This paper is to lay the theoretical foundation of missional church growth, which should be a new paradigm of church growth, in order to renew the Korean church in which distorted concepts of church growth are widespread. In this paper, I define missional church growth as the growth of missional church, which expands its social influence of the Gospel by becoming the witnessing church culturally appropriate in its local community and the world, in terms of not only inner dynamics through worship, education, and fellowship but also the praxis of evangelism, church planting, incarnational ministry, and public discipleship, ultimately the increase of responsible church members who came to the Christ. Prior to explaining the frame and basic concepts of missional church growth, I conducted two studies: firstly, I inquired into the theological theories of church growth and among them tried to find critical clues connecting to the missional church growth; and secondly, from a cultural view point, attempted to elucidate both the fact that some main concepts of traditional church growth theories were affected by modern values, and the postmodern culture is challenging Christian churches today to prepare a new paradigm of church growth. Basically, the missional church growth aims to accomplish the Lord’s Great Commission(Mt. 28:1920), which includes both evangelical mandate and cultural mandate. Thus, it is harmoniously toward enhancing both conversion growth and the social influence of the Gospel. It is also related to the endeavor to realize the apostolicity inherent in local churches, the missionary nature of the church. Its accomplishment would be through enhancing inner dynamics based on worship, education, and fellowship, and activating its missionary praxis toward the world. The missionary praxis includes four main works: evangelism, church planting, incarnational ministry, and public discipleship. Therefore, it could be mentioned that the missional church growth is carried out through the balanced perspective and practices in terms of the Gospel and culture. Finally, the missional church growth should be practiced in an orderly process. The nature, ministry, and structure of the church, three aspects in the life of the missional church, must be in regular sequence. Their order must not be changed: its ministry must come out of its nature and its structure must be built to fulfil its ministry effectively. When neglecting this orderly sequence, the church would be programdirected and losing its missionary nature, which consequently produces distorted church growth.

• 최동규(서울신학대학교, 교회성장학) | Dongkyu Choi