What Does it Mean to be Missional? – Dan Kimball Interview

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At Catalyst West, Brian Proffit interviewed Dan Kimball, author of They Like Jesus But Not the Church and co-author of The Emerging Church.

It was probably in the early 90′s that all of this began to come together. It was a gathering of people who were passionate about reaching the culture. For me it was very evangelistically driven. That was the context of The Emerging Church, which I wrote in 2002. As the emerging and emergent thing grew from that it became more of a rethinking of church theology. For me it was still more about the core of what’s behind this. When Darrell Guder wrote Missional Church, I appreciated it. The word has a strong historical background and conveys something more than a church program.

It isn’t something like an evangelism program. To me, missional means your values, your leadership structure; everything in your church revolves around mission. Of course then the question is, “What’s the mission?” For me the mission is to see people that do not know Jesus come to know who he is, and that includes the poor and the needy and marginal. I don’t use the term “emerging church” any more because it got a lot of hypercritics. There’s some criticism that was valid—a lot of it wasn’t.

Some talk about doing good just for the sake of doing good. You’re saying you see mission as going behind helping those poor and needy and marginal—though that’s part of it—and also introducing them to Jesus.

Yes. There are people in horrible situations that we have to do something about. I’m an evangelical and the evangelical church did not focus on that as much in the past. I think in the past 5 years we’ve awoken to the need that our churches have to be thinking about people in Africa, about genocide, about child trafficking and all of those things that we didn’t really address. But we also have to tell them that there is an eternal component in this life. There is a heaven and a hell to prepare people for, but we should focus also on how to experience the abundant, full life of Jesus now.

I’m sort of becoming more of a provoker of “let’s not forget the eternal part of things.” In addition to everything else that’s part of a mission church, while we’re helping these people we need to be aware that some may not know Jesus. Perhaps they grew up outside of church circles and the knowledge of saving faith. That has to be part of the heartbeat of the missional church conversation.

If I walked into your church, what kinds of things would I see that would let me know how strong a value that is for you?

When we baptize people, we hear their stories. Most of them came because of the missional attitude of people in the church. They became friends with somebody in the church, and got interested in what they were a part of, and eventually came to visit. It grew from there. And it’s interesting—I thought they’d come first to our small communities or smaller gatherings, but most of them come into the larger meeting. I find that’s the pattern now. We know that 20-somethings like going into more intimate situations but even if they have friends it doesn’t seem to work that way getting into the church. I would have thought the opposite, and even tried the opposite, but we realized it wasn’t happening. As we listen to their stories it seems they all want to be part of seeing what the bigger meeting is about.

That really goes against common wisdom.

Well, I would want to ask if it’s wisdom if it’s not being seen in real life. When we started our church that’s what we were thinking. But if you’re in your early 20′s, coming to this home community isn’t the same as just hanging out. It’s this whole thing of Scriptures and praying together. So it’s really missional to go to the movies with someone. I’ve never asked anyone to our church meetings yet except the woman that cuts my hair. People invite themselves!

The entry point is the people. The attraction is not the meeting, the attraction is Jesus and the people and their lives because of Him. But eventually their friends become part of the bigger meeting.

Source: http://www.rev.org/article.asp?ID=3294

Tags: dan kimball, emergent church, evangelism, missions, the emerging church, they like jesus but not the church