What does “missional” mean? What is a “missional church”? Driscoll asserts:

Thankfully, the mission of the church is not that complicated. The mission of the church comes directly from the command of Jesus, who, following his resurrection and just prior to his ascension, said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20; see also Mark 16:15-16; Luke 24:46-49; John 20:20-31; Acts 1:5-8). Jesus speaks of going, evangelizing, making disciples, and planting churches that plant churches to continue the process. Therefore, the mission of the church is nothing less than bringing the entire world to Christian faith and maturity. A missional church must strategize how to carry out the mission to today’s increasingly non-Christian culture

Driscoll’s first move (and, perhaps, first mistake) is to assume that the words “missional” and “mission” are synonyms. Conversations over the years with Alan Roxburgh, one of the authors of the pioneering book Missional Church (which popularized the term “missional”), have given me the impression that one of the reasons the word “missional” was chosen was to convey something related to but not synonymous with mission. The importance (1) of approaching one’s local context as a missionary and (2) of doing local theology has also been impressed upon me. Increasingly, I find myself thinking that “missional” means being a missionary in one’s local context (missionary + local = missional).

If something like this understanding is accepted, then the notion that being missional is “not that complicated” becomes laughable. Translating the gospel for a particular context—contextualization—is complex and difficult work that requires time spent in that context. There will be no “one size fits all” strategies that can be copied out of a book, whether written by Driscoll or someone else. The exegetical insight (posted above) that the “always” of the Great Commission can also be translated “every day” is interesting. At the very least, this move makes the words of Jesus more concrete—more about the past and present than about some endless or timeless future. They become earthier.

Also interesting is the fact that the Greek term translated “Go” is not an imperative (as might be assumed), but a participle. It can also be translated, “As you are going”—as in “as you are going on your way” or “as you are going about your every day business.” Given their historical context, we know that the first hearers of this instruction went away on foot; this simple observation localizes their ministry, as it would have started locally out of necessity. Jesus is calling them to be and to make disciples as they walk around from location to location. Today’s world of nations, accessible by plane, is not in view. Rather, Jesus wants them to disciple the people they come across in their walking, regardless of their ethnicity (the word translated “nations” is ethne, from which the English words “ethnic” and “ethnicity” are derived).

Driscoll’s interpretation of this important passage shows little awareness of these things. His interpretation is not distinctively missional; it is a garden-variety evangelical reading, with a typically Reformed emphasis on power: “Jesus speaks of going, evangelizing, making disciples, and planting churches that plant churches to continue the process. Therefore, the mission of the church is nothing less than bringing the entire world to Christian faith and maturity.” An identical reading could have been offered at the peak of Christendom—decades before the start of the missional conversation.

By emphasizing “going” alongside “evangelizing” and “making disciples,” and by using the phrase “bringing the entire world to Christian faith,” Driscoll reinforces (perhaps unintentionally) the Christendom understanding of mission as something that is done in far-away, non-Western places. Yet one of the primary emphases of the missional conversation has been that as we Westerners are going about our everyday lives, we are in a mission field with opportunities to partner with God and with others in God’s mission. The phrase “bringing the entire world to Christian faith” also has a whiff of triumphalism—not surprising given Driscoll’s Reformed theology. As someone who is also part of this tradition, I have come to recognize its attitude toward power as one of its weaknesses; Calvin, Kuyper, and others would have done well to take more seriously the more critical Anabaptist attitude toward power. The Great Commission is not a call to take over “the entire world” for Christ; it’s a call to make members of all people-groups followers of Jesus. And even if a biblical case could be made for imposing the Christian faith on the whole world, with the collapse of Christendom this goal is no longer missiologically feasible. Driscoll may not recognize the extent to which the power of Western Christians has declined due to his own position as the famed head pastor of a megachurch in the United States of America.

Part of the beauty of the missional conversation is that it frees us to focus on following Jesus faithfully as we are going about our everyday lives in whatever contexts God has placed us.