Missional Church and Global Missions

The comments on Stetzer’s article were interesting and I would just like to make a few comments of my own. Several of you who commented noted the problems of imbalance in seeing missions as either global or local, and I would completely agree with those comments. Stetzer’s critique of emergent and missional movements is a concern that I share and a concern that we must address. As a Wesleyan, there are some nuances of Stetzer’s proposal, however, that I would not share.
In an earlier post, I wrote about the church as missionary or a missional ecclesiology. If we understand the church as those who are a sent community to be the people of the triune God who are primarily identified by mission, our very nature reflects the missio Dei (God’s mission). With this understanding, the missio Dei is not geographically limited. Throughout scripture, God is a missionary God who is concerned for “the nations” or “ethne”. He is constantly moving to restore the broken relationships in humanity as well as creation. If we are those “who reflect God’s glory”, then we too must share God’s desire for transformation, justice and restoration (wherever that may be). My understanding of a missional ecclesiology is that the entire church body is sent. As a body we all have different gifts and callings within that “sentness”, but we all are sent. Some are sent to be a Christian witness to cultures which require language learning and lifelong study of culture, others are sent to be a Christian witness and learn cultures of post modern friends and neighbors. I believe that God gives the church people who have gifts in each of these areas. The fallacy is when we assume that some are sent and others send. We all are sent and we all are involved in sending. Within the body of Christ, there has never been a category for spectators. We are mission or we are not the Church.
As Wesleyans, we find ourselves in the “via media”. We cannot say that we are primarily concerned about evangelism or only that which leads to evangelism. We can say that our Christian vocation is to be a holy people who reflect God’s holiness and God’s nature of mission. We are called to BE a Christian witness.
I know that this is thinking completely outside of some of our normal boxes of understanding, and is radical if correctly understood. I hear many people say that the U.S. should start receiving missionaries from other places, and to a degree that is already happening. If, however, the church in the U.S. grasped hold of the idea that we are the missionary, and if the members of congregations began to function as missionaries who are the church in our communities instead of waiting for communities to come into the church building, we would see a movement of God which is not measured by church growth statistics, but rather by relationship in the life of the Triune God.