The missional ordeal

Thanks to Justin Buzzard for this excellent quote:

“We have a friend who says she believes churches should get Bible teaching ‘on a need-to-know basis.’ In other words, a church should open their Bibles together and learn from Scripture according to the contextual challenges and ordeals they are currently facing together. Sadly, many Christians don’t ‘need to know’ what they hear each Sunday, and so they retain very little of it.

Now, we recognize believers should have a clear, consistent biblical worldview, and we can’t offer Bible teaching based only on felt needs and areas of immediate interest. But frankly, we’d rather teach missionaries, disciples who are hungry for Bible teaching to sustain, enrich, and guide them in the missional ordeal, than churchgoers who have little motivation for hearing the truth. And remember, unused truth is lost truth. It doesn’t matter how true we believe the Bible to be, or how effective and gifted our teachers might be. If our congregations are not engaged missionally…they will have little need for our teaching.” -Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch