Last month, we explored the checkered history of the term "mission" and we sympathized with Bishop Stephen Neill who complained that if everything is mission then nothing is mission. This month, we will look at some helpful definitions of mission. All these definitions must be understood in the context of the idea of the Mission of God (Missio De).
Mission is, in the first place, God's gracious movement to us as we see in Jesus Christ and the bringing of God's reign of peace, justice and love. However, we may even think of God's loving movement to us much further back to the act of creation. The realization that God, perfect in God-self, moved beyond God to create the universe and us as God's creatures, is perhaps the first and primal moment of mission. The commissioning of humankind at the beginning of the creation story sends us into God's creation to tend and care for it. Mission begins with God's creative act. Mission is about the goodness of creation and our place in it. Yet, as we are reminded in Living Faith, sin is a power present in this creation. The world is permeated with injustice, war, broken relationships, and the destruction of the environment. Thus, people and the whole creation need redemption. It is in this second redemptive move of God for the healing of creation and the bringing of peace and justice that our contemporary definitions of mission are rooted.
In fact, the key role we play in the destruction of God's gift of creation is recognized in the first definition I would like to cite. In 1960, the Dutch theologian J.H. Bavinck described mission as "… the penance of the church, which is ashamed before God and man (sic)." What is helpful in Bavinck's perspective is the humility and penitence with which we join God's redemptive mission for the world. Living Faith echoes this when it takes an old Hindu proverb to describe our witness to people of other faiths as "beggars telling other beggars where to find food."
Building on this, the great missiologist (a theologian of mission) of the last century, David Bosch, defined mission as " … the penance of the church, which is ashamed before God and man (sic). Mission is the Church-crossing-frontiers-in-the-form-of-a-servant."
It is clear from these two definitions that mission is not about putting others right, it is not about triumphing over others, but rather about the dynamic "sentness" of the church in its movement with God's healing peace and justice across the world. Bosch pointed out that this frontier-crossing mission of the church crosses the frontier between faith and unbelief, but also includes addressing poverty and injustice and suffering in the world. In the words of Jesus in John 20:21, "Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you."
It is interesting that both Bavinck and Bosch include the church as an essential element of our mission. It is the disciples – the community of faith – who are sent together. We are sent, like Christ, first to be and then to minister, and we are sent as the Church. There is therefore no real mission without the church being authentic in its life and witness to our faith. Sometimes, in the twentieth century, there was much despair about the great discrepancy between the unfaithfulness of the church in its life and witness and the call to mission. Perhaps that is why mission is always something we do in a spirit of repentance.
However, mission is also dynamic and is exactly where the new and different frontiers confront us as the church. This is why I would like to end with another definition of mission by one of the most creative and authentic Christian witnesses of the twentieth century, Ivan Illich:
"Theological missiology is the science about the Word of God as the Church in her becoming; the Word as the Church in her borderline situations; the Church as a surprise and puzzle … Missiology studies the growth of the Church into new peoples; the birth of the Church beyond its social boundaries; beyond the linguistic barriers within which she feels at home; beyond the poetical images she taught her children…. Missiology therefore is the study of the church as surprise …"
This birth of the church beyond social boundaries, barriers and even pet theologies brings us to the topic for next month's discussion – the relationship between mission and evangelism.
