Leadership Journal

Talking with Connie Sabo in the living room of her north Atlanta home, you'd think from her poise and easy grace that she might have been a contender for Miss America. (She is first cousin to one.) But when I first meet Connie, her blond mane is pulled back in a ponytail, she's wearing jeans and sneakers and playing ball with a dozen Latino kids in the muddy parking lot of an aging apartment complex. "We don't speak a word of Spanish," she said, "but they know we care. We certainly were not equipped for this, but God has equipped us."

Her husband, Frank, is there, too. (He is greeted with shouts of "Mr. Frank! Mr. Frank!")

Soon daughter Taylor arrives with her high school classmates for an afternoon of tutoring, a Bible lesson, and games in the parking lot with the kids of Wyndham Creek apartments. For the past six years, this has been their Wednesday afternoon ritual.

"Definitely, it's a big, long-term commitment," Taylor said.

"Mostly we love kids," Frank said. "And they love us back."

The Sabos represent a shift taking place among believers and churches in North America. Frank and Connie lived in several cities during his career in corporate management with a major restaurant chain, and now, settled in Atlanta, they enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. As members of Perimeter Church, a megachurch in the Presbyterian Church in America, their family grew under the teaching of pastor Randy Pope and a wide variety of ministries for their girls. Then their older daughter, Chelsea, now in college, participated in a junior-high outreach to an apartment community of immigrants with lots of kids, few English language skills, and deep need. That in-town mission sparked a desire in the Sabos to move beyond their comfortable faith.

Theirs is part of the story of a church that awakened to the spiritual and physical need of their neighbors and the birth of a service ministry that now includes 90 churches of all denominations in the area.

It is a good picture of what happens when a church and a family go "missional."

The word missional has been in the dictionary for 100 years, defined in the 1907 Oxford English dictionary as something that is of, or pertaining to, missionaries. But those who use the word today have broader applications, focusing on the church's role in the culture.

It refers to a philosophy of ministry: that followers of Christ are counter-cultural, on a mission to change the culture. Missional refers to the specific activity of churches: to build the kingdom of God in all settings where church members are at work, rather than building up the local congregation, its programs, numbers, and facilities.

Many users of the term refer to a change of heart—that missions is not a distant program to which we send a check or boxes of used clothing—but instead something we're personally involved in. The whole life of a believer is to be dedicated to faithful sharing, giving, and going—more than studying, hearing, and sending others.

Those ...