Tag Archives: mission

More on the Mission of God

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On more than one occasion, I’ve questions whether the terms ‘missiology‘ or ‘mission of God‘ (even when written in Latin a missio Dei) are actually very useful terms. They are used in so many different ways that you are never quite sure what people mean by them.

In a recent article, Ed Stetzer highlights the evolution of the term ‘Misison of God’ and notes why some Evangelicals are reluctant to use it. This quote gets to the heart of the issue:

Johannes Hoekendijk and others, sought to define themissio dei as larger than the church. Their concern was that the mission of God was more than church extension–and they were partially right.

Hoekendijk challenged the member bodies in the World Council of Churches to abandon both the traditional form of church and the traditional approach to missions. He held that the congregations should abandon their buildings and institutions and become bands of roving ministers, believing that the time for evangelistic mission work had passed. This was called participating in the missio dei.

Because of this history, and much of the social justice emphasis (or “social gospel” depending on your view), evangelicals have historically shied away from missio deitheology. For example, there is this telling description in the Evangelical Dictionary of Missions under the heading, “Missio Dei”:

Hoekendijk challenged missionaries to identify and integrate with the suffering masses, seeking to realize God’s shalom on earth. As this occurred in the 1960′s and 70′s, the World Council’s ministry focused almost entirely on social, economic, and political “liberation.” Positively, the WCC reminded evangelicals that Jesus came feeding and healing as well as teaching and preaching. Evangelicals, especially the neo-evangelicals, admitted they had presented a “one-sided Gospel,” as Ron Sider put it. Unfortunately, the leaders in the World Council of Churches also advocated a “one-sided Gospel,” one that neglected humanity’s need for reconciliation with God.

However, you really need to read all of Ed’s article (and the associated links) if you want to get a full picture of what he is saying.

If you want some further background to the term missio Dei, you could do worse than read my chapter in James Butare’s book International Development in Kingdom perspective. It’s now available as a pdf here.

Cranmer on Mission and Education

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Archbishop Cranmer came out with this quote in the context of Christian schools, but it is of much wider relevance and well worth quoting:

Mission belongs to God and flows from the heart of God: it is not an exclusively human activity. There is perhaps no more vital a role for a mission-orientated church than engagement in the task of education, to help impart truth, forge peace, renew creation and tell of the redemption of humanity and the coming Kingdom. It is distinct from evangelisation – indeed, it is much bigger: it is not the task of church schools to convert children: it is, as Moltmann puts it, to embrace all activities that serve to liberate man from his slavery. Evangelism has to be the focus of mission, but expressed through love and transmitted and fostered by moral leadership.

It’s Not About Going

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Over the years, I’ve written a lot about the Great Commission and I’ve even published a little e-book on the subject which you can download for free from the right hand sidebar of this blog (or you can buy it from Amazon). 

One of the reasons I’ve written so much about these verses is that despite their prominence in Christian and mission writing, they are often poorly understood. This is excellently illustrated in a superb blog post entitled Greek-Geeking the Great Commission. It is geeky and it does have a bit of Greek in it, but don’t worry, it isn’t too complex – go and read it! Here is a sample to whet your appetite.

Idea #1 – Going.  The idea here is not “go on a mission trip” or “go somewhere.”  The participle conveys a continuous action that is already happening right now, but that also continues to happen into the future.  So, the idea is more like… “As you’re going along in your life.”  The great commission is not a verbal command to go (stop, go back, and read that sentence again).  It is a command to disciple as you are already going.  Going where?  Answer:everywhere.

That means that the great commission is not about going on trips to evangelize people who speak a different language, even though that is a legitimate thing to do.  The “going” in the great commission is best understood as a fact that is taken for granted.  It would be more like, “While you’re going through your daily routine, you, yes you – you who work there at the prison or the restaurant – as you are going along doing what you do, and going wherever yougo… disciple!”  That means that every person can participate in the great commission without ever going on a trip, because we’re all involved in this Greek participle “going.”  We are all going through life in the every-day stuff.  We all have a well worn path that we walk every day, and that is the place where we do the great commission, which is to disciple.

Books I Have Read: The Ministry of a Messy House

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I’m not sure how to describe this book. At one level it is easy to describe it; it’s an excellent book, well written and genuinely easy to read. I don’t have the slightest hesitation in recommending that you read it.

My difficulty, is that I’m not sure how to classify it. It is part guide to modern Christian life (with some good practical hints) and part extended practical theology. This is partly reflected in the title and subtitle. In the Ministry of a Messy House, vicar’s wife Amanda Robbie gives us glimpses into her hectic life with its struggles and triumphs. Those who follow her blog will recognise many of the characters and some of the stories, but the book is none the worse for that. The picture emerges of a family who are very busy, not always organised (buttered bread for Holy Communion), but who are constantly seeking to share their lives and faith with others – sometimes at significant cost. Each chapter closes with a few practical suggestions: things that the Robbie’s have found work for their family and which might help others. If this was all the book did, it would be a good book – though not very relevant to a late middle aged bloke with grown up kids, like me.

However, the subtitle is Grace Instead of Guilt; and this is what sets the book apart from the plethora of family and housekeeping advice out there.  Running through the book is an extended reflection on the way in which we need to live our lives in the light of Scripture and its calling on us, rather than on the expectations created by the world. Essentially, this is a book of missional theology; exploring how to live out the Christian life in that most difficult of workplaces – the home!

As I read it, I found myself thinking back to Chris Wright’s The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (review here). Amanda Robbie’s book is less ambitious than Chris Wright’s work, but the balance of solid theology and practical advice is very similar. Those who know me, will recognise this as praise indeed!

One last comment; it would be sad if this were to become thought of as a woman’s book; men need to read it too.

I should mention that the publishers, IVP, provided me with a review copy of this book. However, this has not affected what I have said. If it was a stinker, I’d have said so – but it isn’t!

Reasons To Be Changing (part 3)

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To my mind, there are three reasons why the Western missionary movement needs to be transformed.

  • Most obviously: because of the growth of the Church in what used to be called mission fields.
  • Most importantly; because our theology and practice of mission have often been based on a few proof texts, rather than on a holistic reading of Scripture.
  • Most urgently; because the church in the West has changed dramatically over the last few decades.

I’ve blogged on the first two issues numerous times over the years, but I’ve not said a great deal about the third one. However, this week I read two blog posts which give a very challenging assessment of the Church situation in the west. I strongly recommend that you read both posts in their entirety.

The first is by John Stevens from the UK:

In the not too distant past, perhaps even into the late 1950s, gospel ministry in Britain involved calling people to live according to the beliefs and values that the society around them, at least outwardly, affirmed and supported. Conversion did not intrinsically require such a dramatic change of world-view, culture and values. Today this is no longer the case. The rapid collapse of both public and private Christian faith over the past 150 years, which resulted in the inevitable abandonment of Christian culture and values, means that evangelism is no longer a matter of calling British people to “come home” to what they purportedly believed already, whilst offering them relief from the guilt they felt because they had not lived up to the standards to which they gave their intellectual assent.

Kevin Bauder writes from a US perspective, but his words could equally apply on this side of the Atlantic.

American Christians have been living as if the sun shone upon them, but the shadows are falling and the light grows dim. The time has come to abandon the daylight paradigm and to adopt the paradigm of the Dark Age. Christians must adjust their eyes to see in the night.

What assumptions must Christians adopt during the Dark Age? Their basic perspective can be summed up in a few brief propositions. First, the expression of their views will be increasingly unwelcome, especially in the public square. Second, their ability to operate from the relative insulation of a subculture will be directly challenged. Third, pressure will increase, both officially and unofficially, to call good evil and evil good. Fourth, Christians will have no weight to throw around in either the social or political spheres.

Under this altered perspective, Christians must not view themselves as Moses, leading a nation into the promised land. They must not even view themselves as Elijah, calling a chosen people to repentance. They must view themselves as Mordecai or Daniel, as exiles in a brutal and foreign land—just as they should have all along. (Emphasis mine.)

If these perspectives are true, and I believe they are, this poses a real challenge for those of us with a calling to encourage the British church to be involved in world mission. However, I don’t see this as a counsel of despair, my first two bullet points give plenty of reason for encouragement and hope.

  • The growth of the World church gives hope for the future of the Church in the UK. The more we are involved in serving and learning from our brothers and sisters around the world, the better equipped we will be to face the challenges of the future. The growing church in Africa and Asia has faces challenges very similar to the ones now confronting the Church in the UK and we can learn so much from them. However, if our attitude to mission is the commonly held (but counterfactual) view that it is our role simply to give and not to receive, we will be in a bit of a mess.
  • Theologically; the success of mission is dependant on the sovereign action of God, not on the actions of Christians in one part of the world. If the British church doesn’t play a role in world mission, it is the British church that will suffer. God will accomplish his purpose with or without us. If a vision to serve the peoples of the world doesn’t motivate us, then self-interest should!

I picked up on these themes in my short talk at the celebration for work at the Wycliffe Centre last week. I also went into this in more depth in a talk called Mission out of Exile at the last Global Connections conference.

By the way, the title is an obscure cultural reference and should not be taken to imply that you have missed parts one and two, nor indeed that there will be a part four.

A Challenge to the Church in the UK

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This photo was taken at the event we held to celebrate 41 years of Wycliffe work at Horsleys Green, before the Centre closes and we all move on.

I concluded my talk with these words:

“Christ will build his church and the gates of hell will not stand against it. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. But if the British church is to continue to play a significant role in this, Wycliffe and other mission agencies have an uphill climb ahead of us.”

If you would like to read more, you can do so here.

A Guide to Mission Terminology

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A couple of years ago, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I wrote the definitive guide to Bible translation terms. In the same spirit, I feel that I should write a guide to terms used in discussion about mission, so here goes:

  • Missional: my church is more exciting than your church.
  • Missiology: the study of the way that I do mission and why other people are wrong.
  • Missiological: you agree with me.
  • missio Dei: not only am I right, but God agrees with me (eg, an approach based on the missio Dei means…). This is the equivalent of playing the ‘God card’ in discussions about guidance. “God told me to do it” actually means, “I don’t need to listen to your advice”.
  • Missional Hermeneutic: reading the Bible in the way that I want you to.

Before you throw something at your computer, or write a rude comment on my blog or Facebook – this is posted under humour. However, behind the humour is a real issue. Reading widely in mission studies both on paper and on the internet, I find that different authors use these terms in very different ways. I have already blogged on this with reference to the terms missiology and missio Dei. 

Recently I came across another couple of quotes which deepened my conviction that we do confuse ourselves by the way in which we talk about mission. In a review of Shawn Redford’s Book Missiological Hermeneutics (American Society of Missiology Monograph) Jerry Hwang writes:

In conclusion, the overarching weakness in Redford’s book appears to be the ambiguity over what a “missiological hermeneutic” actually is. Redford frequently uses the terms “missiological” and “missional” interchangeably, yet this tendency to conflate distinct terms while simultaneously using them in a maximalist way (i.e., anything to do with cross-cultural ministry, missiology, the Abrahamic blessing, or a deeper awareness of God’s international purposes) fails to bring clarity to the ongoing debate over what is entailed by the terms mission, the missio Dei, and missiological/missional/missionary hermeneutics.

… Though it may seem trivial to argue over definitions, the history of mission in the twentieth century has shown that confusion over the scope of the missio Dei results in paralyzing disagreements over the missio ecclesiae in the world.

While I found this on the Gospel and Our Culture Network Site (the whole paper is worth reading):

A couple of meetings ago, I began to notice what seemed to me to be some sharp differences emerging between the various proposals being made about what a missional hermeneutic is. We had not achieved a uniform definition, it seemed to me, and perhaps not even a uniform way to pose the question. Now some of the proposals were beginning to speak to and about each other, cordially, but with some degree of candor, as well. Even where the proposals did not present themselves in that way, distinctions of approach and nuance and accent and aim were becoming more apparent, at least to me. All of this, I believed, and continue to believe, is a sign of maturation in this emerging field of hermeneutical reference.

As this latter quote indicates, there is no clear shared understanding of the term missional hermeutic. However, this is not necessarily negative, it is a sign of the way that the field is developing and growing. The same could be said for any of the terms for which I gave my definitions at the top of the post. Different authors use them in different ways and to apply to different phenomena. The problem arises when we don’t realise that those differences are there.

Update: as I was writing this post, Simon Cozens posted the following on Facebook:

It’s often hard to tell the difference between “theology” and “missiology”, but here’s a useful rule of thumb: if it has any actual practical applications at all, it’s missiology.

I’ll leave it to you to decide if you agree or not.

Paradigms and Pounds

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A few days ago, I wrote a piece which suggested some of the elements which need to be taken into account in developing a new paradigm for Western involvement in mission – but I didn’t mention money. However, it is often suggested that the way to renew mission work is to stop sending missionaries and to send money instead. The new paradigm in mission is to support local/national/native (missionaries rather than send Westerners).

This is a huge question and I’m not going to draw any satisfactory conclusions in a short blog post, but here are a few fairly random thoughts.

  • Rich Christians should be generous with their money. End of story – there is no need for debate on this.
  • However, while generosity is right, it can have a negative impact by creating dependencies, lack of local accountability and such like. These issues have to be carefully balanced and managed and donors need to understand the them. Vinoth Ramachandra recently wrote an excellent post exploring some of these questions.
  • The regulations on transfer of charitable funds from the West to other countries may involve the imposition of fairly stringent conditions on the partners in the developing world which are not always helpful.
  • The case for supporting national workers as opposed to Westerners has sometimes been overstated. Mark Pickett has written an excellent review (part 1, part 2) of one influential book which throws the baby out with the bath water.
  • It is NOT a new paradigm! Whether the West is sending money or people, we still have the West as the one providing the resources and the rest of the world receiving. The seat of power and influence has not moved, the only thing that hs changed is the way in which the power and influence are expressed. A new paradigm of mission needs to see a rebalancing of the relationship between the West and the rest. We need to learn to receive as well as to give and to value contributions beyond the financial ones.

There is no easy solution to this issue (though plenty of people claim to offer just that). The Wycliffe Global Alliance, a grouping of mission agencies, churches and denominations drawn from all continents apart from Antarctica is working on this issue; it’s going to be interesting to see where things fall out in the Bible translation world.

Books I have Read: The Meeting Of The Waters

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 OK, let’s get the important stuff out of the way. Currently, The Meeting of the Waters: 7 Global Currents That Will Propel the Future Church is available for Kindle for £1.99 (it was free until yesterday). At that price it is an absolute steal and if you are involved in Church or mission leadership you should buy it. Do it now.

Right, now that’s dealt with, what about the book?

From 2006-2007 the author, Fritz Kling (who is apparently famous, though I’ve not heard of him) was involved in an exercise called the “Global Church Listening Tour”. This consisted of asking 191 church leaders in 15 countries questions about the future of the Church. The book emerges from that “Tour” and highlights seven major themes; these are:

  • Mercy: The church must address the physical and material needs of humanity, not just their spiritual needs.
  • Mutuality: The church in the developed world must interact with the majority world as peers, not as patrons who seek to control the use of their patronage.
  • Migration: The church must minister to populations that are increasingly multinational, multiracial, and multiethnic.
  • Monoculture: The church must realize that globalization is making local cultures increasingly similar to one another, and this face presents both challenges and opportunities.
  • Machines: The church must utilize technology (especially computers) to accomplish its mission.
  • Mediation: The church must take the lead in making peace and resolving the conflicts that increasingly characterize global culture.
  • Memory: The church must take into account the fact that memory (especially of tragedy and oppression) shapes the way that people respond to the gospel.

For the most part, this is a very helpful and informative analysis. I do, however have a number of slight reservations. For the most part the book describes the trends that it highlights without a great deal of critical engagement. The weakest part is the chapter on Monoculture, which really never gets to grips with the issues in a thought through or theologically balanced manner. It’s obvious that the author has never read Beyond Empire:Postcolonialism & Mission in a Global Context, but he should.

However, that being said, this is still a worthwhile book. I particularly enjoyed the section on mutuality, which chimed with a number of my recent blog posts. I’ll close with a quote:

For generations, outside Christians ably spearheaded evangelism and church-planting ministries in countries around the world. Now, however, indigenous Christians have been empowered by education, travel, and access, and they are confidently taking charge. For instance, we asked Listening Tour interviewees whether it was appropriate for outside missionaries to evangelise and plant churches in their country, and the responses were consistent;

  • “No, evangelism is a strength of the Ecuadoran church.”
  • “No, outsiders should no longer be the primary evangelists to Africa.”
  • “Only if done with Ugandans.”
  • “No, enough Guatamalans are planting churches.”
  • “No, its better for the Nepalese to do this.”
  • “Maybe if it’s combined with a local church or group. But we need Brazilian leadership.”
  • “Indians should probably plant their own churches.”

Along with increased confidence, some respondents also showed levels of resentment and indignation about past relationships. A very prominent African pastor pointed out that, not only is the need decreasing for outside missionaries to Africa, but wealthier countries now need missionaries from Africa to steer them away from increasingly materialistic and secular cultural leanings.

Mutuality may be the single most Current for understanding how to support, work with, and pray for Christian movements around the world. Unfortunately, practising mutuality does not come easily to people of wealth, including this American. People with money and power easily become blind to resources that Christians from other countries bring to the table. True mutuality among players from different corners of the globe is, in fact, quite rare. The urge to “go it alone” is powerful. Collaboration, and the mutuality it fosters is expensive in terms of time, energy, and money… and ego.

 

Hokey-Cokey Contextualisation

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You put your right arm in, you put your right arm out…

Most people are aware of the concept of contextualisation. The notion that missionaries should present the Gospel in a way which speaks into the culture to which it is being addressed. The result is that the expression of Christianity in the UK today is different to its expression in contemporary rural Africa and both are different to the way in which the Apostles lived and worshipped. The message doesn’t change, but the cultural expression does. So far, so good.

However, one of the implications of yesterday’s blog post on mission paradigms is that we don’t just need to think about the culture that the Gospel is being contextualised into, we also need to think about the culture that it is being contextualised out of.

Let’s be honest; British Christians don’t always have the enthusiasm or spiritually vitality of their brothers and sisters in the majority world. We have much to learn from them, but this doesn’t mean we have nothing to contribute. For example, the British church has a great tradition of Biblical studies and expository preaching. Yes, these need to be contextualised for new situations; but they should not be minimised. Equally, Christians from other parts of the world bring strengths from their history and traditions.

Cross cultural missionaries need to build on the strengths that they bring from their background and apply them in a culturally appropriate way. They need to contextualise in two directions.

The increasingly shrill voices I hear that suggest that Western missionaries need to become more like Latins, Africans or Asians are missing the point. Western missionaries need to become better Westerners and better cross-cultural servants.

Of course, I fully realise that for much of mission history, Western Christians have imposed their culture and norms on the rest of the Church – and it still happens. However, as the pendulum swings back, we need to avoid the opposite extreme.

By the way, if you are not sure what contextualisation is, this video might help:

Global Connections Conference 09 Contextualisation from Eddie Arthur on Vimeo.

Eddie Arthur of Wycliffe Bible translators talks about the importance and implications of contextualising the Gospel.

Issues in Mission: Elements of A New Paradigm

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We need to completely rethink our approach to mission and to supporting mission work from the UK. Tinkering at the edges and solving problems are no longer enough.

I wrote these words a few days ago in a blog post which suggested that we need a completely new paradigm or set of wineskins for overseas’ mission today. In this post, I’d like to suggest three elements for this new paradigm.

We Need Structural Change: this is probably the easiest one to describe, but perhaps the hardest one to do. Surveys show that the number of Christians in the UK is falling; conversely the number of mission agencies is increasing. This isn’t sustainable and at some point in the future we are going to see a lot of agencies closing down in a very short time. Assuming that most of these agencies are doing something useful, this would be a huge shame. The only alternative is to manage the drop in numbers by looking to merge and combine mission ministries before it is too late. This means that agency boards and management have to look beyond the narrow interests of their own organisations and to focus on the long term survival of the work they are involved in. My experience shows that this is far harder to do in practice than you might imagine.

We Need Relationship Changes: Western churches and Christians have been accustomed to believe that they are the centre of the Church; the ones who call the shots in leadership and mission; this recent post highlights this. The comparative rates of growth of the Church in the West and in the Global South give the lie to this assumption. Those of us who are Westerners need to get used to the idea that we have a huge amount to learn from the church in the wider world. This means that mission agencies need to give serious attention to blessing the Church in the traditional sending countries through the things that God is doing in the erstwhile mission fields.

On the other side of the coin, we need to realise that the West still has something to contribute. Many writers from the Global South and many missionaries who have compared the growth of the Church worldwide with their home situations have written off the contribution of the Western church. They see it as needy and moribund, with little to offer. This is as much of a mistake as seeing the West as the Centre of things: in truth the body of Christ worldwide is interdependent and needs to learn how to function in this way.

Mission agencies have a huge amount to contribute in helping to develop this interdependency. However, agencies often have a vested interest in promoting the old paradigm where Westerners are sent out in large numbers to the wider world. This was highlighted in the original post which prompted me to write this series of articles.

The mission agency is struggling in its home office to fund the operation, and its leaders are glad to get new recruits who will have to pay 13% operational funds.  There may be other benefits to the agency or its key members as new recruits contribute some of their support to the overall work of the mission.  The mission agency needs to keep accepting missionaries to fund its operations and replace missionaries who have left the mission.

We Need To Learn to Think Theologically: mission agencies are great absorbers of management and leadership literature. Effectiveness, impact and speed are terms that crop up all over missionary literature. However, effectiveness and impact are often achieved at the cost of relationships, service and sacrifice. The Biblical model of taking up our cross and following Christ is less attractive than changing the world. We need a radical refocus of planning and consultation processes to be more theologically thought through and focussed. Some might call this missiology, but I have become rather allergic to the term.

There is a lot more could be said, but this will do for a start.

Issues in Mission: Wine, Wineskins and Paradigms

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We need to completely rethink our approach to mission and to supporting mission work from the UK. Tinkering at the edges and solving problems are no longer enough.

This is another in my series of posts in response to Rollins Gram’s articles on issues in mission. When I first posted a link to these posts on Facebook, a friend commented that it was all well and good to raise issues, but where could we find the people working towards solutions. To which I replied, that I’m not convinced that the idea of a solution is a useful one today. This post is an attempt to explain why, I believe this.

A couple of years ago, I was in a prayer meeting and someone prayed, asking God that Britain would once again become a great missionary sending nation as it had been in the past. (Do I hear an amen?)

Actually, I’d rather not hear an amen. I believe that going back to where we were is the last thing we need.

A hundred years ago, the majority of Christians lived in the Western World and missionaries were sent in huge numbers from Britain (and other countries) to the rest of the world to bring the Gospel. This endeavour was incredibly successful; so much so that the church has grown enormously in areas where there were virtually no Christians just a few decades ago. At the same time, the percentage of Christians in the West has declined precipitously. To quote  well worn phrase, there has been a shift in the Centre of Gravity of the Church. The role and place of cross-cultural missionaries has changed dramatically over the last one hundred years and we need to think through what this means for the future. Even if we could solve all of the problems that Gram raises in his paper – we still wouldn’t have addressed the pressing issue of what mission looks like in a post-Christendom world. Fixing the things that have gone wrong in order to go back to what we were doing so successfully before, is not an option; we need a new way of thinking about mission for a very different new world.

All of this is before we mention other issues which have an impact on mission: the decline in the number of Christians in the UK coupled with a (counterintuitive) rise in the number of denominations, the ageing of the Church (according to the last Churches census, 59% of churches have no one in the age range 20 to 30), the multiplication of mission agencies … And so it goes on.

To take misquote Jesus, I don’t believe that we can fit the wine of cross-cultural mission into the old wineskins of our attitudes, structures and approaches. Or, in other words, we need a paradigm shift (of which, more later, perhaps).