On The Missional Church — Gary Nelson
Gary Nelson, in his book, Borderland Churches, speaks of the challenges of Christians engaging the secular communities as follow:
The aim of presenting the missional nature of the church using the metaphor of the church in the borderlands has been to offer another way to emphasize the radical nature of the Christian faith. In the first century, the focus was as on the creation of a new community, a new way of relating together in our humanity, which resulted in a people that “were one in heart and mind…and shared everything they had” (Acts 4:32, NIV). In no time has it been more important to take the formation of that community seriously.
He cites Rodney Clapp who calls for churches to assess their biblical identity in these words:
I am arguing that the church should be distinctive, that it should live by its own self-understanding as a community constituted and sustained by the lordship of Christ. And according to that very self-definition, the church does not exist for itself, but for its mission and witness to the world on behalf of the kingdom.1
Thus, Nelson claims that the “borderland church” must view itself as
primarily a missional community of people being trained and equipped to live among the world as missionaries. . . . The principles that missionaries applied in their pioneering efforts in previous centuries in the global South are now the principles for our world. God calls us to immerse ourselves in the culture. I love the way that Eugene Peterson captures this in his translation of John 1:14 in the Message, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” We can do no less.
In many ways the call to live as the church in the borderlands is a return to our biblical roots. This will require a radical shift in how we do church today. For most of our churches, the challenge is right here. My assumption throughout this book has been that the Christian faith and the church either lives a missionary existence or it is not the church. The missionary dimension of the church derives its energy from the nature of God, who, by nature, is a sending God.
1 Rodney Clapp. A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society (IVP, 1996).
From Gary V. Nelson, Borderland Churches: A Congregation’s Introduction to Missional Living (2008), pp 131-32.