When "missional" churches aren't

Ed Stetzer wonders why some missional churches don't do global missions.

It appears to me that many missional churches are missing the Great Commission in the name of being missional. That makes zero sense.

I was recently told by a pastor who called himself "missional" that his church needed to pull back on their global mission support to help their people "be missionaries right here."

All this provokes me to ask, "Why are so many missional Christians uninvolved in God's global mission?" As the missional conversation continues and deepens, what has occurred that has led to our blindness to the lost world around us?

Five reasons why Ed thinks this has happened:

1. In rediscovering God's mission, many have only discovered its personal dimensions.

2. In responding to God's mission, many have wanted to be more mission-shaped and have therefore made everything "mission."

3. In relating God's mission, the message increasingly includes the hurting but less frequently includes the global lost.

4. In refocusing on God's mission, many are focusing on being good news rather than telling good news.

5. In reiterating God's mission, many lose the context of the church's global mission and needed global presence.

The full text and Ed's solutions for the unmissional missional church