Why the Marks of the Church Need the Mission by Michael S. Horton

George Barna, a leading marketing consultant to megachurches as well as the Disney Corporation, has recently gone so far as to suggest that the days of the institutional church are over. Barna celebrates a rising demographic of what he calls “Revolutionaries”: “millions of believers” who “have moved beyond the established church and chosen to be the church instead.”²⁰ Since “being the church” is a matter of individual choice and effort, all people need are resources for their own work of personal and social transformation. “Based on our research,” Barna relates, “I have projected that by the year 2010, 10 to 20 percent of Americans will derive all their spiritual input (and output) through the Internet.”²¹ Who needs the church when you have an iPod?

Like any service-provider, the church needs to figure out what business it’s in, says Barna:

Our is not the business of organized religion, corporate worship, or Bible teaching. If we dedicate ourselves to such a business we will be left by the wayside as the culture moves forward. Those are fragments of a larger purpose to which we have been called by God’s Word. We are in the business of life transformation.²²

Of course, Barna does not believe that Christians should abandon all religious practices, but the only ones he still thinks are essential are those that can be done by individuals in private, or at most in families or informal public gatherings. But by eliminating the public means of grace, Barna (like Willow Creek) directs us away from God’s lavish feast to a self-serve buffet.

Addressing his readers in terms similar to the conclusions of the Willow Creek study cited above, Barna writes, “Whether you choose to remain involved in the congregational mold or to venture into the spiritual unknown, to experience the competing dynamics of independence and responsibility, move ahead boldly. God’s perspective is that the structures and routines you engage with matter much less than the character and commitments that define you.”²³ Believers need not find a good church, but they should “get a good coach.”²⁴ If the gospel is good advice rather than good news, obviously the church is simply “a resource” for our personal development, as Barna suggests.²⁵

If the local church is to survive, says Barna, authority must shift from being centralized to decentralized; leadership from “pastor-driven” to “lay-driven,” which means that the sheep are primarily servers rather than served by the ministry. Furthermore, ministry must shift from “resistance” to change to “acceptance,” from “tradition and order” to “mission and vision,” from an “all-purpose” to a “specialized” approach to ministry, from “tradition bound” to “relevance bound,” from a view of the people’s role as receivers to actors, from “knowledge” to “transformation.”²⁶

“In just a few years,” Barna predicts, “we will see that millions of people will never travel physically to a church, but will instead roam the Internet in search of meaningful spiritual experiences.”²⁷ After all, he adds, the heart of Jesus’ ministry was “the development of people’s character….”²⁸ “If we rise to the challenge,” says Barna, Americans will witness a “moral resurgence,” new leadership, and the Christian message “will regain respect” in our culture.²⁹ Intimate worship, says Barna, does “not require a ‘worship service,’” just a personal commitment to the Bible, prayer, and discipleship.³⁰ His book concludes with the warning of the last judgment. “What report of your commitment to practical, holy, life-transforming service will you be able to give Him?”³¹ The Revolutionaries have found that in order to pursue an authentic faith they had to abandon the church.³²

This is finally where American spirituality leaves us: alone, surfing the Internet, casting about for coaches and team-mates, trying to save ourselves from captivity to this present age by finding those “excitements” that will induce a transformed life. Increasingly, the examples I have referred to are what people mean by the adjective “missional.”

Like Finney, George Barna asserts that the Bible offers “almost no restrictions on structures and methods” for the church.³³ In fact, as we have seen, he does not even think that the visible church itself is divinely established. Nature abhors a vacuum and where Barna imagines that the Bible prescribes no particular structures or methods, the invisible hand of the market fills the void. He even recognizes that the shift from the institutional church to “alternative faith communities” is largely due to market forces: “Whether you examine the changes in broadcasting, clothing, music, investing, or automobiles, producers of such consumables realize that Americans want control over their lives. The result has been the ‘niching’ of America—creating highly refined categories that serve smaller numbers of people, but can command greater loyalty (and profits).” The same thing is happening to the church, Barna notes, as if it were a fate to be embraced rather than an apostasy to be resisted.³⁴

However thin, there is a theology behind Barna’s interpretation of Jesus as the paradigmatic “Revolutionary,” and it is basically that of the nineteenth-century revivalist Charles Finney. “So if you are a Revolutionary,” says Barna, “it is because you have sensed and responded to God’s calling to be such an imitator of Christ. It is not a church’s responsibility to make you into this mold….The choice to become a Revolutionary—and it is a choice—is a covenant you make with God alone.” ³⁵

Gospel-Driven Mission
Whereas the biblical covenant originates in God’s gracious choice, redeeming work, and effectual calling through the gospel, placing us in a family of siblings we did not choose based on our own affinities, hobbies, musical preferences, or political views, the American covenant originates in the individual’s choice, moral transformation, and contract with God to be an imitator of Christ.

Where Christ is not King, he is neither Prophet nor Priest. Christ rules his church—instituting its structure and methods—precisely so that he can effectively deliver his good gifts to the world. In the name of mission, evangelicalism is unchurching the church rather than churching the unchurched.

At the same time, in our own circles one can discern an obsession with the marks without a corresponding missional orientation. The faithful ministry of Word, sacrament, and discipline will yield a missional church. Some in recent years have suggested that we add mission as a fourth mark of the church.

However, if what I’ve said is about right, this would be redundant. After all, a church that is not outward-looking, eager to bring the good news to the ends of the earth, is not really bringing it to those already gathered into Christ’s flock. A genuinely evangelical church will be an evangelistic church, a place where the gospel is delivered through Word and sacrament, and a people who witness to it in the world. It will be a place where believers and unbelievers alike will be recipients of God’s good news. We come to receive God’s Word, both law and gospel, and to be buried and raised with Christ. We surrender our trivial scripts in order to be written into God’s unfolding drama. Only as recipients of Christ and all of his gifts can we become part of God’s new creation: witnesses to Christ and servants of our neighbors. Without the marks, the mission is blind; without the mission, the marks are dead. As Lesslie Newbigin has emphasized, the church does not engage in mission; it is a mission.