“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means” So says Inigo Montoya in the 1987 romantic comedy film The Princess Bride. He responds this way to the constant usage of the word ‘inconceivable’, by Vizzini.

I have to say the same to many who use the word ‘missional’.

‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.’ I found myself immersed in the ‘missional conversation’ in the early 2000’s as we began to move past questions about post-modernity and more into the phase of ‘what now?’ We had recognised the world had shifted and was actually continuing to change at bewildering speed, but as the church our approach was still largely ‘come to us’. And if a simple invitation didn’t achieve that end then we would try various means (seeker services / guest services etc) to try and entice people back in.

The ‘missional’ approach was a critique of this methodology and it’s very premise.

It said mission is not about inviting more people to come to church. It is about sending people out into the world to be the people of God. It wasn’t about church growth, bums on seats or any of the stuff that mattered so much to us.

At its core the word ‘mission’ comes from the Latin ‘missio’ which means ‘to send‘, so the idea of inviting back is completely contrary to this. (Understand it’s not wrong or bad to invite people to church. It’s just that this is not mission. It’s inviting people to an event.)

Mission = being sent. Repeat after me…

Now 20 years on from the early conversations, the prickly ‘missional’ word is firmly entrenched in the language of the almost every church. Now we are all ‘missional’, at least that is what it says in our values document. but I sense if we were to ask someone in the pews, ‘just what do you mean by that?‘ the response would not speak to the core of what being missional means. Most people just want to see people come to faith / get converted / follow Jesus – insert whatever language works for your tribe…

But mission is about the church moving out into the world as the loving, serving, blessing presence of God, aligning with his work and reflecting his kingdom in all we do. Out of this of course our hope is that people will have a genuine encounter with Jesus and the God we represent and they will choose to follow in his way.

But this may not grow our churches.

They may not get ‘converted’ in any convenient way that we can count.

They may not choose to follow Jesus in the same cultural pattern as we have.

And this may prove a challenge for us. But it seems to me that the other option is to try and convert people into the cultural pattern of the church, part of which involves learning about Jesus. Mission is far messier than this… Mission is less scripted, unpredictable and often times just looks like people living life.

So when you use the word ‘mission’ what do you mean?… Perhaps it’s ‘inconceivable’ that we could have got this wrong, but maybe we have been so mired in a particular form of evangelical faith that we have been unable to practice mission.

My great fear is that the word ‘mission’ has been lost, as it has been co opted to mean ‘whatever we do to get more people to come to church.’ When I see church’s claiming to be missional, I expect to see signs of the kingdom of God – not better marketing explaining why their church service is better than the one down the street,