The Hsu’s Views

In the ongoing effort to catalog what different people consider “missional,” here is the list from the Gospel and Our Culture Network. GOCN are the folks that began the conversation about thinking as missionaries to the West. There are lots of great articles that are perhaps a bit more technical and scholarly, but accessible.

The twelve hallmarks of a missional church:

1. The missional church proclaims the gospel.
2. The missional church is a community where all members are involved in learning to become disciples of Jesus.
3. The Bible is normative in this church’s life.
4. The church understands itself as different from the world because of its participation in the life, death, and resurrection of its Lord.
5. The church seeks to discern God’s specific missional location for the entire community and for all of its members.
6. A missional community is indicated by how Christians behave toward one another.
7. It is a community that practices reconciliation.
8. People within the community hold themselves accountable to one another in love.
9. The church practices hospitality.
10. Worship is the central act by which the community celebrates with joy and thanksgiving both God’s presence and God’s promised future.
11. This community has a vital public witness.
12. There is a recognition that the church itself is an incomplete expression of the reign of God.

Frost and Hirsch in “The Shaping of Things to Come” add three principles. Each of these three form a chapter in their book.

1. The missional church is incarnational, not attractional in its ecclesiology.
2. The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality.
3. The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a heirarchical, mode of leadership.

Books, Missional