Worship at Milledge Avenue Baptist Church.

Being a Missional Church Edward R. Bolen

Slightly more than 20 years ago, Francis M. DuBose was my missions professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. His class was not spectacular or even particularly memorable. I’m unable to recall a life-altering lecture or an offered maxim that deeply impacted my life or my ministry.

But for three years, we belonged to the same church—Nineteenth Avenue Baptist in San Francisco—and in that classroom, I picked up some wonderful lessons from Dr. DuBose.

First, he loved church. Absolutely loved our church and it’s rickety stairs, inadequate kitchen and limited space and impossible parking. In my mind’s eye, I can see him saunter into the sanctuary, walking cane and driving cap in hand (he always had rather dashing hats), greeting everyone. He and his wife Dorothy weren’t just friendly, they sought friendship. Struggling seminarians and transplanted Southerners, Francis and Dorothy made sure that we found a home and friends and a purpose in our new church. But most of all, I remember how much he loved our church, how he loved being in the worship service, how he loved being with everyone at church.

Second, he coined the word missional. The church, for Dr. DuBose, is in its very nature and structure, missional. Not missionary. Not interested in missions. Not even committed to missions. Rather, the whole “God story” is about God sending and commissioning people for God’s work. It is the nature of God to reach out and claim that which is God’s own. As Dr. DuBose would say, “Missions means sending.”

Missional is not something that we do; it’s who we are. It’s not part of job description or one more task to be accomplished. Here’s how he concluded his book:

“The concept of the sending helps us to see that behind all we mean by mission is a life-transforming dynamic: an impulse and an identity, a passion and a purpose.

Mission is more than doctrine. It is event as well as idea, process as well as content, medium as well as message, mood as well as method, mystery as well as meaning.”1 And Dr. DuBose didn’t just talk about missions and being all missional. He lived it. One Friday night, he packed us in a seminary van and took us down to an inner city neighborhood to share food with homeless people. In the mid 1980’s, he was at the vanguard of caring for HIV victims when everyone else was afraid of the disease. Our first week as church members in San Francisco, he encouraged Susan and me to begin a Sunday School class for young adults.

Francis DuBose died Sunday morning in his beloved San Francisco. Still teaching. Still loving. Still believing in the One who sends.

____________________________ 1Francis M. DuBose. God Who Sends: A Fresh Quest for Biblical Mission. (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1983), p. 160.