Missional Theology

An Introduction

Franke, John R.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493427048
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The notion of missional church and theology has become ubiquitous in the current ecclesial and theological landscape. But what is it all about? In this clear and accessible introduction to missional theology, noted theologian John Franke connects missional Christianity with the life and practice of the local church. He helps readers reenvision theology, showing that it flows from an understanding of the missional character and purposes of God. Franke also explores the implications of missional theology, such as plurality and multiplicity.

Chapter 1
Missional God

The starting point for missional theology is the notion of a missional God. This means simply that God is, by God’s very nature, a missionary God. In a more classical theological rendering, it means mission is an attribute of God. From this perspective, according to South African missiologist David Bosch, “mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God.”1 Put another way, in the oft repeated words of renowned German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill to the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church, creating a church as it goes on its way.”2

Affirmations such as these represent one of the most significant developments in the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century. They are shaped by a broad consensus among virtually all theological and ecclesial traditions that participate in ecumenical discourse: that the mission of the church finds its rationale in the missio Dei, the mission of God.

Missio Dei

The emergence of missio Dei theology is rooted in the history of reflection on the relationship between mission and the church. This reflection was fostered by the International Missionary Council (IMC), which came into being in the aftermath of the 1910 world missionary conference held in Edinburgh and was formally established in 1921. The Edinburgh conference brought together various mission organizations in hopes of fostering better cooperation among them in the task of evangelism, which was generally taken to be synonymous with mission.3 Mission was assumed to be evangelism, and its practitioners were predominantly Western missionaries connected to Western missionary societies. In that era the tendency was to associate Christianity with the West, distinguishing Christianity from the rest of the non-Christian world. Mission work was understood to be the work of evangelizing the non-Western, non-Christian world. In that context the conference’s focus was largely pragmatic, with little reflection on the theological framings of mission.4

With the formation of the IMC, theological questions began to emerge, and more forcefully in the aftermath of World War I in which the reputedly Christian nations of the West had attempted to destroy each other. This, coupled with the increasing recession of Christian commitment and the rapid growth of secularism, no doubt hastened by the war, considerably undermined the notion of the “Christian” West. In the midst of these circumstances, a new mood prevailed at the IMC conference in Jerusalem in 1928. Debate arose about the traditional notion of mission as little more than the evangelization of non-Christian nations. Questions were raised concerning the significance of social and political action with respect to Christian mission, and about the relationship between the Christian gospel and other religions. While no consensus was reached, the conference significantly altered the shape of the conversation.

As the church and the world faced the challenges of fascism, communism, and a second world war, these questions intensified at subsequent IMC conferences in Tambaram, India (1938), and Whitby, Canada (1947). The language of Christian and non-Christian countries was abandoned, opening the way to new possibilities with respect to the understanding and practice of Christian mission. In the midst of wrestling with these pressing questions, a new imagination concerning the basis for mission slowly began to take shape. The IMC moved from focusing on pragmatic questions concerning the practice of mission to a more basic one: Why mission?

At the 1952 IMC conference in Willingen, Germany, the answer to this question began to take shape with the clear emergence of missio Dei theology. While that exact term would not come into vogue until after the conference, the theological assertion was unmistakably indicated. The rationale for mission found its basis in the very nature of God.

The historical impulse for this theological and missiological revolution can be traced to the work of Karl Barth. In a paper presented at the Brandenburg missionary conference in 1932, he articulated an understanding of mission as an activity that finds its first expression in the life of God. Barth and Karl Hartenstein, a contemporary who shared this conviction, began to shape German missiological thinking in the decades that followed the Brandenburg conference, and Hartenstein is credited with coining the term missio Dei after the 1952 Willingen conference.

During the centuries preceding the development of missio Dei theology, mission had been understood in a variety of ways: in terms of salvation, in which individuals are rescued from eternal condemnation; in terms of culture, in which people from the majority world are introduced to the blessing and privileges of the Christian West; in ecclesial terms, in which the church expands and survives; and in social terms, in which the world is transformed into the kingdom of God by evolutionary or cataclysmic means. “In all of these instances, and in various, frequently conflicting ways, the intrinsic relationship between Christology, soteriology, and the doctrine of the Trinity, so important in the early church, was gradually displaced by one of several versions of the doctrine of grace.”5 From the perspective of the missio Dei theology that emerged from Willingen, mission is understood as being derived from the very nature of God. “Willingen’s image of mission was mission as participating in the sending of God. Our mission has no life of its own; only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission, not least since the missionary initiative comes from God alone.”6

From this perspective, mission no longer finds its basis in the church. Instead it is understood as a movement from God to the world, with the church functioning as a participant in that mission. Such participation invests the church in the movement of God’s love for the world and calls forth a response of witness and action consistent with that movement. Missio Dei theology asserts that God has a particular desire, arising from God’s eternal character, to engage with the world. For this reason, the idea of mission is at the heart of the biblical narratives concerning the work of God in human history. It begins with the call to Israel through Abraham to be God’s covenant people and the recipients of God’s covenant blessings for the purpose of blessing the world: “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” (Gen. 12:1–3).

The mission of God is at the heart of the covenant with Israel; it unfolded continuously over the course of the centuries in the life of God’s people, as recorded in the narratives of canonical Scripture. This missional covenant reached its revelatory climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and continues through the sending of the Spirit as the One who calls, guides, and empowers the community of Christ’s followers, the church, as the socially, historically, and culturally embodied witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the tangible expression of the mission of God. This mission continues today in the global ministry and witness to the gospel of churches in every culture around the world and, guided by the Spirit, moves toward the promised consummation of reconciliation and redemption in the eschaton.

Since Willingen, “the understanding of mission as missio Dei has been embraced by virtually all Christian persuasions” starting with Protestants and then by other ecclesial traditions including Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic.7 One of the challenges of this consensus is that, while it inseparably links the mission of the church with participation in the mission of God, there is no specific shared understanding of the precise nature of the church’s participation. Attempts to provide such specification have been contested and controversial. However, despite the lack of full conceptual clarity and continued discussion of its theological nuances, “missio Dei has become the defining paradigm of mission, being accepted by conciliar and evangelical Protestants, Pentecostals, and both Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. For almost 50 years, the concept has been often reaffirmed, for example by the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism.”8

While the connection between the mission of God and the mission of the church remains murky, ecumenical consensus has been secured on two important points. First, God, by God’s very nature, is a missionary God. Second, the church of this missionary God must therefore be a missionary church. To elaborate on the first point, mission is a part of God’s very nature and is expressed in the being and actions of God throughout eternity. This is made known by the sending of the Son into the world. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says to his disciples: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). The term mission is derived from the Latin words “to send” (mitto) and “sending” (missio). Mission means to send and be sent. The sending of the Father and the sentness of the Son and the Spirit point to the being and action of the triune God as both sender and sent. Mission is an attribute of God and part of God’s very nature.

The second point is connected to the first. There is a distinction between asserting that God has a mission and asserting that God is, by God’s very nature, a missionary. In the first instance, the action of mission may be incidental to and disconnected from the being of God; in the second instance, however, the action of mission is consistent with the very being of God because mission is one of the divine attributes. A missional church might worship a God who simply has a mission, but it is also possible that such a God could be worshiped by a church that lacks a missional focus. On the other hand, if mission is part of God’s very nature, then only a missional church can fully, truly worship such a God. As Stephen Holmes asserts, a church that refuses the call to mission is failing to be faithful to the God it worships, in the same way as a church that refuses the command to love. “Just as purposeful, cruciform, self-sacrificial sending is intrinsic to God’s own life, being sent in a cruciform, purposeful and self-sacrificial way must be intrinsic to the church being the church.”9

When viewed from the perspective of missio Dei theology, the church’s missionary activities can be understood in a new way. Mission in the singular, the mission of God, becomes primary, while the particular mission activities of the church, in the plural, are understood as derivative. In the post-Willingen context, the age of “missions” comes to a conclusion and the age of mission commences. Hence, we distinguish between the mission of God and the mission activities of the church and confess that the latter are authentic only when they faithfully participate in the missio Dei. The primary purpose of the mission activity of the church cannot simply be to save souls, or extend the influence of the temporal church, or plant new Christian communities. Instead it must be in continual service to the mission of God in and for the world, as well as against it. “In its mission, the church witnesses to the fullness of the promise of God’s reign and participates in the ongoing struggle between that reign and the powers of darkness and evil.”10

Some have challenged the usefulness of missio Dei theology, claiming that it lacks conceptual clarity and noting that some have used it to promote mutually exclusive theological positions. Nevertheless, it has served to articulate the vital point that the basis of mission is neither the church nor any human agent, but the triune God. The church is privileged to participate in this mission, but its basis is found in God.

One of the consequences of affirming that mission is an attribute of God and part of the divine nature is that we also must affirm that the mission of God does not have an end point. It will not cease at the consummatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Missional God
• 2. Missional Church
• 3. Missional Theology
• 4. Missional Multiplicity
• 5. Missional Solidarity
• Epilogue
• Index
• Back Cover