“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that do not know you, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy one of Israel, for he has glorified you. Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Thus says the Lord; Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”

Although it does not really get translated in the English Standard Version of this chapter, the prophet Isaiah begins here with an exclamation to get his listeners’ attention. In Hebrew the word is “Ho.” Those of us old enough to remember the King James Version know that the KJV has “Ho” at the beginning: “Ho, everyone who thirsts.” I preached on this chapter once in our church here in Escondido, California. I read the chapter and paused. The congregation was doing what all Dutch Reformed congregations do in the first minute or two of the sermon. That is, they were busy passing mints up and down the aisle. I paused just a little longer than usual and then I said “Hey!” And the whole place jumped. And I added, “That’s how the prophet began the chapter, to get your attention.”

Well, I thought I would get your attention now, in addition to shouting at you, by saying I don’t like this conference’s title. I told the organizers I didn’t like it and I reserved the right to attack it. “Missional!” “Missional!” What kind of a word is that? I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. It said, “First used in 1907. Rare.” But you see the OED was published in 1987, and it’s really in the 1990s that “missional” became a hip word. Brian McLaren, in his book Generous Orthodoxy, talks about how “missional” became a buzz word for the emergent church movement of the 1990s. Of course, because we are a really hip seminary, it is appropriate that we might use this word. Actually, I do not like new words by and large. I think if we got along for centuries without words like “missional,” we could probably still get along. Although, I must confess, when challenged to suggest a synonym for the conference’s title, I did not come up with anything very good. But the more I thought about “missional,” the less I liked it. Just stubborn, I guess. But also the word “missional” is largely used in the context of the emergent church movement, and, therefore, is part of what we might think is a faddish tendency in American church life.

There was a recent article, written by Eddy Gibb, Senior Professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary. It is an intriguing article because, although it is not the author’s primary intention, Gibbs surveys the history of the Christian Church. This, of course, always attracts my attention. He says, “We are living in the aftermath of the failed project of Christendom.”

Now there are many ways in which we could argue that Christendom was a failed project, but it is slightly smug to dismiss fifteen hundred years of Christian church history and the millions of people who were brought into Christianity during that period, by just saying “the failed project.” Gibbs also notes that over the last forty years in America, most churches have been in decline and in stagnation. This led me to think that the modern project doesn’t seem to have succeeded marvelously. He then goes on to say that many are beginning to believe that the whole project of mega-churches and seeker-sensitive churches are not the way to go. For they represent an “attractional” form of Christianity, instead of a “sending” form of Christianity, he writes. I thought: “Weren’t most of the people, who are now in the emergent church, in favor of being seeker-sensitive a decade ago? Aren’t we now in a very faddish moment in church history?”
 
There is restlessness, an understandable restlessness about the church today. There is a sense that the church in many places is not as vital, not as growing, not as focused on Christ and His mission as she ought to be. And so we can appreciate the restlessness. Yet, I am not convinced that either the analysis or the solution suggested by Gibb is really very helpful. And so, we do indeed want to be concerned about the mission of the church. But I would suggest that the conference’s title is not only problematic in its faddishness, but also because of the dichotomy that it sets up.

“Missional and Reformed” or “Mission-Minded and Reformed.” Does it suggest (although I’m sure the organizers didn’t intend this) that mission-mindedness is something that has to be added to Reformed Christianity because Reformed Christianity is not sufficiently mission-minded in itself?

Clearly, there are Reformed Christians who aren’t sufficiently mission-minded. But I would argue that, in fact, Reformed Christianity, true Reformed Christianity, real Reformed Christianity as defined by our confessions, is inherently and necessarily mission-minded. In fact, I would defend the slightly triumphalist proposition, that to be Reformed truly is to be missional and, to be truly missional, is to be Reformed.