If you are a Christian you may of heard something about being “missional” or on “mission”, these are basically the concept or methodology of the Emerging Church Movement. There are those who will argue that is not so, but I have done enough research over the past year to know that it is in fact the Emerging Church. However, for the sake of those who may choose to argue, I am going to leave it this way, the theology of being “missional” is heavily tethered to the EMC. Everyone who teaches, trains or writes about being “missional” are EMC leaders and influencers. That in of itself is a problem.

First, what does it mean to be “Missional”? It comes from the idea of missio Dei God’s mission to the world, working to restore and heal creation. (this should already be raising a red flag). The furthered idea that the Church is on “Mission” for this purpose. This idea that God’s mission was/is to restore all of creation is not a Biblical concept, it is Kingdom Now theology and Replacement theology. God does not need our help to solve the issues of societies all across the globe before He will come and receive His Kingdom from us, fallen, wretched, humans and the promises of God to Israel, are for Israel not the Bride of Christ…the Church. God did not send Jesus to restore creation; God sent Jesus to save humanity, sinners, people!!! The way the EMC/Missional church takes the focus off the redemption purpose of God sending His only Son and making it about Jesus being “sent” totally removes the cross and its purpose for humanity from the Church…nothing matters but WHY Jesus was sent! Why do they do this? The reason was very well articulated by Dr. A. Taylor back 1960 (yes, this is not a new thing, just a more visible one) in The Presbyterian Journal where he wrote, “Missions’ in the traditional concept, suggests outreach. One goes out to another who is outside until he is brought in. ‘Mission’ on the other hand suggests in-reach. One reaches across to a neighbor who is already a brother within, but not yet ‘identified’ or ‘committed’.” What?!!!! Yet, that is exactly what is being taught today. People like Caesar Kalinowski and others, who teach that we should love everyone as family, everyone is a brother or sister…well, not according to the Bible. Yes, every human is created in the image of God, but the Bible is very clear when it comes to speaking about who is or is not a child of God. In fact, the Bible tells us that those who do not put their faith in Jesus Christ are children of the world, they are enemies of God. The basic idea in the “missional” movement is that the traditional way of going out and sharing the gospel as commanded in the Great Commission is no longer its purpose. The church’s purpose is to include everyone, which is extremely ecumenical and even universalistic. The unity of the NT Church is based on the gospel not anyone or any organization that labels itself “Christian” – there is an obligation to sound Biblical doctrine when we unite with others who call themselves Christians and when that is not there, we should not be uniting.

The other big common thing you hear from the EMC/Missional Church is being “incarnational”, “transformational”, “living sacrificially” all to transform the world. There is a shift from Holy Spirit led proclamation of the gospel to a man centered inspired gospel. These people use all the Biblical terminology but the substance is very different. Lesslie Newbigin, who is very influential in the EMC/Missional movement saw the church as God’s embassy in a specific place; “It will be a community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in the concerns of its neighborhood. It will be the church for the specific place where it lives, not the church for those who wish to be members of it.” Here is the thing, the Church was not called to change the culture of local communities, it was not called to change culture in a larger global scale. The Church was given one purpose, preach the gospel and make disciples. Basically, when you live on mission and incarnationally, you are living a relationships based (hyper friendship evangelism), conversational, good works (this includes social justice) false Christianity. If you do good works and don’t share the gospel, all you have done is humanitarian work, you are not even being a witness for Jesus Christ. Why would God need our good works to transform the world? The Bible tells us that our (humanity) goods works are as filthy rags (I will let you look deeper into that and understand exactly what is meant) our good works don’t even do anything for us.

There is so much I can write about this, but I am just hoping to provide a snap shot so that if you find yourself connected to a church or a ministry that is pushing the “missional” stuff… you need to realize that it is moving away from Biblical Christianity and you need to reject it. The Bible tells us that in the last days the world is going to wax worse and worse, violence will increase, suffering will increase, disasters, disorder, death it is all going to increase and get worse and part of the reason for that is God’s judgement on a rebellious world, the world is not going to get better, it is going to get worse! Have you looked at what is happening all over these days…we need to wake up! We need to stand for a Biblical gospel that is true to the purpose of why God sent Jesus to earth otherwise we are going to find ourselves in a totally different end than we had anticipated.

Quick thoughts as to why you should say no thanks to the Missional, incarnational concept of Christianity:

1. Based on Kingdom Now/Dominionist theology.
2. Man Centered works focused/social justice gospel
3. Does not follow Biblical end time eschatology
4. Replacement theology (Church replaces Israel)
5. Doesn’t follow Biblical concept of community.
6. It is ecumenicalism and universalism.
7. Incarnational spirituality is no different than New Age incarnational spirituality.

It just isn’t Biblical. Just say NO. That’s it. StraightUp!