Breaking the Missional Code

Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community

Ed Stetzer, David Putman

Across North America, many pastors are excited to see churches growing as they achieve their mission to connect the message of the gospel with the community at large. Still others are equally frustrated, following the exact same model for outreach but with lesser results. Indeed, just because a "missional breakthrough" occurs in one place doesn’t mean it will happen the same way elsewhere.

One size does not fit all, but there are cultural codes that must be broken for all churches to grow and remain effective in their specific mission context. Breaking the Missional Code provides expert insight on church culture and church vision casting, plus case studies of successful missional churches impacting their communities.

"We have to recognize there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the gospel," the authors write. "Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers without removing the spiritual and theological ones."

Chapter 1

The Emerging Glocal Context

“I remember being broken by the fact that there weren’t too many churches reaching the next generation who were both post-modern and multi-ethnic in flavor. As a kid, my best friends were African-American or Caucasian. I had wondered why churches were so segregated. Furthermore, I saw how most of the churches I knew weren’t connecting with my friends. Church seemed so irrelevant and boring to them.”

David Gibbons, Newsong Church

BREAKING THE CODE REQUIRES A belief that there is a code to be broken. Breaking the code means that we have to recognize that there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the gospel. Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers while addressing the spiritual and theological ones as well.

That is what missionaries have always done. Today is no different. North America is a missions context, not because people are less Christian than they once were (although that is true), but because God “sent” us to North America. It is a mission field because God sent us here as missionaries.

However, we are missing a clear reality if we do not recognize that this is a harder mission field than it once was. Historically, the Christian church was the first choice of spiritually minded North Americans—today, it often does not make the top ten list. Years ago, when people looked for spiritual answers, they looked to the church. Now, many look to anybody and anything but us.

Breaking the code is the recognition that there are visible and invisible characteristics within a community that will make its people resistant to or responsive to the church and its gospel message. Discerning Christians discover those relevant issues and break through the resistance—so that the name and reality of Jesus Christ can be more widely known.

One of the biggest cultural barriers we face is the emerging “glocal” context. We use this term to refer to the convergence of the global reality with our local reality. North America has become a “glocal community” requiring new strategies for effective ministry.

When the church was the first choice of spiritual seekers, we just needed to be there. They knew we were here. Most people had friends who attended. All they needed to do was come . . . and they did.

Now, we need more proactive strategies. We need to go to the people. Maybe we have lost ground because we have been thinking that they should just come to us. Now, we need methods and models that address the changing glocal context that is North America. People no longer think just locally; they think glocally.

First, it is important to understand the situation in which we find ourselves. A church that is a good example of living among cultural change is in Miami near Calle Ocho (Eighth Street), the center of what is now the Latino community. Calle Ocho was not always the center of Little Havana. At one time, it was part of the culture that existed in Miami before the Cuban influx.

Then, Batista fell and Castro came to power. One million Cubans moved into the neighborhood and, suddenly, that little church was no longer part of its community; it was a colony in the midst of another culture. It had to decide to change and reach its new neighbors or die. Like most churches, it chose to keep its culture and lose its community.

Today, the church in North America is in a similar situation. The culture has shifted. While this cultural shift has been more subtle and gradual than the one that took place in Miami, the cultural landscape has definitely changed. Lots of people throw terms around to describe the shift. The term that receives the most attention is “postmodernism.” However, since postmodernism is an art form, a literary category, an academic discipline, and even a cultural force, even that fails to describe the situation. But, for the purpose of writing this book, we will use the term postmodernism to refer to the cultural shift that has taken place in our society. Many are now running from the term postmodernism. Since some have expressed concern about the influence of postmodernism in the emerging church, all books and topics that reference the word have to be hidden away! Yet until a new term arrives, we simply recognize that the world has changed and that we live in a world that has transitioned from the modern era to one that is “post.”

Basically, postmodernity is the rejection of the modern view of life and the embracing of something new. It is not about GenXers (only pastors and marketers use that word now). For that matter, it is not really about postmodernism because while much of the culture has changed, it has not changed everywhere. This chart from Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age will help illustrate the change in the broader culture from modernism to postmodernism and how it relates to the church.

The issue is that you have to decide where you are living. Are you in a community firmly entrenched in the worldview of modernity? If you seek to lead your church to reach postmoderns, you will first need to convert people to postmodernism and then to Christ. Is that really our mission?

Maybe you are in an area of the continent that is more comfortable with traditional approaches and churches. Great! Become missional in that context, not a trendy community somewhere far away. For too many, they love their preferences and their strategies more than they love the people whom God has called them to reach.

We are sent as God’s missionary.¹ The only question is where. “Just as God is a missionary God, so the church is to be a missionary church.”² Jesus taught that “as the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). Our purpose, therefore, is to go to this new expression of life, culture, and values and to “face a fundamental challenge. That challenge is to learn to think about [our] culture in missional terms.”³

Evangelicals have struggled with responding to these new realities, finding reasons not to respond. It is important to note that the shift to postmodernism has not happened everywhere—it has not yet impacted many in the church culture because the church culture acts as a protective shield, unmolested by a secular culture’s music, literature, and values.

In large pockets of North America people still live each day in much the same manner as their parents before them. These people have more toys, but they still go to church (or at least feel guilty if they do not go), still have relatively stable family lives, and still espouse the “old values” of America. Most evangelicals live in these modern “pockets” of culture and have been somewhat insulated from the societal changes. Still, even though the societal shift has not yet made its fullest and deepest impact, many people can see the meteorite of cultural change moving their way. They can see the changes taking place in their children’s lives—how they think and reason, how they view life, and how they act differently.

Evangelical churches, firmly rooted in modernity, sit in a culture that has moved beyond modern ideas. Language has changed, music has changed, and worldview has changed. Our churches need to decide whether they will be outposts of modernity in a new age or embrace the challenge of breaking a new cultural code.

Unchurched

Is there evidence that the culture has changed? Some churches are exploding, but most are not. For example, the percentage of Christians in the U.S. population dropped 9 percent from 1990 to 2001. The American Religious Identification Survey 2001, released by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) showed that the percentage proportion of Christians in the U.S. has declined—from 86 percent in 1990 to 77 percent in 2001.⁴ Now, this refers to those people who claim to be Christians, from Howard Dean to George Bush. While it is fair to say that many who claim to be Christians do not know what it means to be one, still fewer people overall identify themselves as Christians.

George Barna tends to have a charitable definition for the unchurched. They are adults who have “not attended a Christian church service within the past six months, not including a holiday service (such as Easter or Christmas) or a special event at a church (such as a wedding or funeral).” Of course, a high percentage of people tend to indicate that they do attend church at least occasionally.

Even with Barna’s charitable numbers, the number of unchurched has almost doubled from 1991 to 2004. A Barna Group study explained, “Since 1991, the adult population in the United States has grown by 15%. During that same period, the number of adults who do not attend church has nearly doubled, rising from 39 million to 75 million—a 92% increase!”⁵

Moreover, the number of “churched” people is much different from looking specifically at the number of evangelicals. In addition, evangelicals have obtained political power but exercise little moral influence. For many, evangelicals have become a voting block rather than a spiritual force.

Among evangelicals, true spiritual commitment seems to be lagging. For example, born-again church members divorce at a higher rate than the unchurched.⁶ This lack of commitment may also be reflected in the fact that many so-called evangelicals decide to remain unchurched. According to Christianity Today, “The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10 million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter.”⁷

Although some churches have broken the code, in general, the church’s influence is declining both in the culture and among its own people. Instead of biblical Christianity, spirituality appears to be the preferred “religion” of North America.

Gallup provides further insight in a January 2002 poll—50 percent of Americans described themselves as “religious,” while another 33 percent said that they are “spiritual but not religious” (11 percent said neither and 4 percent said both).⁸ A recent book, Spiritual but Not Religious, chronicles this growing trend.⁹ Both the media and academia have firmly embraced and clearly promote the idea that spirituality is good and religion is bad.

This trend may explain why more students identify themselves as “no religion” rather than “Protestant” on college campuses.

Results from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA show that an equal number of incoming freshman in the fall of 2004 checked “None” as claimed “Protestant” on the question of religious identity. In total 28% identify themselves as Catholic, 17% say Protestant, 17% say “none,” 11% say “other Christian,” 4% Mormon, 4% Seventh Day Adventist, 4% Unitarian, 3% Church of Christ, 3% “other religions,” 2% Jewish, 1% each for Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and Eastern Orthodox. (Spirituality Report, as reported in e-update #76)¹⁰

Ethnic Diversity

The growing number of unchurched people is just part of the story. The rest of the story is the growing diversity of North America. There was a day when a viable church in a community could be considered a major part of the solution. This is no longer true. Our growing cultural diversity requires a church within the reach of every people group, population segment, and cultural environment if we are to be faithful to the Great Commission. Dave Gibbons of Newsong Church understood this when he said:

This idea of a new song started to align with a passage I had read earlier that year about new wineskins. I remember being broken by the fact that there weren’t too many churches reaching the next generation who were both post-modern and multi-ethnic in flavor. As a kid, my best friends were African-American or Caucasian. I had wondered why churches were so segregated. Further...

Table of contents

• 1. The Emerging Glocal Context
• 2. Breaking the Missional Code
• 3. Responding to the Commissions of Jesus
• 4. The Missional Church Shift
• 5. Transitions to Missional Ministry
• 6. Values of Leaders and Churches that Break the Code
• 7. Contextualization: Making the Code Part of Your Strategy
• 8. Emerging Strategies
• 9. Spiritual Formation and Churches that Break the Code
• 10. Revitalization to Missional Ministry
• 11. Planting Missional Ministries
• 12. Emerging Networks: New Paradigms of Partnership
• 13. Breaking the Code without Compromising the Faith
• 14. Best Practices of Leaders and Churches that Break the Code
• 15. The Process of Breaking the Code
• 16. Breaking the Unbroken Code
• Epilogue
• Endnotes