The Missional Rorschach Test

Based on some of the blogs, my series has spawned, or reignited, some thoughts on what it means to be "missional." That's a good thing, I think, as it will enable some cross conversations.

Here are a few:

• Brother Maynard

• Jamie Arpin-Ricci

• Bill Kinnon

But, I think that "missional" is like a Rorschach Test for many people. In a Rorschach Inkblot Test, a subject is asked to describe what he or she sees in random inkblots. It tells much about what a person is thinking and feeling. I think the same is true for all of us engaged in the missional conversation. To some degree how we define "missional" is determined by our pre-existing concerns about what is wrong, and what is right, with the church today.

So, before I reveal my own ideas (or perhaps as I do so), I think we need to look to history for the genesis of the ideas that have shaped "missional" today.

What is Missional?

For Acts 29, a missional church includes inerrancy.

For many Southern Baptists, being missional includes supporting the Cooperative Program (the denominations centralized mission strategy).

For those of a mainline persuasion, being missional tends to include more of a social justice focus than perhaps it does for evangelicals.

For some, missional and emerging are the same thing.

I am not seeking to (nor could I) disallow these emphases as part of the work "missional"-- I agree with some of them. But, I am saying that how people define missional has more to do with what they believe than it does with the term itself.

And, surprisingly, mission is not easy to define. Let me explain.

Defining Mission, Missions, and Missional

David Hesselgrave and I are currently co-editing a new book called Mission: God's Initiative in the World. It will be a missions textbook geared toward issues in the field of missiology.

The book is structured around three "grand essays" follow by two respondents to the essays with cross references to the others. The contributors are some of the leading missiologists of our day. In that book, we will also address briefly the issue of mission and missio dei.

Here is the outline of the "grand essays." (When we nail down the final "respondent essay," I will share all of them as well.)

Chuck Van Engen: Mission Described and Defined

Paul Hiebert: Changing Perspectives of Contextualization

Ralph Winter: The Future of Missions

(Many of you will be aware that Paul Hiebert recently died, just a few weeks after finishing his essay. We consider it a special honor to publish this work posthumously.)

In our book, Chuck Van Engen has the rather unenviable task of defining mission, missions, and missional--and he does all three with great discernment. That is not an easy task, but it is essential. And, if we are to define "missional" we have to determine what the mission "is."

In his essay, Chuck explains:

It would appear that 'mission' and 'missionaries' are two of the most misunderstood words in the vocabulary of North American churches today.

People use the words mission, missions, and missional in different ways. Thus, any discussion of missional cannot be complete without asking the question, "which missional?"

Also, and to be fair, it is quite probable that most of those who use the term would not have the need to understand the background. If you, as a follower of Christ in interaction with scripture, you determine that you want to be "missional" as best as the Spirit leads you, it it certainly fine to do so.

Yet, as the term has grown in prominence, it has also grown in opposition. In some of the places I have spoken, I have specfically been asked to not use the word "missional," as it is a "liberal word." (I am not sure how a word gets an ideology, but that is another story.)

Now, before you get offended by their concern, there is a reason. Obviously, their concern has not pushed me away from using the term, but it is helpful for us to understand their worry... and it might be a surprise to know the problematic history that causes some evangelicals to reject the word "missional." And, the word "missional" is much less important than the emphasis it brings.

By the way, the objection has nothing to do with the Leadership Journal article "Dangers of Missionalism" which I have read several times and (I think) it is about the danger of having a mission (or goal) rather than the danger of "missional."

However, to understand the objections and the nuances it will be necessary to go through the history, which we will in depth next week. But, let me breifly explain why some evangelicals are concerned about the word missional and its roots in missio dei theology.

Why Are Some Evangelicals Nervous about the Missio Dei

That may seem odd--who can be concerned about the mission of God? Well, it is not the concept, but the history, particularly in missiology, that concerns many evangelicals.

For example, read this paragraph and decide if you agree with its sentiment:

It is the Church and the Church alone which can carry the responsibility of transmitting the Gospel from one generation to another, of preserving its purity and of proclaiming it to all creatures. It is the Church and Church alone which can witness to the reality that man belongs to God in Christ with a higher right than that of any earthly institution which may claim his supreme allegiance... We may and we should doubt whether the churches as they are do truly express the mind of Christ, but we may never doubt that Christ has a will for His Church, and that His promises to it holds good.

This paragraph is from a meeting that took place in Tambaram in 1938.

In the next few decades, the ecclesiocentrism of this passage (and the whole Tambaram conference) would be challenged by a missiology / theology that came to be known as the missio dei. It will be worth your time to read this if you are interested in the subject.

A few decades after Tambaram, Johannes Hoekendijk and others, sought to define the missio 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 dei theology. 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.

So, I hope that everyone is excited about the missio dei becuase they are excited about joining in the "mission of God." But, the theoligcal system called missio dei has a history that some evangelicals do not want to repreat. Many evangelicals are nervous about the origin, history, and implications of the term.

Those concerns typically tend to revolve around three areas:

1. the role of the church

2. the nature of the Kingdom

3. the nature of salvation

Tormod Engelsviken has written an excellent analysis that will play into what I develop over the next several weeks. He wrote in the International Review of Mission an article entitled, "Missio Dei: the understanding and misunderstanding of a theological concept in European churches and missiology."

You can find the beginning of the article here, but this excerpt will address the "problem" of the missio dei:

It was another German missiologist, Georg F. Vicedom, who has the honour of having developed the concept of missio Dei in a way that seems to be consistent with the more classical missiology that preceded Willingen, and quite different from the more radical missiology that, under the same label, was worked out during the 1960s. In his book Missio Dei, Vicedom emphasizes that mission is God's work from beginning to end. God is the acting subject in mission. However, Vicedom does not thereby exclude the church from the mission of God but includes it: "The mission, and with it the church, is God's very own work". (8) Both the church and the mission of the church are "tools of God, instruments through which God carries out His mission. (9)

For the missional Rorschach Test, the question may be built around what you think the mission is, and how it is best lived out related to the church, mission, and culture. Since that was the fundamental debate of the International Missionary Council meetings for the first 60 years of the last century, it is there we will turn next time. For, as best I can tell, those missiologists who first used the term missional all see the genesis of their ideas in the conciliar missions movement (IMC), it is just a matter of when they get off the conciliar missions track (which ended poorly).

To lay my cards on the table, I think that mission, missionary, and missio dei are all helpful root words for missional, but all have their dangers and their failings. Every one of the terms can both be helpful and every one has led to error. The error has come when the terms have been misused or misunderstood.

And, for all of us, our own theoligcal and missiological vision tends to fill these terms: in other words, the words become a Missional Rorschach Test.

The question I want to pursue this week and next is, "how can we best live out our missional mandate by learning from the past as we seek to be obedient to Jesus today?"

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Now, I'd like to ask your help.

First, some theological questions:

What is the mission of God? How does that relate to the mission of the church? How does the mission of God relate to the discipline of missiology?

Second, some practical:

What am I "on to" and what am I missing? What do we need to explain more clearly?

Thanks.

I will be in meetings most of the day Tuesday, but will try to interact as I can.