What Is Missional?

I am trying to figure this concept out in layman’s terms. I have read and heard of various different definitions of this concept. Many explanations seem to in the end lead to emergent thought of compromising the name of Jesus.

I’ve seen one concept mentioned that seems ‘word of faith’ where Christians ‘give away’ stuff and say ‘God bless you’ to the person who they give stuff to only to experience moments later, some ‘unbeliever’ will ‘instantly show up’ with ‘the same stuff you gave away, but more expensive and better quality’ to give to you.

Some definitions seem to be a re-hashed and updated version of the Conspiracy of Kindness evangelistic styles that was prevalent in the Vineyard movement in the early-mid 1990’s. I remember this where church people would have free car washes, give out bottled water with a customized label with the church info to outdoor workers in sweltering summer heat, or wrap Christmas presents for free at the shopping mall calling it ‘unconventional evangelism’ but you never heard people give testimonies on how they found Christ through the ‘unconventional evangelism’.

Some definitions seem to the ‘Have a blessed day’ vernacular that is becoming more and more heard daily at the department store checkout lines.

One concept I have read about via a Tim Keller .pdf file and also viewing videos at this John Piper page (the same videos are also up at youtube if you don’t have quicktime, just copy and paste the name of the video at Piper’s site into YouTube’s search). I really became more confused after I read this .pdf wondering if the content of the .pdf file seems to be ‘converted forms’ of political correctiveness (aka ‘Spiritual correctiveness’).

As the “Stanley Johnson’ character from The Lending Tree Commercials states at the end of the commercial:

Somebody Help Me

understand this concept.