Conference on the ”Missional Church”. Konferencecenteret, Århus University, 1 September 2004. Host: Prof. Viggo Mortensen
“The Church’s Missional Vocation: The Witness of Continuing Conversion”
Darrell L. Guder
Introduction:
The genesis of the term and the theme “missional church”
- Lesslie Newbigin’s missiological project from the 1970’s on
- His discovery that Britain (and the west) had become a particularly difficult mission field in a relatively short period of time
- His question: “Can the west be saved?”
- His question to the churches: “Can the churches in the west become ‘missionary churches’ again?”
- Relevance of his project:
- The obvious “end of Christendom” in various ways and at various stages in the North Atlantic cultures
- Secularization of our cultures
- Marginalization of the inherited church structures
- Emergence of a diversity of post-Christendom forms of church
- The massive shift of the center of gravity of world Christianity (see Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom ) – “the great new fact of our time” (Archbishop Temple)
- The perplexity and struggle of the ‘old churches’ of western Christendom (e.g., in the Presbyterian Church [USA]: membership loss, theological pluralism, unending controversy, threat of schism)
1. What happened to ‘mission’ in the course of Christendom?
- Complex issues, requiring careful analysis: both modesty and conviction, appreciation and critique.
- Observable shift from early, pre-Constantinian Christianity: the church was ‘missionary by its very nature’.
- Apostolic formation of communities whose purpose was the continuation of the apostolic mission.
- The missional purpose of the New Testament documents
- The defining character of ‘witness’ as the self-understanding of the ancient church.
- Kähler: ‘Mission is the mother of theology’
- Then: Christendom – the ‘Constantinian project’.
- The important task of definition – the situation that arises whenever and wherever the Christian community grows and expands to the extent that its public witness is coupled with social and even political influence and power.
- For western Christendom: establishment, cultural hegemony, adaptation to the hierarchical and patriarchal structures of kingdom and empire – and later, nation-state
- The disappearance of ‘mission’ in the gradual development of western Christendom
- Practical consequence of hegemony: who remains for ‘initial evangelization’?
- Instead of ‘mission’, the ongoing task of evangelization of already ‘Christianized’ populations (i.e.: Alcuin’s instructions under Charlemagne, the various forms of popular religious formation carried out by monastic communities; the catechetical role of ecclesial architecture)
- Strategic consequence of significant ‘reductionisms’ that subtly pervade the thinking and practice of Christendom:
- Focus upon salvation as a status defining one’s eternity
- Resulting emphasis upon the church as ‘institution of salvation’, and upon ecclesial administration of individual salvation
- Focus upon the benefits we receive from the gospel, without hearing the full message: the calling to be discipled in order to become part of the apostolate, the witness to the gospel.
- Dilution of the larger and former biblical context for mission: biblical eschatology - the biblical message of the inbreaking reign of God as the heart and thrust of the gospel which defines how the church is to function in its context and to challenge its context.
- Shenk: “Christendom is Christianity without mission”
- Reservation – significant mission movements in western Christendom, e.g. St. Patrick in Ireland, the Iro-Scottish Mission, the Slavic Mission
- Still, Shenk’s point is well taken in that western ecclesiology lacks any focus upon the church’s essentially missionary character – see both the ecclesiologies and the confessions!
- Corroboration: the development of the modern western missionary movement with virtually no theological reflection in the churches of the sending cultures.
- The problem of the insufficient ecclesiologies of the mission societies.
2. Reclaiming the ‘missional nature of the church’
- A note on the language: ‘missional’ rather than ‘missionary’ or ‘missiological’
- A terminology that speaks of mission holistically in terms of purpose, nature, and action, rather than as one of many parallel functions of the church (e.g. worship/mission/service – mission as one of many ‘programs’ of the church).
- The significance of the theology of the missio Dei
- Critique of ecclesiocentric understandings of mission
- In terms of modern mission: mission as the ‘diffusion’ (Lamin Sanneh) of both western Christianity and western culture
- Definition of mission in terms of the person, character, and purposes of God:
- God is missionary by his very nature.
- God’s missional purpose expresses itself in calling and sending:
- The people of God
- The Son
- The Spirit
- The Church
- Definition of the church as the “sign, foretaste, and instrument” of God’s mission
3. Why ‘Conversion’ Rather than ‘Renewal’?
- Not merely a question of returning to something that once was:
- No golden age of the church or of mission to which we might resort
- No repristination of an idealized first century church
- Not merely a question of strategy or tactics
- Fundamental confrontation with basic questions (Newbigin’s triad)
- What is the gospel, and how must we encounter it anew?
- What is the purpose and practice of the church that is defined by the gospel?
- How do we appropriately read and respond to the context of our churches as ‘post-Christendom’?
- As a work of God’s Spirit, conversion cannot be manipulated or strategized. But the conversion of the church will follow upon its repentance, and we can consider what would constitute the ‘missional contrition’ of our churches:
- The assumption that our tradition represents ‘normative’ Christianity, that our confessions have become somehow canonical, that our institutions and doctrines set the standard for world Christianity
- The various aspects of cultural captivity with which the church has made its peace
- The functions and roles the Christendom churches accept that dilute or obstruct their missional faithfulness
- Problematic social and political relationships today:
- ‘Church and Marketplace’ in North America
- ‘Civil Religion’ in North America
- Cautious question about the way that the ‘folk church’ functions in Denmark
- The examples of the ‘evangelical counsels’ and their relevance for the formation of the missional church today (Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament !)
- The western problem of theological pluralism, rapidly becoming parallelism, with little consensus on the central question: Who is Jesus Christ and what is the good news he is and brings? (the Presbyterian dilemma)
- The converting challenge: our missional vocation – to witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ, demonstrated on the cross, at Easter, at Ascension, and at Pentecost.
- What does it mean for us ‘to lead our life worthy of the calling which we have received’
- To respond, to become the missional church God calls us to be, we must recognize anew that God continues to carry out his mission through he calling, gathering, forming and sending of his witnessing people. This is what the Holy Spirit enables us to be and to become. This is what the Scriptures equip us to be and to become. This is who we are and what we are for.
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