What is the difference between a church that has missions and a missional church? This seems to be the question that everyone is asking lately, and it has been one that I’ve been developing a personal answer to for a while.

There always seems to be a new buzzword in Christian circles every few years. The words enter our vocabulary quickly and leave just as fast. People reword mission and purpose statements around them, and some even restructure their entire church around them. “Seeker-sensitive,” “purpose-driven,” “organic,” and “emerging” are just a few, but the newest to be added to the list is the word “missional.” It is the new buzzword of our day. There are missional churches, missional small groups, missional preaching, missional books, missional degrees, and even missional missiology.

But what does “missional” mean exactly? Most people use it without even stopping to determine what it means. Worst yet, some simply make it mean what they want it to mean to give themselves license to do idiotic and irrelevant acts. This is a sad thing, because the word missional has a deep and beautiful meaning for our churches today.