Author: Bulk Importer

What’s it all about? The missionary enterprise faces significant challenges. Religious consumerism, established traditions, and personal temptations for self-fulfillment are difficult to overcome. However, the church is called to participate in God’s mission and to recognize that the mission is indeed God’s. Christian workers begin the missionary task by asking certain questions. Reflecting on the nature of God and imitation of that nature, practitioners of mission learn to listen to God’s leading while interpreting the culture. As a result, missional methodologies are shaped first by theological dialogue.

What’s It All About?

My first involvement with a brand new church planting project was in 1993 in an impoverished section of Memphis, TN. Since that time, I’ve had various degrees of interaction with church planting of various shapes and sizes. In 2001 I began the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime as a new church planter in New York City. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to enter the dialogue on the missionary enterprise, especially in Western contexts. I’ve been grateful to be part of the conversation, but during this time some of the dialogue on church planting has raised concerns for me. I have found myself in workshops and forums where planting new churches was emphasized as a solution for institutional survival. Maintaining the life of the tradition was foundational to the conversations. As various Christian traditions face either potential or real decline in a changing culture, planting new churches is a viable solution. This makes perfect sense. Growth counters decline. However, the mission of the church does not really belong to the church but rather belongs to God. Any emphasis that is overwhelmingly placed on the survival or advancement of a singular denomination, organization, or particular tradition misses the central concern for these types of activities. Church planting, personal evangelism, and social justice initiatives are kingdom activities that represent participation in the missio Dei.

Staying on Mission

During the summer of 2008, I was in the car riding through the Bronx with one of our college interns. We were on our way to a Bible study, and as we rode together, I was explaining some of the challenges of working with the high turnover that takes place in ministry in the city. People are regularly seeking ways to relocate out of the Bronx. Individuals’ job schedules change. Families are under stress. There are numerous competing messages, and, sadly, some simply fall away. I ran through some of these challenges, and as we were getting out of the car, the student became the teacher as he commented, “You have to have a kingdom perspective here, or you’ll go crazy.” In one sentence he prophetically uttered both a theological mandate and a key to my mental sanity as a missiologist in the city. The crucial task for an evangelist in any context is God’s mission. All communities, institutions, or careers are subservient to that one true reality.

The mission of God is a central concern for God’s people, especially if the church is indeed to be a missional community. Debates may abound over what the priorities of the church should be. Evangelism? Community? Social justice? Worship? The answer is likely, “Yes to all.” Despite obvious attempts to do so, these functions cannot be easily divided and prioritized. They are each interwoven into the tapestry of the missio Dei as God’s kingdom breaks into human history. The central aspect of each of these activities is God’s missional agenda. Mission is ultimately the pursuit of connecting the created with their Creator and restoring the glory of God in the hearts of people. Mission is not a program of the church but the DNA of God’s call to participation with him. Every activity of the church bears witness to God’s redemptive purpose. It requires proclamation of the good news of God’s kingdom. Humans are called into an alternative story that points to the reality of their Creator and his sovereignty. Individuals and communities are transformed into representatives of God’s reign. These communities possess a shared purpose for experiencing and representing the reign of God in their midst. Mission shines a light on dark places in our world, and it leads to worship as it brings the glory of God into hearts that do not yet glorify him. Mission is a central concern for the church because the aim of God’s mission is the expansion of his redemptive reign in every crack and crevice of human societies. The kingdom of God is here and now, and yet the kingdom of God is also not fully realized. Until God’s reign is made complete, bearing witness is a key act of worship. God’s people continually call fellow human beings who do not yet worship nor submit to God to recognize God on his throne and to submit to him as the Sovereign Lord.

Just as Gailyn Van Rheenen emphasizes, being sent is at the heart of mission.1 God redeems humanity through incarnational encounter. “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14 NRSV). The Father sent Jesus into human culture bound by time and space. He modeled mission for a group of his followers and sent them out empowered and led by the Holy Spirit. This narrative forms us as we are sent by the Holy Spirit into a world full of both the brokenness of sin and the beauty of God’s creative genius. To participate in the missio Dei is to play a role in the movement of God’s redemptive action in every corner of human society. It is God’s mission, and it only belongs to the church to the extent that the church is participating in the mission of God. This may be particularly challenging to career ministers. It seems to be human nature to seek our self-worth in our work and in our personal accomplishments. There is an innate desire to build, and the temptation to erect our own Babels under the auspices of Christian mission is often present. However, the transformation of Peter, James, and John’s misplaced zeal into an obedient witness plays itself out again in every generation. Today, God is on the move in every corner of our world.

Embracing the mission of God in an age of globalization opens up the missional conversation to the wider body of contributions. Many cell church leaders and church growth gurus have looked to South Korea to draw lessons from the quintessential megachurch. Those desiring church planting movements look to Cambodia, China, or India, and many European churches are experiencing revitalization as they receive refugees of the African diaspora. North Americans look across the Atlantic as they learn to navigate post-Christendom contexts from a new generation of churches in Europe. As the West encounters increasing pluralism in the shadow of politicized culture wars, Christians in the East who have lived side by side with Muslims or Hindus for centuries may provide some lessons for peaceful coexistence and witness. No one nation or culture holds a monopoly as the master of missional enterprise, and these examples are only meant to highlight that fact. In a global society, a collective intelligence may emerge as a new humanity transcending borders collaborates together as participants in the mission of God.

The Continuing Conversation

Conversations around the missional church are not without precedent. This present conversation joins a wider global discourse. For example, several years before discussions on the missional church emerged in the United States, the Latin American Theological Fraternity and theologians such as René Padilla emphasized integral mission. Integral mission raises the holistic and universal nature of mission. Padilla states that “all churches send and all churches receive” in order to address the dichotomy between what have traditionally been sending and receiving nations.2 Western nations, particularly the United States, possess the status of “home” while the majority world is a “mission field.” Such a dichotomy has largely undermined the church’s role as a missionary agent within Western society while simultaneously nursing an ongoing dependency among receiving nations. Padilla correctly argues against this dichotomy and for greater holism. He writes: “The whole world is a mission field, and every human need is an opportunity for missionary service.”3 Padilla further contends that “every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ and to be committed to God’s mission in the world . . . . The Christian life in all its dimensions, on both the individual and community levels, is the primary witness to the universal lordship of Jesus Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.”4 Latin American theologians, such as René Padilla, have argued for some time for a church that is holistic and missional by nature.

Current conversations revolving around the missional church do not need to begin from scratch. Such theological voices from Latin America reflect several years of calling upon the church as a universal missional community. When our understanding of mission shifts from the church’s mission to the mission of God, we are empowered to surrender our sense of possession of the mission and see ourselves as part of a larger play on the global stage. The mission of God incorporates a rich and diverse tapestry of voices from all nations around the globe, each challenged to answer the same universal call.

Finding Our Way

I applaud holistic views of mission. Nevertheless, I also insist that making disciples through planting Christian faith communities should be the key practice of the missionary enterprise because communities of faith in Jesus Christ are the primary agents for accomplishing the tasks that reflect the kingdom gospel. Admittedly, my point is negated if the church is characterized by consumerism and entrenched in programmatic maintenance. However, if the church is faithful as a community shaped by a biblical framework for mission, it is a force for transformation and eternal hope.

I find it fascinating when I am asked whether my ministry, as an organic church planter in an urban context, involves social justice. It is difficult to answer without some nuance, because if I respond by considering what I suspect to be the prevailing cultural assumptions, I suppose I have very little to report. Oftentimes we think of social justice as a programmatic response that clearly addresses a recognized physical need in society. However, as a missiologist, I’m compelled to respond with my real answer. “Yes,” church planting in urban settings is also a work of justice because we are making new disciples of Jesus and developing Christian community. When shaped by the gospel, these individuals and communities represent the agency of the kingdom of God bringing transformational power to human culture. Such communities care holistically for both body and soul. By generating a gospel-shaped community in an urban society, we are bringing a truly holistic force to the city. The church has a biblical mandate to be deeply concerned about justice—and about eternal salvation.

For whatever reason, as a youth I was formed by Matthew 25 just as much as I was shaped by Matthew 28, and now as a church planter I recognize that the primary agent for societal transformation (i.e., social justice) and personal salvation (i.e., evangelism) is vibrant communities of faith in Jesus Christ. When we promote a reductionist gospel, it often becomes either divorced from social justice on the one hand or from evangelistic proclamation on the other. The mission of God, however, is driven by the gospel of the kingdom, and the gospel of the kingdom invades every sphere of human existence—body and soul. Communities representing the gospel are ambassadors of God’s reconciling power in the world.

Paul the apostle understood the importance of the Christian community as an agent of the missio Dei. As he traveled all over the Mediterranean region, he established beach heads of God’s kingdom. As a result of the church being present in a city, all sorts of initiatives are born out of that community sharing the concerns of the kingdom of God. At the heart of missional activity is the gospel that confronts, transforms, and saves.

Our faith community in the Bronx has hosted marriage seminars that have indeed helped people, but such events do not compare to seeing marriages transformed through participation in small relational communities gathered in the presence of Christ. We’ve partnered with food and clothing programs that have done much good in our struggling city neighborhoods, but the gospel is shared in unspeakable ways when a small house church responds by spontaneously emptying their pockets for a struggling family. The people of God form a community that brings healing where there is brokenness, a prophetic voice where there is corruption, proclamation of salvation where souls are lost, and community where there is isolation. Establishing and multiplying communities like these is an imperative of the church today. The missional church represents the participation of God’s people in the missio Dei. However, this brings me back to my opening thoughts. Are we planting churches that are primarily driven by preserving a brand or uplifting religious careers, or are we captivated by the mission of God? This is an important question, and asking these sorts of questions clearly leads us to evaluate what we have been up to so far. Stuart Murray writes:

Simply planting churches of the kind we already have is not the answer. Churches have been leaking hundreds of members each week for many years. Planting more of these kinds of churches is not a mission strategy worth pursuing. But planting new kinds of churches may be a key to effective mission and a catalyst for the renewal of existing churches.5

Dodging Consumerism

An important corrective for the church is to recognize that planting churches that are consumer-driven is not actually participation in God’s mission. In contrast, such a practice may only promote self-centeredness. Creating an exchange of religious goods and services does little to realize the kingdom of God in our midst. Church planters are faced with a significant decision to focus on making and equipping disciples of Jesus to become agents of the missio Dei rather than becoming overwhelmed with programmatic maintenance or enslaved to the demands of religious consumers. This requires strategic decisions that emerge from theological reflection, the cultural context, and careful attention to the leadership of the Holy Spirit. God is seeking to redeem and transform, and the Christian community is his primary agent for the task. Ultimately, the people of God must cross boundaries to restore God’s glory in human hearts. As participants in the missio Dei, our drive is to make disciples of Jesus Christ and to see these disciples form communities that reflect the good news of the kingdom of God. God’s people are to manifest God’s kingdom in the world. Only then does the church find itself swept up in God’s drama of redemption. Building our own kingdoms will always fall short of the realization of the missio Dei. To participate in the mission of God is to realize his kingdom come. For the community of faith to live into this call, we pause and ask, “What is shaping our communities?”

Mark Love’s statement that “missio Dei makes theology, not strategy, the first task of a missional church” is an important declaration.6 We don’t begin with our marketing messages or our inherent desire to carry on meaningful traditions. As Alan Hirsch points out, missional workers must begin with christology, which then determines their missiology, and missiology determines their ecclesiology in a given context.7 Following this sequence really changes everything. We cannot begin the missionary task with our previous assumptions about the shape of the church or our own preferences for religious ritual. Rather, mission flows from the person of God through his people into a lost world.

Anthropological research and church strategies will continue to have prominence as we seek to contextualize the gospel and help the church to behave incarnationally in specific settings. Exegeting culture is an important facet of our participation in mission. However, participation in the missio Dei begins with our understanding of God, how we relate to him, and his vision for the world. All missional activity grows out of that relationship. As Love discusses in his article, church planting is—or perhaps should be—under the influence of a trinitarian worldview. Therefore, our particular relationship to the Trinity matters.

Reflecting the Nature of God

If our trinitarian view is of God as a social Being, that view is likely reflected in the manner in which we participate in mission. A relational view of the Trinity may lead to relational approaches to evangelism as opposed to methods that feel cold or detached. As we reflect a God who, by his nature, is community, a church may place a significant emphasis on relational approaches to ministry. A relational view of the Triune God then naturally flows toward the anthropological work of forming our particular missiology in a specific context. As we relate to God who is community, we then ask, “How do”–or perhaps, “How would”–“people in this cultural setting express love, forgiveness, witness, and similar acts of grace?” Before we can imagine the church in our setting, we must be awake to God’s nature as well as grasp the social dynamics of the culture around us.

I’m increasingly convinced that we are formed by our experiences far more than we realize. A year ago, I was interviewing a seeker participating in our church network. I asked two separate questions. One was about her experiences with this church community and the other was about her evolving faith in God. Later, as I went over the content of the interview, I realized that there was a common thread connecting her experience with the Christian community and how she was learning to relate to God. She explained that she was growing through the one-on-one interactions that took place in a small relational church setting. Then, when asked about her emerging faith in God, she continued to discuss how she was learning to relate to God in a one-on-one manner. She described her experience as personal and less “sterile” than previous religious encounters. Her description of her evolving relationship with God paralleled her experience in this type of faith community. There appeared to be a strong connection between her community experience and how she was beginning to relate to God. While Scripture was beginning to transform her worldview, her theology was being formed at least as much by her particular experience with God’s people. If the popular saying “the medium is the message” is true, our methods do matter. However, we need to make sure we are asking the right questions. Rather than asking, “How do I grow this church?” we instead contemplate, “What will facilitate people having a relationship with God and joining his mission?”

Similarly, David Watson points out in a Shapevine.com interview that the spiritual DNA during conversion influences the ongoing issues facing Christian discipleship. He explains that when someone comes to faith because they were hit with a confrontational message and had an inspirational experience in the context of an event, they will learn quickly to depend on these sorts of experiences in order to maintain their faithfulness because they constantly seek to remain inspired. However, Watson argues that discipling relationships are likely to result in a much more proactive faith experience leading to participation in mission.8 For missional workers, this raises the question, “How does our approach to mission reflect the nature of God?”

I see the move toward a relational understanding of the Triune God as a positive step. Rooting our missional orientation in the missio Dei, we focus our practices upon imitation of God. If we begin by seeing God as a relational Being, we are likely to see missional activity begin to emerge from a theological worldview that is inherently relational as well. Mission arises out of our own journey with the Holy Spirit. In the Book of Acts, it is clearly the Holy Spirit that is leading the charge of God’s mission into the world. In many cases, the first-century church is trying to keep up and catch on to what the Holy Spirit is doing. The point here is simple and yet quite challenging. God is passionate about his mission to the world, but we can only grasp our part in his mission as we keep in step with his Spirit. Impersonal approaches to mission may accomplish significant growth of a particular institution, but if God is relational, it is difficult to affirm that these approaches reflect the genuine character of the missio Dei.

My colleague in New York City, Hugo Monroy, often points out that the nature of God concerns the personal rather than the impersonal. Too often, our practices of mission are impersonal, but incarnation insists on a deeply relational understanding of God. Time and space encounter eternity in the expression of the incarnation. If we take theology seriously as the beginning point and if we begin with a foundational understanding that God is relational in his very nature, we will likely adopt strategies that are also, in their essence, relational. Whatever ecclesiological model is chosen, as missional strategies emerge we reflect upon how a particular expression or activity reflects the nature of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in relationship to our world.

This is precisely why discussions about church models are merely secondary, if not tertiary. These discussions are not without merit or necessity, but they must take their proper place. Van Rheenen tells the story of a church planter named Jim. Jim asks the question, “How can we meet the needs of the people of this community and make this church grow?” The church does grow, but, as Van Rheenen explains, largely becomes a vendor of religious goods and services rather than a living expression of the kingdom of God. In the end, Jim privately contemplates, “What have I created?”9 This is an example of beginning with the wrong questions. I’ve heard similar stories repeatedly told in private conversations all over North America. Beginning with theological questions concerning the kingdom of God and moving into mission as a participant in God’s redemptive narrative would likely lead to a different set of considerations at the start of a church. Church models and strategies are important, but they must be an outcome of the theological and cultural questions explored by the missionary practitioner.

When the rubber meets the road, missional workers have to make choices. We have to decide what our priorities are. We have to decide how we’re going to deal with the forces that come to bear upon us. We were promised that participation in God’s mission would bring with it trouble, but not every challenge faced by missional workers is from the world. When a missionary crosses borders into another nation, he takes significant time to learn the language, become immersed in the host culture, and bond with the local people. When a church planter comes to New York City to evangelize unreached people, however, he often finds himself feeling under pressure to produce quickly in order to keep his funding. As a result, he quickly gathers existing Christians into a new group, establishes a brand, and launches a public worship service while the original intention to reach unreached peoples in the city fades into the background. In the current religious climate, missional workers make sacrifices and missional communities are forced to address systemic cultural shifts in order to place participation in the missio Dei at the center of their communal life and operations.

Conclusion

As the church participates in the missio Dei, the formation of missional practice does not begin with tradition—as rich as a tradition might actually be—nor is the beginning point for a church’s missional life to develop effective recruitment strategies. Rather, mission begins with the very nature of God, his incarnation in Jesus Christ, and his ongoing activity through the Holy Spirit. The driving questions for the missionary enterprise focus on reflections on God’s nature, and a key task is to discover God’s present movement in the surrounding culture and find our place in his unfolding narrative of redemption. As the church aligns its own nature with the nature of God, the church itself is transformed and the world encounters a community with unveiled faces that reflect the glory of the living God.

Dr. Jared Looney serves as a missional catalyst in New York City where he planted an organic church network. Jared lives in the Bronx with his wife, Hylma, and daughter, Adalia, and he is passionate about seeing God’s mission advance in the hands of ordinary believers. He holds a doctor of missiology from Fuller Theological Seminary. To connect with Jared, e-mail him at jared@bronxfellowship.org.

Bibliography

Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006.

Love, Mark. “Missio Dei, Trinitarian Theology, and the Quest for a Post-Colonial Missiology.” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 1 (August 2010): 53-70.

Murray, Stuart. Church Planting: Laying Foundations. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001.

Padilla, René. “What is Integral Mission?” Del Camino Network. http://lareddelcamino.net/en/images/Articles/what%20is%20integral%20mission%20cr%20padilla.pdf. Accessed on March 15, 2010.

Van Rheenen, Gailyn. “From Theology to Practice: Participating in the Missio Dei.” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 1 (August 2010): 30-51.

Watson, David. “Church Planting Today.” Interview by L. Ford. Video Exclusives.
http://www.shapevine.com/index2.php.

Reflecting from a Folk Muslim context in sub-Saharan Africa, and in response to articles written by Mark Love and Gailyn Van Rheenen, the author questions the value of trinitarian language, traditional definitions of syncretism, and Western hermeneutical assumptions in narrative theologies. A post-colonial theology of missio Dei could help us move beyond modern, power-structured forms of mission and cultivate open congregations gathered around work and life together, not homogeneous belief or culture.

Recently, a young man in my congregation woke up in the middle of the night only to see his wife walking out of their two bedroom mud house. He followed her out into the night air calling her name. No response. He took hold of her arm and she lurched away from him screaming. “Where are you going?” he asked. The deranged wife responded in gibberish. He only caught that she wanted to go out into the bush, alone. Only with the help of his neighbors was the husband able to force her physically back into the house, where she collapsed.

The following morning, I came to visit after hearing of the event from my neighbor. I found the husband attending to a quiet but at present calm woman with a vacant gaze. There was tangible worry and fear in the room. After all, this had all the signs of witchcraft, and the antagonist could have been a neighbor. We discussed what happened and the husband said he had found medicine. He showed me an old wine bottle that was full of water. At the bottom of the bottle, shreds of soaked paper slowly dissolved in the water. Of course, this was not just ordinary paper. On the paper were inscribed Arabic words of power. For a people who have merged and mingled the worlds of Animism and Islam, such a concoction is surely as effective as a glass of scotch after a hard day on Wall Street. By having her drink words of divine power, they planned to rid his wife of the curse within her mind. I also learned in the conversation that the wife’s family had a dream. In the dream, the one who was sending the curses had managed to enter the house, but if they moved the wife to her mother’s house, then the curse would not find her. That afternoon, they moved the wife to her mother’s. A week later, I found them both happy and sane. The curse had been lifted.

I vaguely remember studying David Bosch’s paradigms in undergraduate school.1 I recall preaching about God’s mission, looking to join God’s mission, and enjoying the mildly post-modern explorations of Stanley Grenz’s trinitarian communitarianism during my graduate studies.2 I must confess, however, to being post-missional and post-trinitarian. I suppose there is nothing new in such a statement. After all, the Western philosophical world seems to be in a competition over who can be more “post” than the other. But I am not a passionless pew-pusher. Neither am I a secular sociologist bitter about my past. I am what many would call a missionary in sub-Saharan Africa, though I might be inclined to call myself a post-missionary. I say all of this not to trump theory with experience, but to offer a perspective forged in reaction to my neighbor. In the following essay, I would like to reflect on the missio Dei from the place where I sit. I live and work among a Folk Muslim people who hoe a dying ground for subsistence and who are working to navigate the encroaching, unstoppable force of globalization. Organized around the theme of missio Dei, I will intersect my context with my reading of Love and Van Rheenen’s articles along the following sub-divisions: (1) colonialism and missio Dei, (2) narrative theology of missio Dei, (3) human syncretism and missio Dei, (4) trinitarian theology and missio Dei, and (5) missional church and missio Dei.

Colonialism and Missio Dei

Missio Dei in its plebeian sense is a concern of all human beings on the planet, regardless of religion. What is going on here? What is the point of my life? Is there divine intent on earth? A majority of religious revelations are an attempt to answer such questions and thereby explain God’s plan. From this perspective, “What is God’s mission” is a universal question that we have been asking for thousands of years. But in a more narrowly defined, theologically evangelical orientation, missio Dei is an interpretive strategy forged from a systematic reading of the diverse biblical writings. Consequently, it is (to use George Lindbeck’s words3) a second-order description of sacred texts. I would suggest that since missio Dei is a reflection from the Bible, we can find cultural aspects embedded within this theological construction. As a dominant Western key in missiology, missio Dei has a structural dualism that is expressed through word pairs such as: God/world, church/world, call/send, saved/unsaved, here/there, and so forth.

The dualistic nature of missio Dei cultivates colonialism. If the lost are always “out there,” then we will always set up the church and her members as imperialistic managers of God’s kingdom. I have had the gospel preached to me by an Imam. I was convicted, and my life was changed. I was deathly ill of cerebral malaria, and an Imam prayed for my recovery. I will return to how we can speak of the characters in missio Dei. But for now, let me at least argue that the dualistic tendency of us/them, church/world, and sent/receiver is unhealthy and born out of ignorance of many biblical stories. I am reminded of the conversation Jesus had with the Syro-phoenician woman in Mark 7. Jesus learned about the nature of the kingdom of God from this woman. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (Mark 7:28).4 When we read a parable, or quote the narrative, the Spirit of God swells into dialogue instead of monologue. It is the encounter, the event, that opens up a space for the kingdom to grow within all participants. In this sense, we are not sent but simply asked to be open to the event of God’s kingdom when it pierces our reality. I am again reminded of Jesus’ beautiful simplification of religion: love God/love your neighbor (Matt 22:36-40). Living with mission is simply loving your neighbor and allowing love to open a space for all participants to witness to the kingdom among us. Believing in missio Dei is more about reception. I am not sent to my stricken friend and his wife in the name of God. Rather, my love calls me to their doorstep. Our common life opens the possibility of the kingdom to germinate again in that place. I have nothing to give to my friend in a religiously cognitive, doctrinarian sense. Rather, our relationship creates the space for all of us to receive from the Great Physician. This is God’s mission, not mine. I need it just as much as my neighbor.

One final thought that disrupts this colonial, linear sender/receiver dualism is the sense of being a witness. We often think of witnessing to people as a kind of mini-sermon. We formulate an info-packet that combines certain doctrinal concepts with our lived experience in order to draw others into similar beliefs and hopefully similar experiences. I am not against sharing our lives with each other—this is essential to healthy community life. But if it becomes the way in which we allow individuals to enter our community it becomes imperialistic. I have learned from my experience here in sub-Saharan Africa that witnessing to the kingdom of God is a kind of typological, public interpretive act, an event that again transforms all participants. I have seen the story of the Good Samaritan acted out in front of me among Muslims. The experience was again a kind of event that interrupted my life and brought me to my knees. As a witness, I am obliged to tell my fellow friends that this moment is like that moment long ago. What we just saw, what you just did, is like what Jesus taught us. The performance of God’s kingdom surprises us. My job is not to leave it in the dark but to identify what just happened as holy. God just walked by! The kingdom is at hand!

Narrative Theology of Missio Dei

I appreciate Gailyn Van Rheenen’s emphasis on narrative theology as it pertains to missio Dei.5 But it is not sufficiently committed. God’s mission is often put into the “narrative” of creation, fall (under which the entire history of Israel is usually subsumed), incarnation, the age of the church, and Christ’s second coming. Yet contrary to popular opinion, the narrative of sacred Scripture, though written with an already existing interpretation, is open and pliable. The narrative of the Bible is diverse enough to allow multiple interpretations and arrangements. Furthermore, organizations like New Tribes Mission (referenced in Van Rheenen’s article) construct highly stylized, doctrinally laden forms of telling the story. These forms of storytelling are cloaked in Western doctrine and theology. Many of these narratives or missiological programs constrict the biblical text into a predetermined doctrinal outcome. These systematic, metanarrative constructions give answer to God’s intentions in a kind of true/false structure. Jesus’ own way of communicating God’s kingdom was unsystematic, ad hoc, and open to confusion and dialogue. If we are committed to the biblical narrative, why can we not tell the story and nurture the work of interpretation within our neighbor? Why do we also have to domesticate it for them?

I have been in sub-Saharan Africa long enough to know that people read stories differently. We notice different aspects. In general, literate readers are much more prone to abstraction, while oral peoples are more likely to interpret typologically, looking for the immediate connection in their own reality. There are also diverse ways of using a sacred text—from submerging it in water for medicine, to dissecting its parts and tracing etymologies, to arguing with the veracity of the text. The particular systematic way of talking about missio Dei is already hermeneutically sealed. Instead of assuming we know what God’s mission is all about, I would prefer a more ad hoc approach to the matter. When we “open” a sacred text in my context, it is often performed or merely spoken into the air for all to hear. After the reading, the meaning of the words becomes the responsibility of the community. Such an open-ended conversation is an attempt to place the job of imaginative interpretation in the hands of the hearers. Let me add that these hearers may be Christianized, Muslim, or Animist. The only pre-hermeneutical decision offered is the reader’s choice of the passage and its relationship to the day and work in front of the community. This opens up the door for debate about proper interpretation strategies and epistemology, but I believe we must be honest with the implications of post-colonial missional activities. I propose that we read specific stories with our neighbors and discover together—in this place, at this time—what God is doing or not doing.

Human Syncretism and Missio Dei

Syncretism has been used to legitimate Western colonial power and discourage non-Western or indigenous hermeneutics of sacred texts. I do not share Van Rheenen’s concern about syncretism as a blending of popular culture and biblical truth due to my divergent perspective on syncretism.6 Our old definitions of syncretism often connoted a static view of culture. We were worried about foreign “worldviews” entering and polluting the Christian worldview. But I believe human beings are constantly shaping their beliefs and actions in response to experience. Culture and even our beliefs are in flux and in dynamic relationship to the world around us. If my wife gets sick, will I go soak a bit of the Gospel of Mark and have her drink it? No, I will probably look up something on the Internet or call a trusted Western physician. But that does not mean I am ready to call Arabic tea syncretistic and attempt to show the falseness of such behavior and the beliefs imbedded therein. My friend is attempting to navigate his way through a difficult situation based on tools within his cultural toolbox. What matters to him is not so much that Arabic tea works but the existential moment. The event has pierced his reality, and he looks for a way to respond. Fundamentally, this experience and his response will be another layer in his identity. We are all syncretistic because syncretism is about the formation of identity in lived experience. Syncretism is not about wrong answers. As a friend, as a fellow seeker of God, my interest is to help him maneuver through this experience, grow, and be healed. In this light, culture is the ecosystem by which we survive the world. Sacred texts offer tools to live within those environments. But the environment will cause the tools to be used differently. There are many people in the world who need to be given space as they integrate sacred narratives into their lives. Imagine the personal struggle to integrate foreign, biblical stories of God into a Muslim-dominated culture, complicated by animistic concerns for managing ancestors and impersonal powers! The hermeneutical process to internalize new narratives or reshape public practice by new biblical challenges is not a linear process that we can somehow predict, control, and moralize. Consequently, I’m not so worried about Arabic tea. Rather, I’m concerned about how fear can be managed, God can be identified within the context, and healing can occur.

Trinitarian Theology and Missio Dei

Allow me to reflect upon the trinitarian theology that is emerging out of missional theology. I would like to offer four reasons for why I am post-trinitarian and why this theological dogma is not helpful in missiology.

First, trinitarian theology is a second-order description of the essential biblical narrative. Like all theologies, it is not sacred but human reflection on the story. Consequently, I am not against trinitarian formulations as if they were statements of error but merely recognize that these statements are contextual. Trinitarian formulations are hypotheses based on readings of the biblical narrative. As already noted in Mark Love’s article, trinitarian theology has been a kind of religious, Western philosophical exposition over themes such as unity and personhood.7 Despite the beautiful and appealing philosophical work many have done, trinitarian theology is often dumbed down by missionaries into a kind of lesson we give to people about “who God is.” In other words, we are still fixated on the inner life of God (immanent trinitarianism). Instead of exploring who God is based upon what we see God doing (economic trinitarianism), we end up falling into a kind of theological abstraction. Again, I am okay with local theologies, even if they are abstract. But because trinitarian theology is so culturally laden, it is inappropriate to use as a key to how we interact with the world.

Second, I am going to have to play the Muslim card again. Trinitarian discussions with Muslims just are not helpful. The single, dogmatic Muslim appeal “God is one!” is not interested in such philosophical abstractions. My neighbor does not need to agree on the Trinity for him to be part of the kingdom. Even if we want to say that the Trinity is embedded in the narrative of the Bible, we still have to admit that it is an abstraction from the narrative. There is no Trinity. There is simply a character in the divine drama called Jesus who speaks to the Father in the garden. Living among an oral people, this level of abstraction is extremely foreign and not useful for spiritual development. No matter how nuanced the poetics of trinitarianism have become, reality simplifies the issue into two camps: those who believe in three gods and those who believe in one. I used to carry the sleek trinitarian card myself, but I have been called to let go of it. Trinitarianism might open wonderful doors of dialogue with Hindus, but it is not helpful where I live. My beliefs are local. I can understand its attractive qualities, but the reality I engage finds it false.

Third, trinitarian theology hides a dangerous concern for nailing down Jesus’ ontology. I am a follower of Jesus. I try to be. But I am called to follow Jesus, not explain how God’s mystery works. The only reason we have the Trinity is because we need to find a spot for Jesus. The Council of Nicea was a violent leveling of the conversation. But even the conversation had devolved into explaining God instead of following God. Why can we not allow the various terms for Jesus to fill our vocabularies in the local contexts where we live and work? Speaking of Jesus as prophet and Messiah are very helpful words in my context. I’m not reducing Jesus by using them. I’m sticking to the narrative. On a philosophical level, there are traces of modernity’s obsession with ontology within trinitarianism. God—God’s naked being exposed for the world to ogle—is not to be explained. God is to be engaged. God exposes us. We can speak of God like we speak of the effects of wind, but we cannot dissect the wind, or God.

Fourth, trinitarian theology limits the narrative’s characters and therefore the Scriptures as well. As mentioned in Mark Love’s article, new theologies of the Trinity have worked to dislodge the linear movement of the three characters. I applaud these works but find two problems.

One, the interdependence revealed within the Godhead is not consistently applied. By shuffling the order (Father-Son-Spirit; Spirit-Son-Father; Father-Spirit-Son), Moltmann shows a beautiful interdependence within God.8 But the language of “interdependence” is not applied to God’s dealing with the world. If God’s inner life is built upon a kind of cooperation, then God’s invitation to the world should also fit within this assumption of interdependence. From this model, God is not only making room for the other (i.e., the world) but is also dependent upon the world. This might go too far into process theology for some, but on a purely theoretical level, I find it helpful in my life in sub-Saharan Africa. God was dependent upon Moses to respond to the burning bush. Moses could have walked away from the event. God needs us to interpret God’s self into the world around us. A trinitarian God centered on interdependence is dependent upon the world for further self-disclosure, in the same way the world is dependent upon God for further redemption. This might be the deconstructive element within missio Dei, but I find it helpful. Yes, this is God’s mission, but let us not forget God’s presence is always an act of interpretation. To some extent, we must take responsibility for our actions and hermeneutical projects. The crucifixion, in this light, is a reminder of the dangerous ability we have to kill God. If we do not take responsibility to become part of God’s life, then God’s life will suffer and be miscommunicated or forgotten.

Two, threeness limits the characters in the divine drama. The historical way of explaining God’s trinitarian nature leaves out the primordial. In the beginning, God hovered over already existing waters. There is an element disturbingly missing in trinitarian theology. It is all God and humans. In the end, I would think it simpler to talk about a kind of interdependent dualism of God and world. But let me at least suggest that creation is a left-out character. We work with people who are suffering because the creation is suffering. We are not being stewards of creation—we leave the earth out of the trinitarian dance. But the groans of creation are also our groans. The people suffer because the land suffers. There is no divine drama without the stage. This is not about making sure we give a nod to the environmentalists because it is politically correct. Where I live, the land kills and gives life. There must be an integration of God’s life into the life of the soil.

Finally, the reason many churches objectify the “world” into demographic points is not because of a paternal trinitarian theology. The problem is soteriological. We have objectified the planet into the saved and the lost. Therefore, the move from linear to interdependent should be driven more by soteriology. Put differently, our trinitarian views will change when we change our soteriology, because Christians spend more time dividing their world up according to questions about eternity, salvation, and damnation than the structure of God’s life. Consequently, it is more pressing to talk about what we mean by salvation, heaven, and hell than to reformulate the structure of the Trinity. I can only listen and belong to my Imam friend if I first change my soteriology.

Missional Church and Missio Dei

A common application of current missiology, including specific interpretations of missio Dei, has centered on the concept of missional churches. A healthy movement of theologically aligning the identity of the church with God’s mission, missional church theology has integrated community, congregational theology, and missio Dei. This movement also providing a critique of modern church practice. However, the movement has been cultivated in a context where church culture is assumed and is even in the majority. This sociological context has shaped the theology in ways not useful for a missiology in other contexts. I live in an area where the Western form of church is absent. The majority of the people are Folk Muslim. I have learned to live without the division of church and world. Consequently, I do not deal with trying to help churches shift from objectifying the world to living with the world, as American missional churches do. My friend, mentioned at the beginning, is part of my congregation because he and I live in the same village. Our lives are intertwined and we are in community despite our differences. For this reason, I must argue that we do not learn the language of God in worship. If we believe that God is in essence relational—if God is love—then we learn about God not by speaking God-speak in homogeneous gatherings cut off from the world but in diverse conversation out in the field. I have come back to the States on furlough after being away for three years and have been literally unable to understand what my fellow brother is saying because his religious language has become so hermetical. I have learned to talk about God, argue about God, and listen to God literally out in the field. In the context of work or play, I have been part of discussions about who God is, the existence of Satan, and predeterminism. These concepts and characters only matter out in the world. We learn to talk about God only in the world, not in church. This has huge implications for religious practice in the West and missiological theory.

Final Thoughts

The recent theological turn of missiology is healthy. In the past, we were driven by strategy. But I still believe the strategy was shaped and driven by deeper theological values. All the evangelistic strategies of the door-knocking era were still empowered by a certain soteriology. Consequently, I do favor more explicitly and publicly naming the theology that drives missiology. However, I am afraid that if we are not careful, an overly theological missiology will domesticate a very useful, marginal discipline. Missiology has been an aid for us to hear from anthropology, ecology, community development, and even history. These are the strangers of the academic theological world that we should continue to offer hospitality. The interdisciplinary nature of missiology has kept us on our toes. I suggest we not isolate missiology and therefore ourselves by allowing theology to overshadow and silence the voices from the outside. This is God’s mission and God often chooses those in the margins to carry the message. Missiology helps keep our ears tuned to be able to hear everyone from an ancient Semitic donkey to a secular anthropologist.

Kyle Holton lives with his family in northern Mozambique. He is married to Ginger Holton and has three children: Asher, Eli, and Eden. They have lived among the Yao of the region since 2004. Along with their colleagues, they have helped establish a non-profit organization called Malo Ga Kujilana, which means “place of reconciliation.” The organization is composed of local families who manage a sustainable, natural resource center and work to seed the kingdom of God among their neighbors in the community. Find out more at: http://kujilana.org.

Bibliography

Bosch, David. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American Society of Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991.

Grenz, Stanley J. Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000).

Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984).

Love, Mark. “Missio Dei, Trinitarian Theology, and the Quest for a Post-Colonial Missiology,” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 1 (August 2010): 53-70.

Van Rheenen, Gailyn. “From Theology to Practice: Participating in the Missio Dei,” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 1 (August 2010): 30-51.

“New Day”

by Sunset Riot

To me, the missio Dei is the core expression, the heartfelt desire, of the message that a loving Father is trying to get across to his beloved children. To do so he chose a specific time, a specific place, and a specific way to communicate his love. The time, place, and circumstance—from the manger to the cross and open tomb—are vastly different from my own routine. As I walk from my morning train to the office I am surrounded by crowds of people, all going somewhere or late for something. As I buy my groceries I am surrounded by throngs of people all on budgets and schedules and with a million things occupying their already crowded minds. As I go about my countless daily activities, surrounded by many different people, most of whom I will never even speak to, I am reminded that one thing has not changed from his day to mine: his people are still walking upon his earth, further from him than he would like, further than he ever intended. The Father still longs for his children; still, after all this time, like a mother waiting for her grown child to come visit after a long absence or two lovers being reunited after a stint apart. His heart yearns to spend time with us.

To put the mission of the Almighty effectively into practice in my daily life I need to break down the walls of my “routine,” see past the cultural differences of those who worship him in a different way, and learn to look through the eyes of a Father who doesn’t see crowds but rather individuals, who isn’t blinded by budgets and lists and “to-do’s” but instead sees hearts—hearts longing for completion and love and acceptance.

The missio Dei happens in its purest form, in my opinion, where his created beings live within the sphere of influence in which he has created them. I live and work within an industry that seeks freedom and glorifies the rebel attitude. My participation in God’s mission among this culture happens when I rebel against the mindset that says I must adhere to and glorify the “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” lifestyle. True freedom is not being bound to carnal lust but instead choosing to follow the Father’s guidance in all areas, which includes natural desires.

Del is a vocalist for Sunset Riot, a rock band in Sydney, Australia. His aim is to use music to weave the message of God’s love into an industry that is often filled with darkness, greed, and debauchery. His band, Sunset Riot, while made up of believing members, plays in pubs, clubs, and bars as well as youth groups and schools. It is his firm belief that the missio Dei belongs amongst the people at a very grassroots level: change begins with belief. See Sunset Riot’s webpage at http://sunsetriot.com.au and meet them (in a social networking sort of way) at http://facebook.com/sunsetriot.

I remember sitting in church one Sunday evening. It was “Missions Sunday,” which is usually code for “Preacher Vacation.” Missions Sunday at my church was when a visiting missionary came in (usually in the summer) and was basically given 15 minutes to share the story of his ministry. Typically, this was accompanied by a (boring) photo slideshow. Sitting there, even as a kid, I thought, “This guy spends all year in some amazing corner of the world, meeting amazing people, and he’s supposed to share all of his stories in 15 minutes or less?”

In January 2004, my dad and I were on a flight from Little Rock to Orlando, on our way to check out a film school there. It was my last semester at Harding University, and I was looking at pursuing a post-graduate degree in my newfound love: documentary filmmaking. On the flight, an idea crossed my mind that probably changed my life forever: “What if I used film to help missionaries ditch the slideshows on “Missions Sunday”? What if a missionary could show a relevant, ten-minute film, highlighting the sights, sounds, highs, and lows of their ministries, while still having five minutes to direct an inspired audience to their booth in the foyer?”

Over the next year, with that idea in mind, I eagerly studied the art of filmmaking at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida. There I learned the craft and got to have as much hands-on time as I desired with any piece of equipment you could ever hope to find on a Hollywood set. Shortly after graduation, my wife Lauren and I moved to Los Angeles, where I spent the next two years working (mostly pro bono, the L.A. norm) in a variety of positions in the film industry.

The longest tenured job was at The Documentary Channel, a satellite TV network on the Dish Network that airs entirely independent documentaries. I loved my job there, which included assisting their editors and, the best part, screening hundreds of documentaries. It was almost like a second film school. I started hanging out around doc filmmakers and I soaked up how they operated.

In January 2007, Taylor Smith, a friend of mine from Chattanooga, called me up and said, “You should come down to Perth, Australia, where I’m working as a church-planter, and film what we’re doing.” This sounded like a great idea. Finally I would get to put my passion and energy behind a real life “Missionary Documentary.” The only problem: I’d have to quit my job.

In June 2007, I finished that documentary and began trying to get it in the hands of people I had been sharing my dreams with for the last three years. I was very proud of the way it turned out and others began to take notice. That film got me work on another promo film and so on and so on. Before I knew it, it was late 2008 and I had already traveled to four foreign countries on three continents, making high-quality, informational films about missionaries and Christian non-profits.

That’s still what I’m doing today. My company, C1 Entertainment, was created to bring high-quality, affordable HD video content to clients that might not otherwise be able to get their stories out there. I love my job and the opportunities it brings. I’m now doing all kinds of work, including weddings, corporate gigs, and even developing my own feature length documentaries that focus on social and global awareness issues.

I take great pride in my work, being my own toughest critic. I am constantly looking for new, cutting edge ways to help tell great stories. It’s my passion; it’s what I love.

From my perspective as a filmmaker, the mission of God is helping tell His story in a relevant way. As a society, we are connecting more and more with people who put themselves in the line of fire for a cause. We admire their zeal, we connect with the people they reach out to, and we begin to project our own worldview into what we see or hear, that is, “Could I do that?” or “If they can do that, why can’t I do this?” “This” being a cause or concern near to our own heart. Whether these stories are told in the name of Christ or not, we are responding to them in a big way. Why not channel this power and use it to help those whose stories might otherwise be left out?

I am blessed with the gift of telling stories through the medium of film. Because I’ve been given this gift, it’s my part in the missio Dei to use it for his glory.

Patrick lives in Dallas, TX with his wife, Lauren, and dog, Sebastian. Check out his website at: http://C1entertainment.com or follow him on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/C1-Entertainment/147350212323) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/c1entertainment).

This article seeks to reflect the reciprocal flow from theology to practice. People of God prayerfully read and discern the meanings of Scripture and are led to Christian practice by the Spirit of God. This flow from theology to practice is illustrated by the theology and practices of missio Dei. The narrative of Scripture describes God as the source of mission. This God, who is both holy and compassionate, calls and sends missionaries who carry out his purposes. These finite humans, however, typically question and doubt their abilities and calling along the journey. The theology of missio Dei implies a number of missional practices: entering God’s presence, interpreting and entering into God’s story, participating in trinitarian community, and incarnating God’s mission. These ministry practices, in turn, give rise to dilemmas and new questions, which lead the practitioner back to theological reflection. Missional growth occurs within this reciprocal interaction between theology and practice.

Theology and Missiology

In a very real sense theology is the mother of missiology. Out of theological reflections we form practical missiological categories and practices. It is equally true that missiology is the mother of theology. Out of missiological practice, we raise questions for theological reflection. These questions deal with how practices reflect the nature and purposes of God. Missions is best accomplished when there is a reciprocal flow from theology to missiology and from missiology to theology. Missiology and theology became distinct disciplines in the Modern Age due to the rise of pragmatism in the West and the need to differentiate teaching specialties within the academy.

When missiology is divorced from theology, practitioners make decisions by their own culturally-derived inclinations. They trust in human ingenuity and assume that they are theologically reflective. Paul Hiebert writes:

Too often we choose a few themes and from these build a simplistic theology rather than look at the profound theological motifs that flow through the whole of Scripture. Equally disturbing to the foundations of mission is the dangerous potential of shifting from God and his work to the emphasis on what we can do for God by our own knowledge and efforts. We become captive to a modern secular worldview in which human control and technique replace divine leading and human obedience as the basis of mission.1

Opting into a secular or other non-Christian worldview results in a type of syncretism. Frequently this is an unconscious blending of Christian beliefs and practices with those of the dominant culture. Thus, Christianity speaks with a voice reflective of the culture. Syncretism develops because the Christian community attempts to make its message and life attractive, alluring, and appealing to those outside the fellowship. Over a period of years the accommodations become routinized, integrated into the narrative story of the Christian community, and inseparable from its life.2

For example, Jim and his family planted a church. The guiding question forming his strategy was “How can we meet the needs of the people of this community and make this church grow?” Jim raised money for the launch, built a staff, gathered a launch team, held events to gather those interested, held preliminary preview services, and launched a weekly meeting after six months with an attendance of 200 and three years later has an average attendance of 700 people each Sunday. His goal was to launch big in order to develop momentum. By all appearances he is very successful. However, Jim is inwardly perturbed. He acknowledges that his church attracts people because it caters to what they want. The church is more a vendor of goods and services than a community of the kingdom of God. Jim knows that those attending have mixed motives: attending is their duty, a place to meet people of influence, or where children receive moral instruction. Church attendance assuages guilt and declares to others (and to self) that “I am religious.” A spiritual responsibility has been discharged. Therefore, all is well. Observing the disconnectedness and worldliness of members leads Jim to ask himself, “What have I created?”

Developing a theology of missions helps overcome such syncretism.

Metaphors of Theology of Mission

Two “ship” metaphors help us discern this relationship between theology and practice.

A theology of mission is like the rudder of a boat or ship guiding the mission of God and providing its direction. My wife is fond of remembering how our children frequently wanted to “drive” when we took them on pedal-boats. At times they were so intent on pedaling, making the boat move, that the rudder was held in an extreme position, and we went in circles. Realizing their mistake, but still intent on pedaling, they would move the rudder from one extreme to the other so that we zig-zagged across the lake. When missionaries operate without the foundation of a missional theology, their lives and ministries tend to zig-zag from fad to fad, from one theological perspective and related philosophies of ministry to another. A theology of mission, like the rudder of a boat, provides us practical direction for Christian ministry.

A theology of mission is also like the engine of a boat or ship propelling forward the mission of God. One spring my wife and I taught at Abilene Christian University’s campus abroad program in Montevideo, Uruguay. During the semester, we traveled with our students to Iguazu Falls, a spectacular waterfall between Brazil and Argentina. One highlight of our visit was a motorboat excursion against the mighty currents of the river almost to the foot of the falls. I was impressed not only by the immensity of the flow of the water but also the power of the engine to pull the boat against the tide up the river. A mission theology, like the engine of a boat, provides the power that enables finite humans to carry God’s infinite mission against currents of popular cultures.

Jim, in our example, while believing in and preaching from Scripture, unintentionally applied the beliefs and practices of his secular culture to ministry strategy. He believed that human ingenuity employing marketing strategies of a secular culture would grow a church. And in a sense it did! He planted a church with great appeal to the local culture. But it did not reflect the love, holiness, and faithfulness of a people formed to live as participants in the kingdom of God. Jim caught in the ebb and flow of cultural currents inadequately employed the rudder and engine of theology to guide and empower the mission.

A theology of mission provides both direction and empowerment for developing practices of missions.

These metaphors illustrate that theology is indispensable to the mission of God. A theology of mission provides both direction and empowerment for developing practices of missions.

Mission Alive, the church planting ministry with which I minister, encourages participants to move intentionally from Theology to Practices to Structure. We reflect on overarching themes of Scripture like the kingdom of God, incarnation, and missio Dei—threads interwoven in the narrative of Scripture which form Christian reality. We then ask how these themes are practiced within Christian ministry. These theologies and practices guide us to develop spiritually formative structures commensurate with the theologies and practices.

In this article we will consider the theme of missio Dei, the title of this journal and a significant beginning point for discussing the movement from theology to practice.

A Narrative Theology of Missio Dei

This theology, missio Dei, “express[es] the conviction that mission is not the invention, responsibility, or program of human beings, but flows from the character and purposes of God.”3 God, the source of mission, who is both holy and compassionate, calls and sends his people to be his missionaries who carry out his purposes. As finite humans, however, we typically question and doubt our abilities and calling along the journey.

God, for instance, called Abraham to become the father of an elect nation and sent him to a land that he did not know (Gen 12:1-7). Abraham, however, doubted God’s promises. Why could he not settle in Haran where some of his own people lived rather than going on to Canaan (Gen 11:31)? Would God protect him (Gen 12:10-20)? How could he become a great nation since he had no son (Gen 15:2-6)? What sign would God give him that he would possess the land of Canaan (Gen 15:8-21)? Despite these doubts, Abraham “believed the Lord” (Gen 15:6).4 His faith grew so that he was willing to obey God’s command to sacrifice his son (Gen 22) because he believed that God, who is faithful to his promises, would raise him from the dead (Heb 11:17, 19).

The biblical narratives of God’s mission invite us to participate. How do these stories describe our lives, provide motivation for ministry, and shape us to become representatives of his mission?

God called the reluctant Moses to go back to Egypt (Exod 3:1-12) to lead the Israelites from captivity. Moses, however, felt inadequate. Forty years earlier Moses, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, identified the Israelites as “his own people” and felt the injustice of their bondage. He slew an Egyptian slave master (Exod 2:11-15), expecting that they would realize that “God was using him to rescue them” (Acts 7:23). God’s timing, however, was not the same as Moses’. After forty years in Midian, God called Moses to return to Egypt as his missionary of deliverance. Moses feared God’s call. He felt insufficient, afraid that he could not accomplish the task. He failed to realize that the mission was God’s, not his. He was merely the emissary carrying out the mission of God. Moses’ misunderstanding led him to object: “Who am I that I should go?” (Exod 3:11); “Who shall I say sent me?” (Exod 3:13); “What if they don’t believe me?” (Exod. 4:1) and “I have never been eloquent. . . . I am slow of speech” (Exod 4:10). These objections illustrate the human tendency to make God’s mission a mission of self. Each was based on human deficiencies or misunderstandings. God’s responses, however, proclaimed that the mission is greater than the missionary. The ever-present I AM WHO I AM was behind it.

God’s calling and sending is reflected throughout Scripture. He called Isaiah by revealing his holiness, helping Isaiah realize his sinfulness, leading him to repentance and cleansing, and then sending Isaiah to Jerusalem as his spokesman (Isa 6:1-10). God called Jeremiah as a child to prophesy and weep over a disobedient nation (Jer 1:4-8; 8:21-9:2) who were about to go into captivity (Jer 5:18). God called Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah at various times and sent them to organize his captive people and lead them back to Jerusalem. God sent his only Son to earth to reveal his “glory, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10), and “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8b). Jesus, in turn, sent his disciples, stating, “As the father sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21, cf. 17:18). Just before Jesus ascended into heaven, God sent his Holy Spirit as another Counselor so that his people would not be left as orphans (John 14:15-18).

The calling and sending of God was also evident in the early Christian church. By his authority as resurrected Lord, Jesus commissioned his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:18-20). These disciples were sent by divine power for divine purposes. God called and sent Peter by the Holy Spirit to the house of Cornelius, thus opening the door to the Gentiles (Acts 10). God called Saul as he was traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus to persecute Christians. In a vision Jesus told him: “I am sending you to the Gentiles to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:17-18). Paul invited Timothy to join Silas and him as they traveled on the Second Missionary Journey (Acts 16:1-4). Titus accompanied Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem (Gal 2:1). These early Christians defined themselves as apostles (Rom 1:1, 5; 1 Cor 1:1; cf. Gal 1:15-17) or ambassadors (2 Cor 5:18-20), in other words, those sent to represent God in his mission.

Describe how God has called and sent you as his missionary, that is, one sent by God in his mission for his purpose. What doubts and questions have you felt as a result of God’s calling?

Sometimes God enters into the human situation himself and becomes the Sent One, the Missionary. For instance, when Adam and Eve first sinned, God himself walked in the Garden of Eden seeking his fallen creation (Gen 3:8-19). God fought all night with Jacob, the deceiver who stole his brother’s blessing and birthright, and changed his name to Israel, meaning “one who struggles with God” (Gen 32:22-29). God in Jesus became flesh and entered human culture (John 1:14). God in his Holy Spirit indwells Christians to emancipate them from sin and to lead his people forward in witness to the world (Acts 1:8).

Understanding God’s trinitarian nature amplifies our understanding of missio Dei. God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, though separate personalities, operate in perfect unity. The church, when living in communion with the Trinity, is called to reflect the harmony and qualities of this union (John 17:20-23). David Bosch describes this trinitarian unity of God’s mission: “The classical doctrine of the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit is expanded to include yet another ‘movement’: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world.”5

God continues to call and send his disciples into his mission, and these disciples continue to question and doubt their calling and ability to fulfill the mission. My wife Becky and I have both received the callings and experienced the doubts. To be frank sometimes I am so filled with insecurity that I question every step I take even as God calls me forward. I have been surprised to find how much I am like Moses, asking God, “Who am I that I should go?” I struggle to listen to God when he says, “I will be with you!”

Early in life I received the call to be a missionary. It was rooted in my upbringing, much like Timothy (2 Tim 1:5), from parental encouragement to experiences in a Christian high school and university to graduate studies. Becky made a decision to be a missionary by marrying one. We felt the hand of God in times of blessing and when Christian leaders spoke into our lives encouraging us as messengers of God. We doubted our ability to leave our parents and friends and form new relationships in another land, to raise our young son (and children to come) in a foreign land, to learn new languages and cultures, and to serve as God’s messengers opening a new area to his gospel. I especially worried because of a learning disability that hinders language learning. But God was faithful in the midst of our doubts and struggles.

The mission of God, as illustrated in Figure 1,6 originated in the mind of God. He is its source. The mission flowed from him to Christ, who proclaimed God’s kingdom and in his death enacted God’s kingdom plan. He prayed that the Father would send the Spirit. This Spirit empowered the church for mission. God’s mission flowed, then, from God to Christ to the church, who, empowered by the Spirit, carries the mission to the world. Mission, therefore, is derived from the very nature of God who sends and saves finite humans who doubt and struggle along the journey.

From Theology to Practice

What practices are implied by this theology of missio Dei?

Entering God’s Presence

First, the theology of missio Dei leads us into God’s presence—to be spiritually formed by him. We, as fallen humans, are not magically transformed from sinner to saint. That transformation takes place only as we dwell in God’s presence and allow him to shape us. There are no easy roads to God. The journey is more like navigating the ruts and holes of muddy, rutted roads through forests of obstacles and discouragements than traveling well-paved interstates. Like Abraham and Moses, we question and doubt along the journey, and frequently fall from God. We grow to maturity only by looking beyond ourselves to God. We move into his presence by listening, trusting, depending—moving beyond ourselves to absorb his transforming radiance. Only then are we “transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). Spiritual transformation occurs only by God’s power, despite and through our human frailty.

This shaping of our minds and souls is called spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is walking with God in such an intimate way that our character reflects his love, holiness, and faithfulness. Imagine 1 Peter 2:1-3 played out in life: Deborah comes into a Christian community as a spiritually curious God-seeker and “tastes that the Lord is good” (v. 3). While walking with other Christians in community, God begins to mold her in amazing ways, helping her overcome “malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind” (v. 1). As she comes to Christ a radical transition occurs: “Like a newborn baby, she craves pure spiritual milk, so that by it she grows up in her salvation” (v. 3). It comes from a thirst for living water (John 7:37). God is molding her within a community of Christ-followers, the matrix of her spiritual formation.

This journey of spiritual transformation is an ongoing, threefold process of purgation from sin and the dominion of Satan, illumination of God’s love and holiness, and union with God. These three moves into God’s presence are “simultaneous rather than sequential, but our finitude prevents us from seeing their simultaneity, so that we perceive of them as distinct phases.”7 The “dryness and fruitlessness” of our souls hinders us from entering the mission of God.8 Only God can purge, illuminate, and unite us with him. Missio Dei ultimately flows out of this union with God.

Seldom does one enter the presence of God individually; it is typically in communion with others. An African proverb says, “Malale kwendet agenge” (“One piece of firewood alone does not burn”). Thus listening to God almost always implies listening with others on a heart level. One model practiced by many in our church plantings is called CO2, or “Church of 2”.9 Those on a journey toward God check in with each other to listen to each other as they mutually listen to God. They acknowledge, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up” (Eccles 4:9-10). Neil Cole says:

The basic unit of Kingdom life is a follower of Christ in relationship with another follower of Christ. The micro form of church life is a unit of two or three believers in relationship. This is where we must begin to see multiplication occur. Let’s face it: if we can’t multiply a group of two or three, then we should forget about multiplying a group of fifteen to twenty.10

In CO2 conversations the acronym SASHET (Sad, Angry, Scared, Happy, Excited, Tender) provides beginning words for describing the condition of the heart. CO2s may be daily phone conversations for two weeks or twice weekly exchanges for a more extended period. A church planter focuses on nurturing a few leaders who in turn nurture other leaders. Church planter Micah Lewis says:

I have found this practice to be the most exciting spiritual practice I have ever done.  I don’t even think of it as a practice but simply as pouring myself into a relationship with God. I have started a CO2 with a good friend that I work with at Starbucks.  We check in almost everyday [sic], sharing the state of our hearts and talking about how we have been hearing from God.  It is really exciting to see how God has been at work in both of us as we listen to him.11

An important question is, What spiritually formative practices help sojourners and searchers as well as those of the community of faith come more fully into the presence of God? Practices will vary from culture to culture, context to context. CO2, for instance, is exceptionally appropriate in impersonal, individualistic cultures where people do not naturally walk together.

Imperative to this process is a contemporary catechesis for spiritual formation. This formation process should overview the narrative and fundamental teachings of the Bible; encourage memorization of Scripture (to put nuggets of God into Christian hearts); nurture holiness, love, and faithfulness within the context of ministry; and bring followers face-to-face with significant passages like the Sermon on the Mount. This spiritual formation is not so much taught as caught within a community of nurture, encouragement, and training. Alan Kreider’s The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom overviews the spiritual formation patterns of the early Christian church and illustrates our need to contextualize appropriate patterns with high expectations for those on a journey to kingdom living in this post-Christendom age.12

Gradually we begin to listen to God and are surprised that God calls us into his mission. Despite questioning and doubt, we place our lives in his hands and allow him to form and lead us in his mission. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19). We likewise acknowledge that we can do nothing by ourselves but only seek to do what the Father does as illustrated by the life and ministry of Jesus.

This transformation leads us to read Scripture in a new and exciting way.

Interpreting and Entering into God’s Story

Second, missio Dei leads us to read Scripture as an amazing story of God’s movement through human history. The Bible begins with the story of creation (“In the beginning, God created . . .”) and the Gospels with the story of Christ (“In the beginning was the Word . . .”). Other genres of Scripture (Law, Letter, Prophetic Oracle, Wisdom, and Psalm, and Hymn) reflect their own particular historical settings.

Many of us, however, learned to think through Modern categories that sought to reduce the Bible to a logical compilation of facts. We assumed that “by avoiding human speculation and confining ourselves to bare scriptural facts, all people could come to understand the Bible alike. The biblical message was simple and clear, needing very little interpretation.”13 Teachings on salvation focused on steps that we must take to enter the kingdom of God (“hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized”) rather than the work of God in bringing us to him. We interpreted the Bible through a hermeneutic of “command, example, or necessary inference” rather than entering into the story of God’s redemptive history and allowing these narratives to form our identity. A new syncretism developed which took the facts of the Bible but interpreted them within the rational grid of our popular culture.

Trevor McIlwain of New Tribes Mission, seeking to understand the pervasive syncretism of the people served by his mission, realized that Christians only partially knew the storyline of Scripture and had inserted Christian components into their traditional narratives. His conclusion awakened me to the need for narrative theology:

We must not teach a set of doctrines divorced from their God-given historical setting, but rather, we must teach the story of the acts of God as He has chosen to reveal Himself in history. People may ignore our set of doctrines as our western philosophy of God, but the story of God’s actions in history cannot be refuted.14

The Bible is a narrative describing the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Jesus who “appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory” (1 Tim 3:16); and the Holy Spirit leading his people in mission from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). This trinitarian view of reality is progressively apparent throughout Scripture: the history of missio Dei portrays God the sovereign Lord in the Old Testament, the Anointed One sent to save us in the Gospels, and, in Acts and the Epistles, God’s leading in the church through the Holy Spirit. Bosch’s idea of God sending his Son and Spirit into the world, who in trinitarian unity send the church, becomes increasingly significant for understanding the mission of God. The Bible is a story of God’s sending; a story meant to be told, retold, and told again.

As we read Scripture, we hear within the words our own developing story(ies). Biblical stories focus our hearts, define our reality, and form our allegiance. Lives are shaped by hearing the doubt and faith of Abraham, the spiritual transformation of Jacob, the calling and ministry of Moses, and the gracious hand of the Lord upon Ezra to organize and lead God’s people. We define ourselves within God’s narrative.

Participating in Trinitarian Community

Third, a theology of missio Dei implies community. God, who exists in trinitarian community, calls us to form communities reflecting his kingdom unity. Jesus prayed:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. (John 17:20- 24; emphasis added)

Christ partakes of God’s glory and is thereby united with his Father. A “perichoresis, or interpenetration,” exists “among the persons of the Trinity reveal[ing] that ‘the nature of God is communion.’”15 The church, when it reflects God’s glory, likewise participates in this unity. The church thus is a “finite” and “temporal echo of the eternal community that God is.”16 This trinitarian unity, seen in the church, is tangible, readily recognized by the world.

The ancient apologetic of Christianity, consequently, is not merely a set of rational postulates arguing for the existence of God but an incarnational apology of the presence of Christ in his people. “The church is a witness to the presence of Jesus in the world as it embodies and lives out its faith.”17 As “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God,” we are able to “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet 2:9). Roxburgh and Boren say that the church is called to be “a contrast community shaped by hospitality, radical forgiveness, the breaking down of social and racial barriers, and self-sacrificial love. As we live inside God’s story, we are shaped into habits of life that empower us to be the sign, witness, and foretaste of God’s dream.”18 The world, as it sees the church serving in its neighborhoods, among its relatives, and in its workplaces, recognizes the church’s distinctiveness. For example, bishops of the early Christian church wrote letters asking Christians not to flee to save their own lives like the Romans when pestilence broke out but to remain to serve the sick.19

As a contrast society, the church serves the community by:

• Walking intimately with God, reflecting his love and holiness (2 Cor 3:18)
• Ministering to the poor, sick, and oppressed (Luke 4:18-19)
• Practicing hospitality (Rom 12:13; Lev. 19:33-34)
• Telling the story of God’s kingdom on different levels so that people can contextually hear it (Matt 13)
• Cultivating spiritual friendships (John 4)
• Giving and receiving ministry to help both self and others overcome sin and Satan (Acts 26:17-18)
• Fellowshipping all of God’s people (Gal 3:28)
• Making disciples (Matt 28:19)

These interconnected activities form some of the tangible ministries of a local church and lead the church to develop certain rhythms of Christian life and service.

How these activities are configured into the life of the church is not specifically mapped in Scripture but is learned on the journey. Churches are planted in different ways and with different emphases. Hugh Halter and Matt Smay describe three spheres of an incarnational community: mission, community, and communion. The kingdom becomes tangible in the confluence of these three spheres.20 Some churches are planted out of mission: what Alan Hirsch calls communitas, or shared ministry. For example, compassionate ministry sometimes leads those serving the poor, sick, and oppressed to define themselves as a church.21 Some form more slowly out of personal relationship or community, with an emphasis on hospitality and cultivating spiritual friendships. Others form community out of deep communion with God and with each other. The deepness of the church draws sojourners and Christians into the journey with God.

These emphases are reflected within the ministry frameworks of various missional resource people: David Watson of Church Planting Movements emphasizes mission; Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, community; and John White of LK10 Resources, communion.22 While mission, community, and communion exist in all churches, there are varying emphases.

Developing trinitarian community is a great challenge in church planting and renewal. How does the church grow to reflect this trinitarian unity? The answers are not easy. Primarily, this challenge calls us to live in God’s presence continually being renewed by his Spirit. It involves churches restructuring around complementary gifts rather than hierarchal structures. Attention is given to equipping “God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (Eph 4:11-12), to become mature (v. 13). The church thus “grows up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (v. 15-16).

Participating in trinitarian community readies the church to participate in God’s mission.

Incarnating God’s Mission

Fourth, missio Dei implies incarnation—that God comes to us and lives in our midst!  Sometimes God comes to us personally as he did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  God incarnated himself in an elect people, the Israelites, so that they might be his light unto the nations, and came to them through prophets and priests.  The ultimate expression of God’s incarnation, however, is Jesus Christ.  God in Christ became a human being and lived among us so that humans witnessed “the glory of the One and Only, who comes from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  God continues to come to the world through the church, “the continuation of the incarnation . . . the earthed reality of the presence of Jesus in and to the world”23 and through the apostles, prophets, and evangelists carrying God’s mission to the world.

The ministry of God’s living Messiah provides a model for our incarnational ministry. Even as Jesus taught and served the masses, he focused on equipping and sending disciples. His first priority was making disciples. He modeled, equipped, sent them out, and tutored them when they returned. This equipping prepared many for ministry in what eventually became a church planting movement. Thus the core phrase of the Great Commission—“go and make disciples” (Matt 28:18-20)—also describes the focus of Christ’s ministry.

“Jesus did not come into this world and live His life on a mountaintop isolated from human suffering. He walked among us, ate with us, and shared in our humanity. He did not heal lepers from a distance, but touched them into wholeness. He pressed His disciples and prayed for them to be in the world but not of the world. The focus of their three years together was not the salvation of the Twelve, but their ministry to the entire planet.”

Erwin McManus, Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 111.

This ministry of disciple-making is further defined by Jesus’ words to Saul on the road to Damascus: “I am sending you to [the Gentiles] to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 22:17-18). Thus Christ’s mission shows searchers a new kingdom reality (“open their eyes”) and breaks the fetters of sin and Satan (“turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God”). This mission creates a compassionate environment of forgiveness (“so that they may receive forgiveness of sins”), a nurturing community (“a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me”).

The mission of Jesus did not begin with the strong and powerful—within the upper class working downward or the middle class working outward—but with the poor and oppressed. The reading from the scroll of Isaiah in the Gospel of Luke is the climax of events describing Jesus’ ministry: he was led by the Spirit in his baptism (Luke 4:22), defeated Satan in the desert (4:1), and appeared in Galilee (4:14). Then Jesus read:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

(Luke 4:18-19; cf. Isa 61:1-2)

These words defined–by God’s Spirit–Luke’s understanding of Christ’s mission!

“The year of the Lord’s favor” is the Year of Jubilee, which occurred every fifty years. At this time all debts were to be cancelled, all slaves released, and all lands restored to their previous owners (Lev 12:10, 38-42). The practices of Jubilee, seldom if ever observed, would now be realized in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples.

Jesus did not minister as a lord or earthly power broker. He came as a servant (Mark 10:45), a shepherd of the flock (John 10:11), and a steward of what God had entrusted him (John 5:19). He did not stand at the top of a pinnacle overseeing an earthly kingdom, but at the forefront of a wedge of people on mission being called and sent to minister within the culture and inviting searchers to listen and participate.24 At an appropriate time Jesus called these searchers, saying, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He first chose twelve apostles “that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons” (Mark 3:14-15). He then sent out the twelve and then the seventy two-by-two to find a “worthy person” (Matt 10:11) or “a person of peace” (Luke 10:6) to replicate his mission.

Can these simple disciple-making practices of Jesus be reproduced with contextual adaptations in every tribe, people, or nation in the world?

This incarnational model tends to grow slower during the initial years because the emphasis is on disciple-making rather than gathering a crowd. Frequently, God uses these new disciples to teach others who teach others—resulting in a church planting movement. These churches, simple and with replicable processes of disciple-making, develop the momentum of a spreading virus, like the early church or the church in contemporary China.25

Missional leaders create environments for discipleship, not by replicating programs or developing projects but through life-on-life in the context of Christ-formed community. Programs and projects may aid specific facets of spiritual formation but often become a replacement for incarnational living. Life-on-life consists of incarnational living in existing cultural contexts, specifically the family, the neighborhood, the workplace, and Third Places.26

Missional leaders create environments for discipleship, not by replicating programs or developing projects but through life-on-life in the context of Christ-formed community.

Family or kinship is the deepest relationship in the world, even in the Euro-American West. It is therefore not surprising that people come to Christ as a result of relatives influencing their own people. My co-worker Fielden Allison made a study of sixteen new churches among the Kipsigis of Kenya. Thirteen of the sixteen (or 81 percent) were started by a relative of one of the new Christians. The message of the Gospel generally flowed through consanguineal kinship ties (that is, related “by blood” rather than “by marriage”), and, as is typical in age-oriented cultures, from older to younger relatives.27 Sue Salazar brought two of her daughters to one of the first meetings of Christ Journey in Burleson, Texas. One daughter came with her husband and their three children; the other with her live-in boyfriend. This extended family became some of the first leaders of the church. It is important even in the West, where family relationships are waning because of individuality and mobility, for Christians to be God’s missionaries to their families.

Neighborhood is likely the second most important context for missional ministry. Roxburgh and Boren say:

The task of the local church in our present situation is to reenter our neighborhoods, to dwell with and to listen to the narratives and stories of the people. . . . It will be in these kinds of relationships that we will hear all the clues about what the Spirit is calling us to do as the church in that place. But this is not a strategy we take to a context; it is a way of life we cultivate in a place where we belong.28

Missional Christians reflect all the practices of a missional church. They bring people together for community; neighborhood events, like a cookout or party in the park. They pray for the sick, welcome newcomers, mobilize resources to help those who have lost their jobs, paint houses, build patios, and welcome people to gather around their tables. They walk intimately with God reflecting his love and holiness and cultivate spiritual friendships. Living missionally in community naturally leads to the planting of neighborhood churches in homes, clubhouses, and storefronts. Roxburgh and Boren write, “We are learning to read Scripture with the eyes of our neighborhood, which reshapes our imagination about the mission of God and allows us to begin seeing Scripture in a new way.”29

We must also represent God in both our workplaces and in Third Places. Some develop prayer groups with workmates which opens doors to new families and neighborhoods. Christians with children may visit McDonald’s once a week to interact with other parents as they are together in the play area. Others office at Starbucks or Panera Bread or spend time each week in a local pub specifically to be God’s missional presence in those places. Wherever people gather, we are God’s presence . . . for the sake of the kingdom.

The major function of missional leaders is to equip disciples to represent Jesus among their relatives, where they live, and where they work, thereby developing groups listening to and being shaped by the living word of God. Their ministry is personal and empathetic, focused around hospitality and prayer and compassionate service. Through these practices the kingdom of God becomes tangible.

Dr. Gailyn Van Rheenen served as a church-planting missionary to East Africa for 14 years, taught Missions and Evangelism at Abilene Christian University for 17 ½ years, and is the founder and Facilitator of Church Planting in Mission Alive (http://missionalive.org). His books Missions: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Perspectives (Zondervan), Communicating Christ in Animistic Contexts (William Carey Library), and The Changing Face of World Missions (Baker Academic; authored with Michael Pocock and Doug McConnell) are widely used by both students and practitioners of missions. He has edited Contextualization and Syncretism (William Carey Library, 2006), a compilation of presentations of the Evangelical Missiological Society. His Missiology Homepage (http://missiology.org) provides “resources for missions education” for local church leaders, field missionaries, and teachers of missions.

Bibliography

Allen, C. Leonard. The Cruciform Church: Becoming a Cross-Shaped People in a Secular World. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1990.

Allison, Fielden. “The Effects of Kinship on Church Growth in the Kipsigis Churches.” In Church Growth among the Kipsigis of Southwest Kenya. Vol. 4. Unpublished, 1983.

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American Society of Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Cole, Neil. Organic Church: Growing Faith where Life Happens. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

Guder, Darrell L., ed. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Gunton, Colin E. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991.

Halter, Hugh, and Matt Smay. The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 2008.

Heath, Elaine. The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.

Hiebert, Paul G. “De-theologizing Missiology: A Response.” Trinity World Forum 19 (Fall): 4.

Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006.

Hirsch, Alan, and Darryn Altclass. The Forgotten Ways Handbook: A Practical Guide for Developing Missional Churches. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009.

Hunsberger, George, and Craig Van Gelder. Church between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Kreider, Alan. The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999.

Lewis, Micah. “CO2 (church of two).” Imagine a Daybreak. http://micahlewis.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/co2-church-of-two/.

Luke 10 Resources. “2-Page CO2 Brochure.” Practice #2 – Listening to Jesus with one (or two) others. http://www.lk10resources.com/practice-2.html.

McIlwain, Trevor and Nancy Everson. Firm Foundations: Creation to Christ. Sanford, FL: New Tribes Mission, 1991.

McManus, Erwin. Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003.

Murray, Stuart. Church Planting: Laying Foundations. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001.

Roxburgh, Alan J., and M. Scott Boren. Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009.

Van Rheenen, Gailyn. Missions: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Strategy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.

________. “Modern and Postmodern Syncretism in Theology and Missions.” In The Holy Spirit and Mission Dynamics. Evangelical Missiological Society Series 5. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1997.

Webber, Robert. The Younger Evangelicals. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. “Third place.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place.

The emergence of the concept of missio Dei amid the struggles of Christian world missions in the mid-Twentieth Century occasioned a theological paradigm shift. Although its conceptualization has been contested and sometimes dichotomized, recent developments move toward a broad, integrative vision of God’s mission that may serve as the best framework for the church’s theology and praxis.

Rediscovering Missio Dei

Everything is mission. On the lips of a “career missionary,” those words seem far too self-involved to be true, or even moderately insightful. As a summary of the implications drawn from sixty years of ecumenical reflection on the sending of the Son and the Spirit, however, they are a legitimate challenge to every corner of Christianity to understand the world, the church, and Scripture in terms of missio Dei1—God’s mission. In order to understand how missio Dei came to be a theological concept currently discussed on a broad popular level, we must enter a historical world that will be foreign territory for many readers. In so doing we may gain a clearer understanding of what is at stake theologically in the debate over terminology, which seems at first glance to be blown out of proportion. Our entry point into that world is a village in Germany called Willingen.

The ecumenical gathering of church leaders known as the International Missionary Council held its 1952 meeting in Willingen. Two immediate crises set the stage for the meeting. First, Mao Tse-tung closed China, removing all foreign missionaries. Naturally, this caused distress among these leaders, committed as they were to the spread of gospel among such a significant portion of the human population. Second, the realization was dawning that Christian missions had been deeply implicated in the colonialist project of Western civilization, a project that was beginning to crumble. Missions had been tied to the spread of Enlightenment culture, and the churches influenced by these ecumenical leaders were about to begin a long and painful struggle to differentiate their mission work—its motivations, means, and goals—from colonialism.

It is also necessary to mention a third looming specter. Colonialism aside, critical self-reflection also revealed that Christian missions was plagued by what would come to be called ecclesiocentrism. What the church expected to achieve in its missions was, through and through, too much about the church. We might characterize (or caricature) the worst of ecclesiocentrism this way: The church sends the church’s missionaries to accomplish the church’s mission, which is the expansion of the church and, implicitly, the achievement of the church’s agenda.

Willingen was host to a broad range of theological dispositions, but two polarized positions, which I will refer to as traditionalist and humanist, emerged as the dominant contenders battling over the conceptualization of missio Dei in the last century. Though they became two seemingly mutually exclusive options well after Willingen, they were not obviously diametric opposites at the conference itself. In fact, they were similar enough in their response to the problems mentioned above that participants managed to draft a unifying statement at conference end. Moreover, I will argue below that the currently emerging concept of missio Dei is a healthier blending of these two positions than many would have thought possible in the decades following Willingen.

The traditionalist position was traditional in that while it retreated from the paternalism and ecclesiocentrism of the past, it still maintained that the church was the means to the fulfillment of God’s eschatological intentions. For the traditionalist, therefore, missio Dei signified a move toward chastened self-perception by way of theocentrism. The church was freshly recognized as, we might say, merely the means, whereas God was the ultimate source, actor, and fulfiller of mission.

The humanist view did not immediately deemphasize the church’s role, though more radical elements were already present at Willingen. Instead, it focused upon a more realized eschatology, maintaining that God had already inaugurated his kingdom. The church, then, served not as means to its realization but as proclaimer of its reality.2 Dutch missiologist Johannes Christiaan Hoekendijk developed this line of thinking further. His essential argument was that because the realization of the kingdom in the world is God’s doing, and because the church is not a means to an unrealized eschatological reality, the reasonable conclusion is that mission is God’s work in the world regardless of (and, as history would suggest, often despite) the church. Thus, the humanist perspective became preoccupied with God’s work in the world apart from the church, which proponents naturally understood in terms of humanity’s socio-political concerns.

Though clearly at odds, the traditionalist and humanist views hung together on one major point of agreement: “Mission is ultimately God’s affair.”3 The expression of this fact in terms of “missio Dei” seems especially shaped by the theology of Karl Barth, who first revived the trinitarian idea of missio in 1932.4 In addition, the preliminary report from the U.S. study group hinged upon the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, the statement that ultimately distills the conference findings reads:

The missionary movement of which we are a part has its source in the Triune God Himself. Out of the depths of His love for us, the Father has sent forth His own beloved Son to reconcile all things to Himself. . . . On the foundation of this accomplished work God has sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. . . . We who have been chosen in Christ . . . are by these very facts committed to full participation in His redeeming mission to the world. There is no participation in Christ without participation in His mission to the world. That by which the Church receives its existence is that by which it is also given its world-mission. “As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.”5

It was another document, written by Karl Hartenstein after the conference, that utilized the Latin phrase missio Dei in order to summarize the fundamental idea conveyed by the conference findings:

Mission is not just the conversion of the individual, nor just obedience to the word of the Lord, nor just the obligation to gather the church. It is the taking part in the sending of the Son, the missio Dei, with the holistic aim of establishing Christ’s rule over all redeemed creation.6

Hartenstein clearly wrote from a traditionalist perspective, though his terminology would also be co-opted by the humanist camp in order to signify an idea of mission exclusive of the church’s “taking part” in God’s movement toward the world. Yet, we may note that the dispute was not simply between those who advocated a “social gospel” and those who did not. The “holistic” notion of a kingdom over “all redeemed creation” was integral to the traditionalist view, which made room also for individual conversion, obedience to the word, and the gathering of the church. The issue remained, implicitly at least, one of eschatology and its implications for the church’s instrumentality. That is to say, a critical dialog between eschatology and ecclesiology had begun.7

Considering the concept from another angle, the intersection of trinitarian thought and salvation history was also a major variable for the alternative views of missio Dei. As Hartenstein indicates, the traditionalist view understood the “sending” of Son (and Spirit) to be constitutive of mission. It is that particular salvation-historical datum that qualifies the concept of missio Dei. In contrast, while movement within the Trinity was also basic for the humanist perspective, it was abstracted from the confines of salvation-history.8 According to this understanding, intra-trinitarian movement (missio Dei) continues in the world quite regardless of the particular sendings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels or of the Spirit experienced in the church. Moreover, despite trinitarian language in the humanist camp, without reference to the salvation-historical narrative of Jesus and the Spirit, missio “devolved into an immanent principle of world history” focused on “being, not God’s being” (emphasis original).9 At stake in this convergence of salvation history and Trinity is, again, one’s understanding of the kingdom. Is the establishment of the kingdom that Jesus announced a work that God does in world history apart from the proclamation of Jesus by the church and the power of the Spirit manifest in the church? An affirmative answer caused many to see the socio-political shifts toward a “better” (more humanitarian) world as proper to the concept of missio Dei.

At the risk of oversimplification, these basic observations lay a minimum of groundwork for considering some of the implications that this monumental shift within Western theology entailed. Because the rediscovery of missio Dei is still causing aftershocks in theology and missiology today, tracing the path of these implications will bring us to consider insights that are only now emerging.

In the Wake of Willingen: Implications of the Shift

Relief was the most immediate payoff of recasting missions in terms of missio Dei.10 If the mission is fundamentally God’s, then the church’s failures (e.g., colonialism, ecclesiocentrism) and limitations (e.g., the closure of China) were not cause for despair. Even if, as traditionalists affirmed, the church is instrumental in God’s completion of his mission, it remains God who will complete it. Not only the justification for but also the viability of mission rests upon the sovereignty of God, even in the midst of terribly uncertain circumstances. To cast it more starkly, God’s mission cannot be compromised even when the church is.

A terminological evolution also occurred in the wake of Willingen, and its subtlety continues to beleaguer missiology today. Many began to reserve “mission” for reference to missio Dei and coined “missions” (note the added -s) for the church’s missionary endeavors. The distinction served to express differing concerns, depending on one’s understanding of missio Dei, but for all involved in the conversation it was a necessary result of missio Dei’s conceptualization. Thus, more than merely an antidote for anxiety, missio Dei was a corrective for both colonialism and ecclesiocentrism. “It is inconceivable that we could again revert to a narrow, ecclesiocentric view of mission.”11 As the mission is God’s, God’s agenda is determinative rather than that of colonialism, the church, or anything else. Theocentric missions is the upshot, with the church’s continual self-assessment the corollary. In light of missio Dei, the vital question for churches becomes: Are we on board with God’s mission in any given endeavor, or are we just calling it missions?

Critics have relentlessly leveled one charge in particular against advocates’ lofty claims for missio Dei: “If everything is mission, nothing is mission.”12 There are two different uses of this well-worm adage, and both call to attention important implications for the conceptualization of missio Dei.

First, missio Dei seems to imply an ontological assertion: God is missionary in nature. The corollary is therefore that everything God does is mission. Beyond the fear that this entails a “humanistic” or “social” gospel a la Hoekendijk, the problem with everything being mission is that it “necessarily makes light work of the distinction that Christian theology, because it is rooted in church members’ experience of God, has to make between the incomprehensible activity of God in the world and the redeeming and healing activity of Jesus Christ.”13 Putting it this way, God is admittedly “doing” much more than the salvation-historically limited activity of Jesus and the Spirit in the church. The complaint is therefore semantic: because of the experiential (i.e., epistemological) difference between what are usually called “sustaining” activity and “saving” activity, there is legitimate need to distinguish between the two in our God-talk.

In other words, if God’s “missionary nature” requires that we call everything he does from providence to personal salvation “mission,” what word then will we use for the activity traditionally designated as mission? Of course, this objection does not actually deny that we ought theologically to understand all of God’s activity in terms of his revealed activity (the sending of the Son). Rather, it is a caution against ascribing to God through the label “mission” a variety of activities that are not known to be God’s doing in the same way that God’s people know their own experiences to be his doing.

Second, if everything God does is mission, then mission becomes the proper descriptor of everything the church does in participation with him. “Mission” effectively becomes synonymous with “ministry.” Therefore, many object to the idea that “everything is mission” in reference to the church’s activity. Tormod Engelsviken is representative:

It takes some courage to limit or restrict both the biblical basis and the theological understanding of mission, as well as the practical outworking of it to what is the specifically missionary “intention,” without denying the missionary “dimension” (to borrow the famous words of Lesslie Newbigin) of all the church is doing.14

This seems like another semantic grievance, however, if we are willing to admit that all Christian ministry (“all the church is doing”) has a missionary “dimension” by virtue of its relationship to all that God is doing. Although it is frustrating to our established linguistic compartmentalization, the “discovery” of missio Dei calls the church to speak about all that God does and all that the people of God do in participation with him in terms of the sending of Son and Spirit.

Indeed, the generalization of mission as a theological category was inevitable, for while the conceptualization of missio Dei occurred in the context of classically “missionary” concerns, its trinitarian basis meant that a shift necessarily occurred in theology proper rather than in missiology alone. That is to say, what is true of cross-cultural church work because it is true of God must also be true of every other church work. Whatever we are doing, we are merely participants in what God is doing. If this principle is true, the essential question remains: Is everything God is doing revealed paradigmatically in the missio of Son and Spirit? If so, we can hardly speak wrongly of everything God and the church do by calling it mission.

In contrast to the usual objection, Wolfgang Günther states:

[Missio Dei] offers an umbrella, as it were, under which all the different biblical motives for mission and the corresponding different directions in our churches have their rightful place but are at the same time relativized. God’s mission is so all encompassing that all who take part in it can only ever take up one small part of it.15

These words are reminiscent of David Bosch, the theologian who spelled out the implications of missio Dei for evangelical Christianity in his landmark work, Transforming Mission:

We do need a more radical and comprehensive hermeneutic of mission. In attempting to do this we may perhaps move close to viewing everything as mission, but that is a risk we will have to take. Mission is a multifaceted ministry, in respect of witness, service, justice, healing, reconciliation, liberation, peace, evangelism, fellowship, church planting, contextualization, and much more. And yet, even the attempt to list some dimensions of mission is fraught with danger, because it again suggests that we can define what is infinite. Whoever we are, we are tempted to incarcerate the missio Dei in the narrow confines of our own predilections, thereby of necessity reverting to one-sidedness and reductionism. We should beware of any attempt at delineating mission too sharply.16

It was indeed a risk that Bosch took, in that he dared to accept what missio Dei meant for the nature of the whole church itself: “There is church because there is mission,”17 “it is the missio Dei which constitutes the church,”18 and ultimately, therefore, “Christianity is missionary by its very nature, or it denies its very raison d’être.”19 It follows, then, that we should call all that the church does “mission,” regardless of the risk of misuse it entails or the change of vocabulary it requires.

The shift in theology proper continues to reverberate through the theological disciplines. These aftershocks are proving extremely generative and, reciprocally, refining the concept of missio Dei. As Bosch indicated, ecclesiology was foremost among the fields forever changed for those who would accept the implications of missio Dei. The widespread acceptance that the church, by virtue of missio Dei, is missionary in its very nature has led to a fundamental reorientation of the church’s self-understanding, its motives for participation in mission, and its view of the gospel vis-à-vis the kingdom message of Jesus. This has found expression in the “missional church” movement, which requires a brief explanation of the semantic evolution that produced the term “missional.” Darrell Guder, one of the leading missional church thinkers, explains:

This terminological experimentation is, to be sure, driven by all that we have learned in the twentieth century as we became more aware that the Christian movement was in fact a global reality, a “world missionary community” (Mackay). Understanding this “great new fact of our time” has encouraged the gradual shift away from ecclesial thinking that centers upon the church, especially the Western church, as an end in itself, and instead toward understanding the identity and purpose of the church within God’s mission, subordinate to and focused upon God’s purposes. The term “missional” was introduced in order to foster this more radical way of thinking about the church and, more generally, of doing theology. It was, as we stated in the Gospel and Our Culture network’s research project published in 1998, an attempt to unpack the operative assumption that “the church is missionary in its very nature.”20

Guder notes that the term has begun to suffer a fate similar to “missio Dei” regarding its overuse and subsequent vacuousness. Moreover, “missional” has become “a cliché, a buzz word” in pop Christianity, further diminishing the value of the word for many.21 In fact, that is a problem that confronts the entire missional church movement, as its impulse toward contextualization has caused it to be lumped together with the “emergent church” phenomenon. For many who so freely sling these labels about, “missional” and “emergent” seem merely to connote a culturally relevant or, less flatteringly, a “cool” way to be the church.22

Still, “missional” appears to have finally filled the terminological void over which the semantic arguments above languished. That is to say, the adjective “missional” denotes the “dimension” of the entire church that corresponds to the missio Dei, leaving “missionary” for the properly “sending” activity (“intention”) of the church. More generally, missional is “simply an adjective denoting something that is related to or characterized by mission, or has the qualities, attributes or dynamics of mission. Missional is to the word mission what covenantal is to covenant, or fictional to fiction” (emphasis original).23 Given this development, we might now rather say that God is missional in nature, and therefore the church is missional in nature, reserving missionary for the persons and activities related to the church’s particular sendings.

In any event, the missional church movement is one of the most prominent aftereffects of missio Dei’s rise. In essence, it is the outworking of what it means for a congregation to be sent as the Son was sent in its context, apart from the issue of sending missionaries to other contexts. Ecclesiology has taken a turn for the participatory, thereby challenging ever greater numbers of the church’s members to consider what being a part of this missional body means for their own lives. Becoming part of a church as an end in itself is, thankfully, a dying model in many corners.

All of this church-talk is naturally taking place within the traditionalist vein of the earlier dichotomy. Church is a working assumption in the ongoing conversation. Sadly, the Church Growth Movement that rose to prominence among traditionalists, in part as a reaction to the secularizing trends of the humanist vein, stayed disconcertingly close to ecclesiocentrism.24 Yet, missional church thinkers represent a long-overdue, grassroots re-convergence of traditionalist and humanist concerns. Many churches have begun to advocate a vision of “shalom” or total well-being on a global, societal scale in conjunction with the church’s vital participation in God’s realization of that reality, which is called the kingdom of God. Figure 1, reproduced from a recent missions textbook,25 is indicative of the way in which evangelical theology is currently resolving the tension between the narrow, traditional use of “mission” on one hand and the somewhat novel understanding of God’s extra-ecclesial work in terms of “mission” on the other.

This represents a critical shift from a dialectic to a synthetic understanding of missio Dei, progress beyond the initial conflict that stood at the heart of the formula. While a holistic understanding of missio Dei was present in embryonic form in the theology of many Willingen participants, the dichotomy that emerged subsequently between traditionalists and humanists prevented its acceptance on a broad scale. We are now beginning to see a church-wide discovery of the whole mission of God, exemplified in Jesus’ total witness to the in-breaking reality of the kingdom.

Another potentially monumental shift is evident in the current discussions of missio Dei. It is a move to a substantive teleology, signaling a step beyond the early intersections of ecclesiology with eschatology and salvation-history with Trinity. This shift is reflected in a subtle, albeit natural, change in the usage of “mission” in English-language missiological discussion, which echoes broad cultural usage of the term:

Many organizations talk about their mission. There are missions to explore space, diplomatic missions, mission statements of businesses, and fact-finding missions. All of these rely on the core idea of mission—the sending of someone or something to do a job.26

While many have explained mission in terms of an over-simplified etymological notion of “sending,” the emerging sense of mission in contemporary usage is focused on the purpose, goal, or aim—in short, the telos—that drives the sending. It has been common to refer to “God’s purposes” in the discussion of missio Dei. For instance, Hartenstein’s initial formulation cited above refers explicitly to the “holistic aim” of participation in the sending of the Son; a conceptual union of Trinity and telos. Recently, however, teleology is becoming constitutive of the meaning of the missio Dei itself. In other words, while the sending of the Son is still paradigmatic and determinative for mission, and while the historical conceptual development discussed above still stands behind today’s ubiquitous reference to “God’s mission,” the concept of missio Dei has broadened theologically beyond discussion of the Trinity.27 This is distinct, however, from the humanist camp’s abstraction of “sending” from the Gospel accounts in order to generalize it as a universal principle. It is, instead, a theological reflection upon the reason for the sending of the Son—that which stands behind and fuels the mission. In summary, to speak of the missio Dei is to denote its purpose.

In a way, the movement to a less exclusively trinitarian idea of God’s mission is an echo of the much-debated historical discord between the formal disciplines of Biblical and Systematic Theology. Mission seems to have presented itself as a contender for the ever-elusive “center” that Biblical Theology seeks, yet it is with tremendous difficulty that Trinity, the pinnacle of Systematic thought, should serve as such.28 The purpose manifest in missio Dei, however, is proving most promising. Thus, Christopher J. H. Wright’s watershed work, The Mission of God, puts mission to work for Biblical Theology, contending that the biblical narrative’s “whole worldview is predicated on teleological monotheism” (emphasis added).29 “The Bible presents to us a portrait of God that is unquestionably purposeful,” says Wright, and mission is best understood as “a long-term purpose or goal that is to be achieved through proximate objectives and planned actions.”30

On this basis, Wright sets out to develop and employ a “missional hermeneutic,” which is the latest significant upshot of missio Dei.31 While Wright’s is the first major monograph on the subject, he is notably preceded by Richard Baukham’s outline of a mission-centered narrative hermeneutic, which has a substructure justifiably described as teleological, in that “a metanarrative of this kind has a definite future goal towards which it moves.”32 These attempts at constructing a missional hermeneutic are merely another manifestation of the affirmation that “everything is mission.” If mission is an adequate conceptual category for all God’s activity, it naturally follows that we may read the entire narrative of Scripture through the lens of God’s purposeful movement toward his ends. Moreover, “missional” becomes the descriptor for the framework that holds together all the theological disciplines in proper relation to God’s agenda, which ultimately gives them their significance and which they serve.33

A teleological definition of mission naturally raises the question of what God’s telos is. Even assuming that “the kingdom” is the goal, as much of the literature appears to do, our subsequent description of the kingdom continues to be subject to a variety of interpretations, as it was from the beginning of missio Dei’s emergence. But this is not the place to begin exploring the many possible articulations of God’s purposes for the world. For now, suffice it to note this most recent step in the conceptual evolution of missio Dei.

Conclusion

What began as a contextually driven search for answers has led to one of the most significant theological developments of our time. There are perhaps other concepts that could have functioned to recenter the church in a similar way. Yet, it was immersion into the global vision that world missions uniquely engenders that called the church to account in the middle of the last century. In that sense, the conceptualization of missio Dei is itself another affirmation that mission is the mother of theology.

It was the need to reconsider what it means to be sent as the Son was sent, in his way for his purposes, that afforded a renewed theocentrism, a chastened ecclesiology, and a reframing of “everything” in relation to God’s being and act revealed in the sending of Son and Spirit. Undoubtedly, whenever a single formula attempts to designate what “everything” is about there must be tremendous repercussions. Many will continue to feel that missio Dei and its adjectival neologism “missional” are too provincial, too entrenched in the special concerns of missiology, to provide an adequate framework for “everything.” In the ensuing dialogue about the adequacy of our words, it is vital to remember that terminology is not what is truly at stake. Rather, it is the need somehow to speak about the concepts that should shape Christianity’s very worldview. Our capacity to obfuscate essential theological tenets is undisputed; our tendency to see ourselves and our world wrongly, undeniable. Whatever words we choose, we must not fail to speak about who God is in light of the sending of Jesus and the Spirit and what that means for everything we are and do.

Glossary of Key Words

colonialism – n. (a) the expansion of influence from one society to another with the aim of control, whether by literal colonization or by political and cultural domination; (b) specifically referring to the expansion of Western civilization during the 18th-20th centuries

ecclesiocentrism – n. (a) literally, church-centeredness, i.e., the placement of primary importance upon the church; (b) in missiology, the view that Christian mission has its source, sustenance, and culmination in the church

eschatology – n. (a) the theological study of the “end” (eschaton), referring to the “last day” as envisioned in the biblical narrative; (b) realized eschatology refers to the realization, to one degree or another, of end events in the present time, as in the realization of the kingdom of God in human history

humanist view – n. in this paper, the perspective of those who understand missio Dei to refer to a principle of God’s action in the world without necessary reference to the sending of Son and Spirit, thus affording humanity’s social and political agendas preeminence in the description of God’s mission

missio Dei – n. (a) a Latin phrase literally translated as mission of God or sending of God, the meaning of which varies depending upon the theological disposition of the speaker; (b) originally, the sending of the Son and Spirit; (c) in other usage, the principle of God’s immediate involvement in the improvement of the human situation through secular political and historical processes; (d) in recent English usage, the purpose or goal of God

missional – adj. (a) describing something that is related to God’s mission in an essential way; (b) often connotes the corrective assertion that something should not be understood apart from God’s mission, as in “missional church”

missionary – n. (a) a sent person; (b) in traditional usage, a person sent to carry out the purposes of God or the church, usually cross-culturally; adj. (c) of or related to persons sent, as in “missionary endeavor”; (d) sometimes used synonymously with missional, where the notion of being sent in the usual sense is absent, as in “the church is missionary is it very nature”

missions – n. (a) the church’s work of “sending,” whether near or far, for the purpose of participation in God’s mission, synonymous with mission work, as in “domestic missions” or “domestic mission work”; (b) sometimes synonymous with missio ecclesiae, a Latin phrase literally translated as mission of the church, which denotes the categorical difference between the church’s activity and God’s activity; (c) sometimes reserved for particular activities such as evangelization and church planting

salvation history – n. (a) a concept developed in Biblical Theology to express the relationship between secular history and history as the Bible tells it in terms of God’s saving acts; (b) denotes the continuous, epochal account of God’s work in history understood by virtue of particular moments of redemption or revelation recorded in the Bible; (c) functionally synonymous with postmodern usage of “biblical narrative” or “metanarrative,” which express a unified story not in terms of modernist “history” but in terms of a worldview that places all history in relation to its particular epistemological claims

teleology – n. (a) the theological study of purpose (telos); (b) specifically, the study of the purposes of God, especially in relation to his mission

theocentrism – n. (a) literally, God-centeredness, i.e., the placement of primary importance upon God; (b) in missiology, the view that Christian mission has its source, sustenance, and culmination in God

traditionalist view – n. in this paper, the perspective of those who understand missio Dei to define mission as particularly God’s, though never without reference to the church’s participation in that mission, thus maintaining the church’s traditional instrumentality

Greg McKinzie (http://gregandmeg.net/greg) is a missionary in Arequipa, Peru, where he partners in holistic evangelism with Team Arequipa (http://teamarequipa.net) and The Christian Urban Development Association (http://cudaperu.org). He is a graduate (MDiv) of Harding Graduate School of Religion. He can be contacted at gemckinzie@gmail.com.

Bibliography

Ahonen, Tiina. “Antedating Missional Church: David Bosch’s Views on the Missionary Nature of the Church and on the Missionary Structure of the Congregation.” Swedish Missiological Themes 92, no. 4 (2004): 573-89.

Bauckham, Richard. Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003.

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American Society of Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Engelsviken, Tormod. “Missio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Concept in European Churches and Missiology.” International Review of Mission 92, no. 367 (October 2003): 481-97.

Flett, John G. “Missio Dei: A Trinitarian Envisioning of a Non-Trinitarian Theme.” Missiology: An International Review 37, no. 1 (January 2009): 5-18.

Gospel and Our Culture Network. “eSeries No. 2.” The Gospel and Our Culture. http://www.gocn.org/resources/newsletters/2009/01/gospel-and-our-culture.

Guder, Darrell. “Missio Dei: Integrating Theological Formation for Apostolic Vocation.” Missiology: An International Reiview 37, no. 1 (2009): 63-74.

Günther, Wolfgang. “The History and Significance of the World Mission Conferences in the 20th Century.” International Review of Mission 92, no. 367 (October 2003): 521-37.

Kinnamon, Michael and Brian E. Cope. The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

Moreau, A. Scott, Gary R. Corwin, and Gary B. McGee. Introducing World Missions: A Biblical Historical and Practical Survey. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.

Neill, Stephen. Creative Tension. London: Edinburgh House Press, 1959.

Richebächer, Wilhelm. “Missio Dei: The Basis of Mission Theology or a Wrong Path?” International Review of Mission 92, no. 367 (October 2003): 588-605.

Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006.

Preparing to go to the mission field as a recent graduate student, I was compelled to consider subscribing to academic journals. These journals are the natural way to stay plugged into conversations that have become important for the ongoing formation of a soon-to-be practitioner such as myself. In my experience, if we learn anything from professional training, it is that we are very far from finished learning. Even the most modest amount of ministry experience confirms this, inciting us to find conversation partners that can speak to the realities we confront in the service of the kingdom. Some of these realities are very practical; some are very theological. And sometimes hard-won wisdom suggests that there is little difference between the two. Whatever their nature, these formative conversations have, for all of us, taken place within a specific context, a church tradition with its own voice in the discourse. Shockingly, however, there has existed no means (since 1996,1 at least) for missiological conversation partners from my own tradition to take their place at the table alongside my other subscriptions.

My consternation at this situation was compounded by the Stone-Campbell Movement’s (SCM) potentially rich contribution to the field. While my own experience is limited to the Churches of Christ (a cappella), I can assert as a matter of history that the SCM has been deeply involved in missions, and no few of its higher-learning institutions have taken part in the emergence of the sub-discipline of missiology in the last century. Yet, with a few notable exceptions (one of whom, I am pleased to say, is among our first contributors), the SCM’s chorus of voices has not been heard by the wider missiological community. And we are, I suggest, all the poorer for it, because it is the interchange that enables us to grow. It should probably be said at this point that there is little of brand loyalty in all this talk of tradition. Rather, it reflects the lesson, which the heirs of Stone and Campbell have learned the hard way, that a historical self-consciousness is far more productive than the presumption of autonomy and traditionlessness. Those working on the present project, though we are fundamentally committed to the mission of God, do so from within the SCM, aware that it affects how we hear and speak, in joyful communion with others in the same tradition, eager to engage generatively with those who hear and speak differently. This is the vantage from which we appreciate the SCM’s missiological contribution and also hope and pray to see it enriched by other perspectives.

As far as ministry experience goes, we also realize that it is not merely academic voices that long for an outlet but also those of seasoned practice. If we are really going to attempt to mine the riches of a tradition, why not go all the way, even at the risk of unconventionality? This impulse coincides with recent expressions in both missiology and theology that point toward a far more holistic vision of God’s mission in the first place. That is to say, by acknowledging previously unrecognized arenas of and participants in mission, a way has opened for us to bring new and exciting conversation partners to the table. Though the dialect from context to context is often somewhat different than scholar-speak, it is certainly no more incomprehensible (likely far less so, in fact), and we are all called, in the end, to the very missionary task of learning to communicate with one another. In short, we’re excited at the prospect of a medium through which any reflective participant in God’s mission can speak. So much, then, for a traditional academic journal.

The initial impulse to hold academia and practice in tension was but the first glimmer of a much greater endeavor to overcome false dichotomies between theory and practice. For that is what these dichotomies ultimately are: false. While we have grown accustomed to, even rewarded by, our niches and specializations and gifts, we only ever engage in monologues when we are trapped within the confines of our provincial subcultures. We manage to talk about “scholarship” and “practical ministry” as though they are competing forces, employing seemingly incompatible languages, each implicitly asserting the superiority of its epistemological norms. Scholar or minister, theory or practice, academic (journal) or popular (magazine), footnotes or endnotes, but never both, and so the great divide becomes indisputable and, perhaps, unbridgeable.

This caricature of “we” cannot really withstand experience, of course, as we all know professor-practitioners or minister-scholars. Yet, the dichotomy persists somehow as young editors begin to cobble ideas together and find that they “have to” cater to a niche audience. Why? Because publishing, perhaps in simpler terms than any other endeavor, reveals the actual state of the disunion and does so in terms of bald disinterest. Perhaps Sir Thomas More put it best when he said, “Low brows find everything heavy going that isn’t completely low brow. High brows reject everything as vulgar that isn’t a mass of archaisms.” We don’t speak each other’s language, and when it comes to actually listening to one another, it shows. “What could your academic prattle do for my actual situation on the ground,” says the practitioner. “What could your earthy anecdotes contribute to my studied reflection,” says the scholar. Of course, what the professor-practitioner and the minister-scholar know is that the answer to both questions is, a great deal. And what the missionary knows is that the real issue is communication, not relevance.

Yet, the niching of the publishing industry has only served to reinforce the natural barriers to communication across fields of expertise, and this plays right into the hands of postmodern consumerism, meaning there is also an economic incentive urging us not to challenge readers who know what they like. Needless to say (one might wish), the mission of God calls this sort of provincialism to account, issuing a vocation to the people of God to speak cross-culturally as both learners and sharers, not least when it comes to speaking within the Christian community about the mission itself. What this all means for the project we have come to call Missio Dei is not that we invent a mystical method of translation that makes the low brow palatable to the high brow and vice versa but rather that we set aside the boxes and create a hybrid, a journal that is about holding in creative tension the voices of the Christian subcultures that must be heard in a truly holistic dialogue about God’s mission.

Missio Dei is, therefore, neither academic nor popular, neither theological nor practical. It is a place for interchange. There will be unapologetically academic contributions, with latinisms and technical jargon and dense footnotes. There will be stories, anecdotes, and essays, with easy-to-read prose and contractions and an utter lack of secondary sourcing. There will be artistic expression as well, both lyric and graphic. There will be even more than all this. But let it be said that this is not an effort to provide “something for everyone.” It is, unequivocally, an effort to bring everyone into one conversation about the mission of God, in the deep mutuality that belongs to the people of God, for his kingdom and his glory.

It is perhaps dangerously close to cliché to name a journal Missio Dei. Yet, there is something about the idea of missio Dei that remains fundamentally important for those of us advocating this discourse. It is, in that sense, always the fitting banner for missiological conversation. At the same time, there is something about the present moment that incites us to say once more, in words writ large, that this is God’s mission. These are times when it seems especially evident how exciting it is to be involved in what God is doing. All over the world, in the midst of a riotous variety of expression, the church is rediscovering God’s mission and, therefore, her own. This emerging awareness, accompanied by a rearrangement of frameworks and priorities, indeed, a reexamination of fundamental assumptions, beckons the whole church to community discourse.

Naturally enough, that discourse must begin with—and often return to—a conversation about the mission of God itself. Can God’s mission, as a theological concept, bear the weight that many would presently place upon it? Is it, as an expression, really just one way among many of saying what we all mean—a place holder, stylish one decade and antiquated the next? Or do we in fact mean very different things? And more fundamentally, is it really conceivable that Christianity sidelined and distorted something as central and essential to its very identity as even cautious advocates would suggest “the mission of God” to be? These questions, broadly sketched as they are, merely hint at the tangle of issues that comprise the ongoing discourse about the many concepts and practices rooted in a reality that has come to be identified as missio Dei—the mission of God.

Our first issue is themed “Rediscovering Missio Dei” as well, because we felt it would be valuable for readers to engage with the concept straightaway, encased as it is within one of those esoteric Latin phrases that make ideas feel inaccessible to some and irrelevant to others. Either way, we need to overcome a lot of (probably justified) shoulder shrugging and eye rolling by getting to the marrow of the matter quickly. There, we pray, a generative conversation will begin.