Alan Hirsh in his book, The Forgotten Ways, defines the missional church as

“a community of people that defines itself and organizes itself around its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission.”

Mission as the church’s organizing principle is more nuanced than simply mission being the church’s priority. The missional church allows mission to organize all the other functions of the church – worship, discipleship, and community.

In most churches, worship does the organizing. It gets its own building, several staff, and a weekly meeting precisely because it is via worship that these churches do their mission, community, and discipleship.

In the missional church:

Worship becomes a daily activity rather than a weekly one shaped around our missional engagement with others.

Community is built by committing to the common task of God’s mission in the world.

Discipleship happens as we engage in missional activity and reflecting biblically on that activity rather than being consigned to study groups and sermons.

The missional function of the church, however, is a divine event before it is ever a reality in the life of the church. In other words,

mission is first and foremost and attribute of God, not an activity of the church.

Furthermore, the mission of God is defined by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the missionary God incarnate. In him the mission of God becomes a concrete reality and central to the missional church’s life.

In short, the church’s mission comes from our unique relationship with Jesus who “became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message).

So with Jesus at the center of our church community, we put the mission of God above all we have and all we are.

In this way, Matthew’s Table is not some reactionary force attempting produce something hip or trendy, but is centered in Jesus Christ who has compelled us to be sent as a collective missionary people.