By
George Bullard

GBullard@TheColumbiaPartnership.org

The application of the missional church concepts that have been around for about a generation of time suggests a new category to go along with things like church growth, church faithfulness, church health, church success, and church transformation.

Hundreds to thousands of congregations are now seeking to become missional in nature. This is a good thing. I like it. I consider myself to be missional in nature and motivation. I want to be part of a truly missional church.

But, it can be another box, category, or destination rather an open-ended movement. It also has three somewhat competing sub-categories I call push missional, pull missional and leap missional.

Push missional churches are seeking to increase disciplemaking processes in their congregation to prepare people to go out into the mission field and express their gifts and passions. I suspect it is the approach taken by 80 percent of congregations claiming to be missional. That is just a hunch. I have no research to support it.

Pull missional churches are seeking to understand the mission field to which they perceive God has called them, and then equip disciples within their congregation with the skills needed to reach that mission field.

Leap missional churches are seeking to connect with emerging cultures that often cannot be geographically defined, and for whom there are few if any people fully prepared to reach these cutting edge target groups.

Push is primarily boxed. Pull is moving beyond the box. Leap is outside the box and has declared it irrelevant.

If your congregation is seeking to be missional, which approach are you taking?

In future posts I will define more what I mean by push, pull, and leap, and how they play out in a congregation.

Copyright 2007, Rev. George Bullard, D.Min.