Re-thinking Mission - Part 2

In my first post on this subject I gave ashort introduction to the contemporary Missional Movement which contends that 'mission' is primarily an attribute of God rather than a task delegated to the Church.  The late South African missiologist David Bosch summarized the paradigm shift well when he wrote: "There is church because there is mission, not vis versa".  This expanded view of mission is commonly referred to as the missio Dei, which simply means the "mission of God".  The God of the Bible is a missional God who has called into existence a community composed of redeemed individuals to join Him in His mission.  The missio Dei finds its primary Scriptural basis in John 20:21 where Jesus says to His disciples: "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you".  Just as the Father sent the Son to redeem and the Father and Son sent the Spirit to indwell and empower, so the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have called out a community composed of redeemed individuals and sent them to bear witness to the Kingdom of God which has come in the person and work of Jesus Christ and is still coming in greater fullness.  If mission is an essential attribute of God and by extension, an essential attribute of the called-out community, then it cannot be a "temporary necessity" as John Piper has argued.  The Church will continue to be a missional and 'evangelizing' community in the eschaton just as God will continue to be missional indefinitely.

If you're anything like me, that last sentence will probably sound a bit confusing.  How can there possibly be mission and evangelism once the final judgment has fallen?  How can God be 'missional' once the Great Commission has been fulfilled and we are reigning with Christ in the New Jerusalem?  I've been wrestling with questions like these as I've engaged with Barth and some of the more contemporary missional literature over the past few months. According to missiologist Darrell L. Guder, the confusion arises because we Evangelicals have by and large minimized and reduced the gospel message to matters of personal salvation, felt needs, and life after death.  Most of us who have grown up in Conservative circles have been trained to think of the 'gospel' as a message that needs to be shared with non-believers.  In most Evangelical churches and para-church ministries the question "did you share the gospel?" usually means "did you make it clear for the non-believer how they could be saved and have eternal life?"  A "gospel presentation" is therefore defined very narrowly as a verbal declaration consisting of three or four truth propositions followed by an altar call or an invitation to "receive Christ".  Guder has challenged my own thinking on this particular topic in his book The Continuing Conversion of the Church:  "If the Christian community is to carry out its mission of gospel witness, then its evangelization will be directed both to itself and to the world into which it is sent.  We need to free our language and our thinking from the idea that evangelistic ministry is only directed to nonbelievers… Evangelizing churches are churches that are being evangelized." (p. 26)  If the 'gospel' is simply a matter of personal salvation and its benefits then John Piper is right on target – mission is indeed a temporary necessity that will one day pass away.  But if we define the gospel more broadly, taking into account its cosmic scope (cf. Col 1:20) and using the Kingdom terminology which permeates the New Testament  (but is conspicuously missing from nearly all of our evangelistic materials!), then perhaps we also need to broaden our concept of evangelism and mission.

Proponents of the Missional Movement are not suggesting that we stop proclaiming the message of salvation to non-believers. On the contrary, Barth is very strong on this point!  What they are suggesting, however, is that there is a need for us to expand (and possibly to correct) our definition of the gospel and our conception of mission and evangelism.