Missional God, Missional Church

In Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for Re-evangelizing the West (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012), Ross Hastings discusses that one of the responsibilities of the missional church is to cultivate missional community that spiritual charisms and character are joined together instead of being dichotomized. A missional church realizes that mission is carried out by missioners who are morally formed into His likeness. This junction is Christian relational wholeness through which Christian mission flows from. Any ecclesial practices should be oriented around this kind of spiritual and moral formation so that Christians are equipped to participate in the mission of God to the world (see pp. 301-304).

Ross Hastings rightly says: “The strategy of Jesus’ mission was to invest heavily in the transformation of a few. If our sentness is to reflect his, we will follow this strategy. Robert Coleman said this well when he suggested that ‘everything that is done with the few is for the salvation of the multitudes’” (p. 302). A missional church should not fall into the temptation of mass production and be succumbed to the one-size-fit-all mentality. Jesus chose a few and nurtured a few at a time. We see the fruit of Jesus’ labor in the early church as the disciples went out to carry out His mission in the presence of the Spirit.

Jesus’ strategy always puts me into perspective on how to “do” ministry. “Doing” ministry in Jesus’ way is to delay one’s gratification to be big. The Jesus’ way is like a mustard seed. It starts small and looks insignificant. It will grow tall at the appointed time. However, we don’t make it grow. “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how” (Mk. 4:27).