Frank Turk, contributing writer to the ‘world-famous’ Pyromaniacs blog and “blogger of ill repute” – but not really – agreed to take the time to discuss with me the topic of missiology, address a few of my concerns and give some of his own. Overall, I think it was helpful and if nothing else, has encouraged me to reevaluate some of the possible preconceptions I may have had on current ‘missiological’ thinking. I’m still not convinced all is right in the world of “being missional”. However, this discussion has been beneficial for me, and I hope it will be to you as well. – Joel

Joel: Frank, first let me say I’ve been looking forward to this, and I appreciate you taking your valuable time to give your input on the topic of so-called modern day ‘missiology’. It’s a loaded term and I’m aware that depending on who you are speaking to at any given moment, it’s one that can take on various nuances in meaning. By the way, I put the term in finger quotes because I despise it, not that I’m opinionated or anything.

Having said that, and before I start probing your brain to see what insight God has given you on the matter, let’s narrow down the definition of the term, if for no other reason, to give you a jumping off point.

LifeWay. Ed Stetzer. Missiology. The Great Commission. This is the nuance of the term I want you to smell. I don’t necessarily expect you to reinvent the term to assuage anyone, in fact, I prefer you don’t, not that you would, of course.

As you know, Stetzer has begun a series of articles on Missiology and developing churches to be ‘missional’.  So I guess my first question is simply this: Given the simplicity of the Great Commission given by Christ at His ascension, which is, quite literally, Having gone or As you are going…make disciples, do we really need to complicate things by going beyond merely sharing the Gospel as we move about our daily lives, to a place where we invent terms that induce unnecessary strategic planning beyond merely speaking the Gospel to others? Or am I assuming too much?

Frank: First, let’s say this: so much circus comes in under the cover of the tent of “missional” that I think someone using that term better define it clearly.  I think Ed (since you bring him up) tries to do that, and therefore if you read him through you can “get” what he’s driving at – but so many other people use the virtue of being “missional” to trump actual Biblical virtues (for example: the death of Christ; the reality of sin; the penalty for sinners; the boundaries of the church, etc.) that I can see why you find the term creepy.  I admit that most days I find the term creepy.

In Ed’s case, I think he rolls up a lot of systematic theology under the umbrella of “missional” so he can avoid using the word “ecclesiology”.  You know, ecclesiology is the theology of the church – who, what, why, where, when and how.  When Ed says missional, he wants to exhort people to a today-implementation of the Biblical 5W’s and H.  I think he gets misunderstood because he hasn’t (and I think, shouldn’t) written a book of systematic theology on ecclesiology.  I think he also gets a bad rap because most theology people think “ecclesiology” is strictly about how many pastors you have, and whether or not they report to a central office.  But if you read the book of Titus, for example, the purpose of Elders is to set things straight — and they aren’t just setting straight the question of how you answer Q34 of the Westminster Larger Catechism, including Greek & Hebrew scripture proofs.  They are setting straight the whole life of the church through teaching, discipleship, example, and practice.  Personally, I think that’s Ed’s vision of “missiology” is: not just crusading to get someone to pray a prayer, but having something to bring people into which actually causes people to be brought in.

Do I buy everything Ed advocates? No, not hardly.  I think you’re somewhat right to say he’s read one too many John Maxwell books on his eternal trips through the airport, and he’s got too  much tied up in MBA best practice for large organizations, but we can forgive him that because what he means by it is this: the aim of our charge is Love – that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

That’s not true of everyone who is under the cover of “missional”, but in Ed’s case I think we have to read him a little more generously because of the way he has spent his life.

Joel: Well, we agree it’s a creepy and umbrella term, as you put it, and certainly needs to be defined for discussion. I mentioned Stetzer only because when the term ‘missiology comes up, Ed is the face of it for so many. I appreciate Ed as well, but, like you, do not buy into all that he advocates. Then again, that can probably be said of us as well. That being said, do you see a need for a “today implementation” of ecclesiology? I mean, man is not modern, he hasn’t changed, the needs are the same, and the commission of Matthew 28 hasn’t developed any new goals. In other words, isn’t using an umbrella term like ‘missiology’ redundant in a sense? The true Church is already missional, so it seems to me any attempt to make a local church missional is an attempt to get goats to eat sheep food, so to speak.

Frank: I think we have to make sure we are saying what we mean to say in this case.  For example, it’s a fine place to start the discussion of “missiology”with Matthew 28, right? Jesus says, “I have all authority, I send you, go make disciples and teach them.”  That’s the short-form version of what the church needs to do, right?  But where’s the church actually mentioned here?

“Well, well, well, …” we start to say and we can find it between a lot of lines in Matthew 28 – but it’s not in Matthew 28.  It’s implied or assumed.  So we have to do one of two things (maybe there’s a third option not evident to me): either we don’t need the church to do the Great Commission, or else we have to be more careful with our definition so that we don’t exclude things which ought not to be excluded.  I mean: where is the Lord’s Supper in Matthew 28?  If it’s not there explicitly, does that mean it’s optional from a missiological standpoint, or do we go back to “all that he has taught us” which we are to therefore teach and see it there and do it because it’s there?

See, I agree that “the true church” is already missional, but this comes back to what makes a “true” church.  I know I have a rep for saying this, but the White Horse Inn tells people every week that if the pastor properly frames the Gospel through teaching, preaching, and he administers the sacraments, and from time to time there is church discipline, then you have a true church and you’re all set.

But look at that. It completely lacks the Great Commission, doesn’t it?  The WHI guys would say no, because the sacraments are evangelical, but you and I both know that’s systematically-hokey at best.  The “Missional” church is the church in Acts 2, or as required by Paul to Titus in the letter the former wrote to the latter.  That is: it is the people who are called together by God’s name, living as if what God says is true, being changed by God’s work in a progressive way, hearing & doing the apostles’ teaching, praying, doing sacraments, bearing burdens, and bringing new people into the flock daily as God ordains.

Now, as I read your question, there are no innovations on that in your view. But look: deacons are an innovation upon Acts 2.  In one sense, we take them to be part of the plan, part of the Biblical requirements of the church, but there were no deacons in Acts 2.  It’s an institutional necessity to have deacons, and the Apostles said, “that’s a good idea,” and they kept it in.  The reason, of course, was so that the church could do what it ought to do to.  God didn’t demand that there be deacons by decree: he did it through the apostles based on their perception of need and a church-centric approach to solving it.

And this, frankly, is a good idea – because the apostles didn’t have microphones in 40 AD.  They didn’t have grocery stores or WAL*MART. They didn’t have cars.  They didn’t have a ton of free time because they didn’t live in a society where you could earn a living in 50 hours a week and you could take the whole weekend off without starving to death.  So somehow, there are things evident today which were not evident then, and the Gospel has to be brought to them and applied – and the church has to live with them.

You know, the church has to live with the fact that you and I can have a conversation in a digital stream and never see each other face to face.  It has to have a reaction to that – which suits the Biblical form of the Gospel. It can’t just uncritically say, “Hey, because we can have internet church, we must have internet church.”

So missiology is that: it’s finding faithful and biblical ways to bring the Gospel, through the only people who have the Gospel (the Church) to the fallen world.

Joel: Actually, I think the business of being missional is simply redundant on the surface, because I don’t see the Great Commission as separate from being ‘missional’. One is the outflow of obedience to the other. The emphasis I see being placed on missiology is more on being cross-culture than daily obedience to our task of sharing the Gospel where we are. It’s almost like missiology is being driven more by National Geographic than it is the New Testament.

As for new innovations, I’m only against them when the Church seeks them out because it (and the leaders of it) are being driven by culture and not by obedience to the Word of God. That of course, seems to open the door to some unbiblical and non-God-ordained activity.

But it sounds like you’re saying the Church has that option of coming up with new, innovative ways to proclaim the Gospel and be missional in ways driven by culture and modern needs. That certainly lines up with Ed’s comment in part 1 of his series:

As culture changes, we are often faced with the need to change our own vernacular and conversations. New words–like missional–create new questions and deeper dialogue…We need a shift in the conversation.

That sounds eerily emergent to me.  You agree with that? Do we really need new questions, conversations, or do we just need to be obedient to what we’ve already been commanded?

Frank: Before I answer, let me relay an anecdote.  Back when I was a channel rat at #proapologian, (the chat channel for aomin.org) I was having some conflicted feelings about some of the apologetics I thought I was going to have to get involved in because some of the things I was going to have to say sounded Roman Catholic — and I wanted to avoid that at all cost.

I brought it up in channel, and James White told me, in words to this effect, that just because something sounds like a Catholic would say it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily false.  You know: sometimes we react against the way something sounds, or the people we associate with it, because we think somehow we’re biting their whole bitter pill when instead they are actually right once or twice a day like any broken clock.

Just because something “sounds like emergence” doesn’t mean it’s trash.  But think on it: the world and our culture has changed and is changing.  It was unconscionable even 10 years ago that “gay marriage” would be seriously considered by anyone — and today 1 in 9 Americans live in states where it’s not just considered but permitted by an act of law.  In a world where millennia-old moral standards are eroding, the call to declare the Gospel has to somehow encounter that.  In a world where the church has allowed divorce to become a viable option for dealing with relational hardship, the Gospel has to somehow encounter that.  In a world where there are people who are illegal immigrants looking for economic freedom by violating the essential assumptions of economic freedom (the rule of law), the Gospel has to deal with that.

These are different social contexts than Paul had.  He didn’t cover every permutation of human depravity and social decline.  And the Church has to somehow bring the Gospel to these people.

That’s the rightside-up version of missiology.  There is an upside-down version of missiology, but we have to define the rightside-up version before we start naming names regarding who is falling out of the bed of orthodoxy.  With respect, I think your circling back to the downside keeps missing that there is a rightside-up missiology that we should all at least consider before we start to reconsider it.

Joel: Ok, so we’ve defined ‘rightside up missiology’, and I’ll use your words from earlier, as:

finding faithful and biblical ways to bring the Gospel, through the only people who have the Gospel (the church) to the fallen world.

So again, I have to ask, do we need to be finding faithful ways? Do we need professional ‘missiologists’? Bear with me Frank because here’s my point, and I consider this contributing to the ‘rightside up’ definition.

The methodology of missions has already been given by Christ at the ascension to the disciples (and to us), and this seems to be something many, for some reason, overlook or have a difficult time grasping, because just like with pastor-teachers, we’ve turned missionary work into a professional career. Follow me here for a moment.

In Matthew 28:19,20, when Jesus commanded ‘make disciples’, He was not speaking to specialists. He was and is speaking to every true disciple of His. Biblical theology is missionary theology. ‘Go’, ‘baptize’ and ‘teach’ are participles modifying the imperative verb ‘make disciples’… make disciples being the only explicit command in the Great Commission. Ok, that takes care of the command.

How is it to be carried out according to Christ? By adapting to, or worse, being driven by culture and finding new ways to communicate the Gospel to a fallen world? That seems to be the idea even under the ‘rightside up’ definition of missiology.

I don’t think so, because when Jesus said “Go”, and in the Greek (yes, it’s important), it’s better translated ‘Having gone’ or ‘As you are going’. In other words, the Go part is assumed. He assumes His disciples –us – are going to be about our daily business, lives, and the world of influence where we meet people on a daily basis.

That seems to me to bring into focus the definition of rightside up missiology and the the only sanctioned methodology for biblical missions. So why should we be looking for new ways? Why turn missiology into a hunt for better methodology?

I agree when you say the Gospel encounters a changing culture, divorce, every aspect of society. But the way the Church is to bring the Gospel to these people is to bring it the way Christ intended when He commanded us to make disciples…As we are going.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Frank: Well, how far do we take this sort of reasoning?  I mean: if we follow the reasoning of resistance against so-called “professionals” even to consistent application, we will probably develop a pretty serious skepticism about the value of seminary in making men ready for pastoral service. Seriously, there are no seminaries in the NT.  Yet anyone who would start blogging that we need a new reformation in which the seminaries are all right out wouldn’t even get the first hearing.

Now, that said, I have a small bit of sympathy for what you’re expressing here, which is, that what Christ calls us to is not something professional but in fact something more substantial than that.  This isn’t an art or a craft.  It’s something deeper still – something where we don’t earn anything for it, and probably lose much instead.

But here’s what I hear you saying: we don’t want to block this thing out into systematic categories because that’s either too artificial (as opposed organic or natural) or too worldly (as opposed to spiritual or holy).  And when we say it that way, suddenly again we have to ask ourselves about consistency: if a systematic approach to missiology is wrong, why is a systematic approach to theology not wrong?

See, I think getting the systematic stuff right helps us understand when the word “missiology” is getting abused.  That’s how we use systematic theology in general, and that’s how we should use this subset of it to work out our issues.  And to that end, when you say things like, “So why should we be looking for new ways? Why turn missiology into a hunt for better methodology?” you miss the point that “better” doesn’t have to mean “superior to the Apostles,” but can instead mean “demonstrating the same good judgment that Paul used in that Titus was never circumcised but Timothy was.”

And you yourself are slicing the apple with regard to what is “better” – you just think that traveling with one change of clothes and a staff is probably the best way to spread the Gospel today (if you’re serious about the adoption of methods from the Bible, anyway).  You think “better” is “identical” (at least, insofar as you are willing to be identical), and I would say (and I think Ed would say) that “better” means “works like the pragmatic methods we find in the NT, but in this new cultural context.”

So for example: should the pastor use a microphone?  Should the church own a building? Should there be a dress code for worship? How intentional should thinks like fellowship and bearing burdens be?

What constitutes a “burden”?

These are -missiological- questions.  They are not directly addressed by the NT – but I think what the NT does tell us about what the church is and how it should engage the world “is sufficient” for us to make morally and spiritual sound decisions about them.

So to your direct question, I would have to say, “No, I don’t agree – but only because I think you are oversimplifying the problem to ask your question.”  Is the Bible enough – is it sufficient – to guide us to the right answers?  Yes.  Does it tell us how to use the particulars of the age and culture we find ourselves in?  No, but that doesn’t mean we are either helpless or somehow stained for being in the world.  We must be in and not of the world – and knowing clearly what the framework of biblical church is (which, as I said, is not just ecclesiology but missiology) is how we walk the narrow path.

Joel: I ask why should we be looking for new ways because, well, take Romans 10:14. Preaching worked in the cultural context of the Apostles for taking the gospel to a fallen world, and the Church has used it in obedience ever since. God has used preaching and proclamation of the Gospel as the means from the first century to our day. When I read articles on missiology, I see tons of pragmatism, and less of the Gospel and it’s proclamation as the driving force behind it.

As a pastor-teacher, that concerns me. Preaching itself seems to be relegated, in some cases, to a supporting role.  In other words, missiological pragmatism often appears to override Scriptures.

Do you see problematic pragmatism in the way missiology is being executed? Is it a valid concern?

Frank: Aha!  -Now- we’re talking about something I can agree with you about, I think. If the problem is that some people take a right-minded view of doing the right work as described and prescribed by Scripture and take is too far by trying to determine “what works,” then we have a problem. “What works” is the Gospel — and it works in two ways: it is the stench of death to those who are perishing, and it is the fragrance of new life to those who are or ought to be believers.  This is a critical issue in about a dozen ways, but let me line up a couple for you.

First, consider: It is utterly true that the Gospel is a kind of offense for those who cannot, will not believe.  Period.  But that doesn’t mean we have to make sure the Gospel is offensive.

You know, in some sense, God hates fags – that is, the sinner who doesn’t repent of his sin will be subject to God’s anger and wrath.  God also hates divorce.  But what this doesn’t mean is that those who are divorcing or are homosexuals, or are serial hetero sinners, are all unwelcome and unable to hear the call, “Repent!  For the Kingdom of God is at hand!”  So to say that “God hates fags” and mean “so don’t bother repenting,” is not the offense of the Gospel.  This is the offense of stupidity and a kind of pride which needs to be dumped off the nearest bridge.

But think on this as well: One of the current principles of organizational management today is that you need all the right players on the bus.  That’s raw pragmatism, and it works.  But is this the Biblical model for building community and leadership?  In some sense, maybe.  But the degree to which you have to work out the nuance there to make those two things align, frankly, doesn’t do a lot of good service to either.  “What works” does not always yield Gospel-aligned culture and values.

I agree with you that “what works” has its own niche in the  English-speaking church.  LeadershipNetwork and Catalyst are where these sorts of people congregate, and they have decided to brand their approach “missional” because “it works” to bring people in.  What they are being brought into is sort of assumed to be the church or the Gospel or something, but I think it’s hard to frame it up that way for real.

The place where I think we can see the big sloppy difference is something that happened at James MacDonald’s “Elephant Room” when Matt Chandler sat down across from Steven Furtick and they sort of faced off about depth vs. evangelism.  I’m biased as a fan-boy of Chandler, but Furtick didn’t look great in spite of MacDonald propping him up – he didn’t hardly defend himself in a compelling way against the charges Chandler drew out.  But somehow he sees himself  as “on mission”, running a “missional” church.  Chandler’s church is 10x more missional than Furtick’s in cities very similar — and in a quick canvass of either church, I think you’d see the difference quickly.

One is really doing the great commission, and the other is sort of enjoying the threshold of the mission and never really getting into the hard work.  At least from my perspective.  That would be a great way to size up rightside-up missional and wrongside-down missional.

Joel: What role, if any, are eschatological views driving missiology? In other words, do you suspect there’s a ‘do whatever it takes before the rapture’ type mentality out there?

Frank: I think the way you asked the question assumes that the “missiologists” are pre-mil dispensationalists. Personally, I think if you surveyed these guys, you’d be surprised at how many would disavow any kind of millennialism as a driver for their “missiological” views. They are probably non-millennial on purpose as a reaction against a certain kind of either fundamentalism or conservative social gospel. That lack of a right-sized view of eschatology is probably a problem also.

I think eschatology does drive missiology. I think the -lack- of an eschatology will also drive missiology, and not in a good way. Losing sight of the fact – the historical, prophetic, inevitable fact – of Christ’s return will cause people to do all manner of things which forgets that our hope lies in that fact, and not in what we accomplish here today.

Joel: Well, Frank, I think we’ve got a pretty good idea of your view of missiology in general. I could probably come up with more questions, and I’m sure I will at some point, but you’ve given much to digest here. I appreciate your time and your input. For myself, I ‘ll probably rethink a few things, and may come to different conclusions. Perhaps I’ve been too harsh in some areas, maybe not. In any case, God bless, and thanks again.