. Perhaps that is why Exiles, Frost's latest book, seemed to capture my current place on my journey so well...