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Breaking the Missional Code is about how every church should approach their communities with a missionary mentality in order to reach different cultural groups with the Gospel. It endeavors to explain why some churches are growing and thriving in a modern world and why some are shrinking and failing. The churches that are thriving are said to be “breaking the code,” a term that is used dozens of times throughout the book.
The church in America faces serious challenges. Secularism is on the rise. People are no longer Biblically literate. The number of unchurched people is rising. No longer is America a Christian nation. When missionaries visit foreign countries, they are encouraged to translate the Gospel message into a form that can be understood in the culture they are ministering to. With the rise of diverse ethnic groups, language groups, and cultural groups in America, a similar missionary approach is needed.

In the 90’s, the “purpose driven” model of church growth of Rick Warren and the “seeker-sensitive” model of Bill Hybels became popular. However, the exact methods, strategies, and formulas of Warren and Hybels do not automatically translate into every context. The authors of this book argue that a new paradigm of church growth is needed, a paradigm they call the “missionial church.” Missionial churches do not look like one another, however, they do share a common philosophy. They approach their communities with a missionary mentality that strives to translate the Gospel into terms their communities can understand.

Missional ministry is not an option for an engaged church, it is a necessity. Jesus commanded the church to “Go into all the world,” so every church has a mandate to reach out to the world that surrounds them. The church is sent by Jesus on a mission, a mission to reach the lost. In other words, “your church is intended to be God’s missionary church” (p. 42). Becoming a missional church requires a shift in thinking. The missional church must move from programs to processes, from demographics to discernment, from models to missions, from attractional to incarnational, from uniformity to diversity, from professional to passionate, from seating to sending, from decisions to disciples, from additional thinking to exponential thinking, and from monuments to movements. Missional leaders have a strong sense of calling, character, competency, comprehension, commitment, and courage.

Contexualization of the gospel is important for the missional church. The “eternal, universal truth of God’s word is understood and appropriated by people through a cultural grid or framework” (93). The authors argue that “evangelism should be less programmatic and more process-oriented” and it should be “less propositional and more relational” (102). The authors argue for a discipleship process that involves searching, believing, belonging, becoming, and serving. The authors discuss a variety of practical suggestions for inviting guests, welcoming guests, engaging guests, connecting guests, assimilating attenders, and discipling members. They discuss models for launching a “code breaking” church including: pioneering, branching, partnering, restarting, and catalyzing churches. They look at the benefits and challenges of different methods of planting churches including “core-to-crowd” and “crowd-to-core.” Questions that church planters should ask include: Am I ready to plant? Are my teams in place? Have I solved the resource challenge? Have I determined the right place to plant? Do I have a clear vision? Have I networked my community? Am I ready to go public? Do I have an assimilation process in place? The authors warn that “techniques, paradigms, and methodologies” do little good without “genuine biblical and missiological convictions” (184).

Evaluation
Ed Stetzer holds the Billy Graham Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton College and he is the executive director of the Billy Graham School of Evangelism. He is the interim pastor at Moody Church in Chicago. He plants and revitalizes churches and trains pastors and church planters. David Putman is a Lead Navigator with Auxano where he helps bring clarity to people’s visions. He is a consultant and a coach. His mission is to equip ordinary disciples for planting the Gospel where they live, work, and play. They write to pastors, and church planters, and to seminary students who might start a church someday.

One small problem that makes the book dated is that this book quotes Mark Driscoll several times and holds Mars Hill Church up as an example of a missional church. But, the fall of Driscoll and the complete disappearance of his church makes his story a cautionary tale instead of a good example. The amount of good that Driscoll did is probably equal to the amount of bad that happened after the dissolution of his church.

The word “missional” has only recently been coined and in some ways it is a confusing, imprecise, and overused term. This book uses the root phrase “mission” in a variety of ways. It refers to “God’s mission.” It says a church must “do mission.” It refers to “missiology,” and to “missionaries.” At its heart, the term “missional church” means “a church that focuses on its mission to reach the lost.” One drawback of telling every church they are a missionary church is that it subtracts value from those who are missionaries in the traditional senses. If everyone in the church is a missionary, then what should “real” missionaries be called? Many North American churches have significantly or completely cut out their mission’s budgets because they have decided to focus on their own neighborhoods. While it is good to reach American neighborhoods, there is still huge need for real missionaries in the far off corners of the earth. For example, in Tulsa, there is a church on practically every corner, but in Pakistan there is one missionary for every one million Muslims. Where is the greatest need?

The authors argue that discipleship begins long before conversion occurs. They tell several stories of individuals who participate, serve, and even go on mission trips before they actually decide to follow Jesus. In their view, it may take several months or even years of participation and exposure to a church before someone is saved. While it is important for a church to provide opportunities for seekers to be included and even involved, in this author’s view there is a serious problem with a church where one can attend for several months and not get saved. The authors write, “Asking people to literally change their worldview after simply hearing the gospel, with no previous exposure to a Christian worldview, is usually unrealistic” (84). This ignores that fact that the Holy Spirit is involved in the conversion process and that many people do in fact get saved in an instant. They do acknowledge that “in some cases…conversion can be instantaneous” but they believe that “in most cases, God draws people to himself through a journey that includes making connections with a Christian community” (123).

This book is “church centric” instead of being “kingdom centric.” The authors believe that the local church is the main expression of God’s mission here on the earth. They write, “The church is God’s primary instrument for communicating the Good News. The church is God’s missionary to the world” (122). But, why cannot a missionary be God’s missionary to the world? The authors believe that churches that are trained to do evangelism are less effective at evangelism (122), which is a counter-intuitive conclusion. They believe that “the church is the best place for evangelism to occur” (145) which is not necessarily true. They write, “people can make a dangerous decision (for Christ) in a safe place (the church)” (145). The problem with making the church the focus of evangelism is that lost people usually do not come to the church. The key to evangelism is not getting people to come into the church building; the secret is to get the church to go out to where the people are. As an evangelist, this author often holds evangelistic meetings on soccer fields or cricket field because many people who would never step foot inside a church are willing to visit a neutral sports venue, especially in foreign nations like Pakistan where it is completely impossible for a Muslim to attend a church. On this point, the authors of this book would disagree with this author. They say, “Evangelism became identified too closely with great campaigns or crusades designed to win individuals to a commitment to Jesus Christ” (227). This is an ironic position for Ed Stetzer to take since he is the executive director of the Billy Graham School of Evangelism. Often, the best place to evangelize is on the street, or on a sports field, or around a dinner table; not inside a church building. However, I do say a hearty “amen” when the authors write “the mission of the church to fulfill the Great Commission does not get relegated to a program of evangelism, but it becomes intricately woven through the entire fabric of the local church” (228). Ultimately, every church should be enthusiastic about the mission of leading the lost to Christ and every believer should help to fulfill the Great Commission.

In my opinion, this book really misses the mark for many reasons. #1. It is poorly organized. It wanders around and is long, wandering and redundant. There are about 2 or 3 original ideas and then the rest is all rehashing. #2. Considering that we are talking about spreading a faith that is alive and vital, this book goes on and on about strategy, but is remarkably silent regarding anything that would make me believe that the authors are "on fire for Jesus." Excuse me, but where is Jesus in all of this methodology? I begin to get the idea that the authors are more on fire for breaking the code than they are for Jesus. #3. It is a bit self aggrandizing and egocentric. There are a lot of references that make a big deal about "code breakers" and especially the authors' efforts in that regard. This brings me back to #2--"Look at me--I'm a code breaker!" Well, yes... and you can use this to sell me a computer or the latest fashion trend, but now you're going to sell me Jesus? The point being: Fresh bread is amazing--nobody has to sell me on it--it doesn't need an add campaign or fantastic sales methods. Just put the bread in front of me and I will buy it. What does it say about the authors' beliefs about Jesus that we need to talk about amazing code breakers in order to bring people into relationship? #4. This book makes reference to the importance of having the right theology and then hints that this might have something to do with changing gender roles. If there is a problem with the roles that men and women are playing, please just come out and say it. Don't make hints and assume that the reader knows what your doctrinal issues are. If good theology is important enough to mention, then it is important enough to be specific and be prepared to defend it. #5. This is small, but I truly disliked the invented word: glocal. I was glad when it disappeared after the first quarter of the book. Because of the length of the book, the endless references to "glocal" and code breaking became wearisome.