Planting Seeds or Nailing Down Stakes: What Happened to the Missional Church?

In the late 90s, when I was finding my voice in ministry, the air was thick with talk of becoming “missional.” Coffee shops and conferences buzzed with pastors dreaming aloud about churches that moved, congregations that reached out to the surrounding world with attention and love—seeking to discover what God was doing and desiring to join God there.

Even then, I worried that such conversations were like morning mist—beautiful while they lasted, but destined to fade like other movements that had come before it. The name we and theological academics gave to that vision of the church was “missional.”

“Missional church” gave me words for the Jesus I had glimpsed in scripture’s pages—a savior who moved always toward the margins, always toward the other. I fell in love with that vision then, and my heart hasn’t forgotten.

Today, watching what we tried so desperately to plant wither in American soil, I find myself grieving. What once grew as a mission has been uprooted by something altogether different—Christian nationalism. 

Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, in their book, Taking America Back For God, define Christian Nationalism as “the belief that the United States is—and should be—a Christian nation.”

Perry and Whitehead nail the definition. Christian nationalism is a parallel kingdom to the kingdom of Christ, one where a particular and partisan view of America is the end goal of God’s work in the world.

In essence, Christian nationalism is a flat rejection of everything we longed and worked for in the missional church. In fact, Christian nationalism doesn’t simply ignore missional thinking. It stands as its stark opposite, a shadow cast where light once fell.

Two Songs, Two Spirits

Listen closely and you can hear two melodies playing in the American church, each pulling the faithful in opposite directions.

The first song begins with God’s own movement—the Father sending the Son in the Spirit’s power to mend what was broken in the world. The church, in this song, becomes not the destination but the vessel, not the end but the beginning. It moves with the rhythm of humility and hospitality, of sacrifice and service. Its melody always flows outward, like water seeking the lowest places, drawn always toward the other in love.

The second song collapses heaven into the borders of a single nation and reduces the kingdom to the fortunes of particular people in particular places. To be frank, those people are white, and the place is America, and is known as the “real America.” It beats with the drum of cultural control and political conquest. Its refrain echoes with “winning” rather than witnessing. This song binds the church’s identity to flags and founding fathers, making sacred what was always meant to be sent.

The first song whispers with Paul, “When I am weak, then I am strong”—a vulnerable melody that trusts God’s timing and God’s work. The second song pounds out a different beat: “When I am strong, then I am safe”—obsessed with power, with getting its way.

One finds its harmony in the cross. The other marches to the cadence of the sword.

The Dance of Confidence and Fear

Missional church conversations often begin with a missionary named Leslie Newbigin, who devoted his life to learning that the church exists not for itself, but for those still standing outside its doors. He taught us to dance facing outward, always outward, while Christian Nationalism teaches us to circle the wagons, to protect what’s ours.

Newbigin showed us how the church’s life together becomes the world’s first glimpse of good news—not through argument, but embodiment, not through force, but presence. He called it confident pluralism: holding your deepest convictions like treasures while still making room at the table for those who see differently.

But where confidence once stood, anxiety now reigns. Christian nationalism moves not with the assured steps of those who trust the gospel’s power, but with the frantic gestures of those who fear it might not be enough. It betrays a deep unease about whether love can really win without coercion, whether grace can really triumph without government enforcement.

The early church grew not from the seats of power but from the margins, not through political control but through the strange magnetism of sacrificial love. They drew the world not by conquering it but by serving it, not by dominating it but by dying for it.

Picture two communities: One kneels to wash the feet of strangers; the other stands to demand their submission. One empties itself for the sake of others; the other fills itself with the tools of dominance. One finds its strength in weakness; the other seeks validation in control.

What Happened to Welcome?

The world of Christian nationalism can only contract. Welcome comes with a list of requirements, an assimilation exam. The stranger must shed their strangeness before being embraced. What was once hospitality of the heart becomes hospitality of the head—calculated, conditional, careful. The gospel’s radical welcome gets traded for cultural gatekeeping. The table that was meant to expand keeps shrinking, until only those who look, think and vote the right way find a place to sit.

The contrast between Christian nationalism and the missional church offers us two ways to share our faith: we can plant seeds in the soil or drive stakes into the ground. We can offer testimony or demand submission. We can trust the Spirit’s gentle, slow work or grab the levers of legislative power, betraying a profound mistrust of the gospel’s own power, a fear that love alone might not be enough.

The missional church chooses the way of the seed—scattered freely, trusting that what’s true will take root in its own time. It believes the gospel creates its own credibility through communities that love well, serve faithfully and suffer gracefully.

Walking the Tightrope

In my community, Ecclesia Houston, we are still trying to walk the narrow path of mission, even as the ground shifts beneath our feet. We strive to enter our city as learners rather than teachers, as servants rather than masters, as guests rather than conquerors.

It’s lonely work sometimes, this commitment to positions that were once common ground but now feel like contested territory. As fear rises and hearts close, maintaining an outward posture requires swimming against increasingly strong currents.

The Moment of Choosing

The Western church stands at a crossroads where two paths diverge. Down one path lies the way of cultural dominance, the seductive promise that we can win by wielding power, that we can advance the kingdom through conquest. Down the other lies the way of mission, the ancient call to be sent people bearing the marks of the cross.

The choice we make will echo in eternity. Will we choose the way that leads through death to life, through weakness to strength, through service to significance? Or will we choose the way that promises safety but delivers only smaller and smaller circles of the same?

The watching world waits to see which song the American church will sing—the melody of mission that draws all people toward the light, or the march of power that drives them away. In this choosing, we don’t simply decide our strategy; we decide our soul.