Ed Stetzer is worried that a lack of precision about the term ‘missional’ is going to see division among people who share fundamental truths about salvation. (Missing The Missional Mark)
The demarcation always seems to fall on whether the works that flow from salvation or the truth that brings salvation are the primary work of the kingdom.
Some worry that any emphasis on the works that flow from salvation detracts from an emphasis on the message and ultimately leads to compromising the message.
Clearly message and works are indivisible, but the priority of the message needs to be observed.
Stetzer wants to define the term in order avoid confusion and disunity.
I wish him all the best.
Me, I kind of like this: (from Against Heresies)
On June 23rd 1833 Princeton Seminary graduate James Eckard was about to set sail for Ceylon (Sri Lanka). He took with him a letter written by ten year old Archibald Alexander Hodge and his sister Mary Elizabeth. The letter was addressed to the “heathen.” It said:
Dear Heathen,
The Lord Jesus Christ has promised that the time shall come when all the ends of the earth shall be his kingdom. And God is not a man that he should lie nor the son of man that he should repent.
And if this was promised by a Being who cannot lie, why do you not help it to come sooner by reading the Bible, and attending to the words of your teachers, and loving God, and, renouncing your idols, take Christianity into your temples?
And soon there will be not a Nation, no, not a space of ground a large as a footstep, that will want a missionary. My sister and myself, by small self-denials, procured two dollars which are enclosed in this letter to buy Bibles and tracts to teach you.
Archibald Alexander Hodge and Mary Elizabeth Hodge,
Friends of the Heathen
Now, that’s missional thinking.
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