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John Franke, Missional Theology

Chapter 1: Missional God

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The starting point for missional theology is the notion of a missional God. This means simply that God is, by God’s very nature, a missionary God.

From this perspective, according to South African missiologist David Bosch, “mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God.”

Missio Dei

One of the most significant and influential developments in the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century was the broad consensus, shared by virtually all theological and ecclesial traditions that participate in ecumenical discourse, that the mission of the church finds its rationale in the missio Dei (mission of God).

Two additional points: first, God, by God’s very nature, is a missionary God; second, the church of this missionary God must therefore be a missionary church.

The term “mission” comes from the Latin words “to send” (mitto) and “sending” (missio).

One of the consequences of affirming that mission is an attribute of God and part of the divine nature is that the mission of God does not have an end, it continues into eternity as an essential aspect of the divine nature.

The Eternal Mission of God

While the mission of God is complex and multifaceted, its central character and that from which all other aspects flow is love. In the words of the famous South African theologian David Bosch: “God is the fountain of sending love. This is the deepest source of mission. It is impossible to penetrate deeper still.”

Perhaps the single most significant development in twentieth century trinitarian theology has been the broad consensus concerning the significance of relationality as the most fruitful model for understanding the doctrine of the Trinity.

At the heart of the contemporary consensus of the divine relationality is the apostolic witness that God is love (1 John 4:8). Developing the doctrine of the Trinity in accordance with the category of relationality provides a profound conception of this biblical assertion.

Love expressed, received, and shared by the trinitarian persons among themselves provides a description of the inner life of God throughout eternity. The statement “God is love” refers primarily to the eternal, relational intratrinitarian fellowship.

This notion that God is a loving missionary from all eternity points to the particular concerns of God in engagement with the world.

The love that characterizes the mission of God from all eternity is the compelling basis for the extension of the divine mission to the world.

The Mission of God in the World

Creation is a reflection of the expansive love of God, whereby the triune God brings into being another reality and establishes a relationship of love, grace and blessing with the intention of drawing that reality into participation in the divine fellowship of love.

However, human beings, created in the image of God, have rebelled against the love of God. Instead of seeking the well-being of their fellow humans, they have sought their own good at the expense of others and established oppressive societies that colonize citizens, particularly the powerless and vulnerable.

Out of love for the world the Father sends Jesus the Son into the world (John 3:16-17) to redeem it through a cruciform life of humility, service, obedience, and death for the sake of others.

Jesus calls the world to follow his way of life and participate in the kingdom of God—a community where everyone has enough and no one needs to be afraid.

God sends the Spirit into the world to call, guide, and empower a new community from every tribe and nation, centered on Jesus Christ, to be witness and provisional demonstration of God’s will for all creation.

The extension of this mission into the created order occurs not only through the sending of the Son and the Spirit, but also in the sending of the church.

The mission of God in relation to the world is love and salvation leading to peace or shalom. This mission in the self-giving, self-sacrificing love of God expressed in the trinitarian fellowship. This divine mission forms the context for the mission of the church.

Chapter 2: Missional Church

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God is love: God lives from all eternity in an interactive relationship characterized by the giving, receiving, and sharing of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Together these three are one God by virtue of their interdependent relationality.
God is a missionary God: Mission is a part of God’s very nature and is expressed in the being and actions of God throughout eternity and made known by the sending of the Son into the world. The church of this God must be missionary because it worships a missionary God.
Difference and otherness are part of the divine life: While Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together are one God, their unity is not an outgrowth of sameness. Rather, they are one in the very midst of their difference.
The love of God is not an assimilating love: The love of God does not seek to make that which is different the same, but rather God lives in harmonious fellowship with the other through the active relations of self-sacrificing, self-giving love.
Creation is a manifestation of the expansive love of God: God seeks to extend the love shared and expressed in the divine life by bringing into being another reality, that which is not God, with the intention of drawing the created order to participate in the divine fellowship of love.
Human beings, created in the image of God, have rebelled against the love of God: Instead of seeking the well-being of their fellow humans, they have sought their own good at the expense of others and established oppressive societies that colonize and marginalize its citizens, particularly the powerless and vulnerable.
Jesus is sent into the world to bring about salvation: Jesus was not sent to condemn the world but to redeem it through a life of humility, service, obedience, death, and resurrection for the sake of others. By his teaching and example, he called the world to follow his way of life and participate in the Kingdom of God, a community where everyone has enough and no one needs to be afraid. By his death and resurrection he conquered the powers of sin and death, reconciling the world with God.

In seeking to understand the mission of the church in relation to the mission of God, we begin our exploration with the words of Jesus in John 20:21-23: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

This sending is at the very core of the church’s reason and purpose for being and must shape all that the church is and does. Mission must not be viewed as merely one of the many programs of the church or something done by a few specially called people who proclaim the gospel in faraway lands. In the words of the authors of Missional Church, mission “defines the church as God’s sent people. Either we are defined by mission, or we reduce the scope of the gospel and the mandate of the church. Thus our challenge today is to move from church with mission to missional church.”

NT scholar Michael Gorman: “already in the first century the apostle Paul wanted the communities he addressed not merely to believe the gospel but to become the gospel, and in so doing to participate in the very life and mission of God.”

The Church as Community

Two traditions: individualist and communitarian

Elements of Community: 1) a community consists of a group of people who are conscious that they share a similar frame of reference; 2) a sense of group focus is present in communities; and 3) the group orientation of a community leads members to draw a sense of personal identity from the community.

The Church as the Image of God and Sign of the Kingdom

The Church as the Body of Christ and Instrument of the Kingdom

The Church as the Dwelling Place of the Spirt and Foretaste of the Kingdom

Mission After Christendom

Beginning in the Roman Empire, Christendom is a system of church-state partnership and cultural hegemony in which the Christian religion maintains a unique, privileged, and protected place in society, and the Christian church is its legally and socially established institutional form.

This model of the church, and the outlooks and intuitions that attend to it, are so deeply pervasive that even when the formal and legal structures of Christendom are removed, as in the case of North America, its legacy is perpetuated in the traditions, structures, and attitudes that are its entailments. This known as functional Christendom.

Richard Twiss: Christian mission among the tribes of North America has not been very good news. What worldview influences allowed the Creator’s story of creation and redemption to morph into a hegemonic colonial myth justifying the genocide and exploitation of America’s First Nations people?

In light of its history and complicity with the forces of colonization, the mission and witness of the church must be reimagined in keeping with the principles and values of the Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus. Missional theology seeks to reimagine Christian witness so that it more faithfully reflects the mission of God and the participation of the church in that mission.

Chapter 3: Missional Theology

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“Either we are defined by mission, or we reduce the scope of the gospel and the mandate of the church. Thus our challenge today is to move from church with mission to missional church.” The move from church with a mission to missional church has significant implications for the practice of theology.

As with the church, the impulses and assumptions that have shaped the discipline of theology in the West are those of Christendom rather than the mission of God. Most of the teaching and research in universities and schools of theology in the West remains in thrall to traditional academic models that stress detached objectivity in the study of any discipline, including theology.

If theology is to serve the life and witness of the church to the gospel and if we assume that the church can only exist as truly itself only when dedicated to the mission of God, a burning question ensues. How should one reinvent theology and theological education so that they flow naturally for an integral perspective on God’s consistent will and activity in the world?

Like the challenge facing the church in moving from church with mission to missional church, so the discipline of theology, if it is to serve the church and be faithful to its subject, must move from theology with a mission component to a truly missional conception of theology.

Figure 3.1

Definition: Missional theology is an ongoing, second-order, contextual discipline that engages in the task of critical and constructive reflection on the beliefs and practices of the Christian church for the purpose of assisting the community of Christ’s followers in their missional vocation to live as the people of God in the particular social-historical context in which they are situated.

The Nature of Missional Theology

The Task of Missional Theology

The Purpose of Missional Theology

Doing Missional Theology

Missional theology starts in the life and witness of a community that believes in the gospel and is prepared to live by it.

As the community bears witness to the gospel in its particular social location it has encounters and experiences that continually shape and challenge its conception of the gospel and Christian faith and their implications for witness in the world. These lived encounters and experiences provide the starting point for theological reflection.

This reflection begins with the formulation of questions to be wrestled with and responded to: What is going on in the culture? What needs, desires, concerns, and challenges are reflected in these encounters and experiences? How are they addressed by the gospel? What insight into these situations is provided by scripture? What contributions are made by Christian communities past and present to contemporary situations and challenges? How is God at work in the situation? What is the Spirit saying to the churches?

Because this reflection is the result of lived situations, it will result in action as the communities and individuals determine how they will respond to the particular situations and challenges they face. The determination of a course of action will also raise important questions that require further theological reflection: What response constitutes faithfulness to the mission of God? What is the response of love? How might the community need to change? What sacrifices might be called for by individuals and the larger community? What are the implications of particular responses for the unity of the church? How will dissent be addressed?

Figure 3.2

Theology in Christian history constitutes a series of local translations of the gospel and iterations of communal life based on the texts of scripture in relationship to particular social, historical, and cultural conditions. The science of communal convictions.

This multifaceted history is an important element in the method of missional theology. While it is beyond full comprehension, the more we are aware of this history and all of its diversity, the more alert we become to the voice of the Spirit at work in the witness of Christian communities and the infinite translatability of the gospel and theology.

Chapter 4: Missional Multiplicity

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“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

On the day of Pentecost, a strong wind came upon them and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages (Acts 2:1-4). The text goes on to say that a large and diverse gathering who were present for this phenomenon were bewildered because they each heard their own language being spoken. Those who experienced this linguistic phenomenon were reportedly amazed and perplexed and asked one another what it meant (Acts 2:5-12).

The meaning of this Pentecostal plurality is significant for understanding the mission of the church to bear witness to the ends of the earth. The action of the Spirit here effectively decenters any particular language or culture with respect to the proclamation of the gospel and the mission of the church. The implication is that no single language or culture is to be viewed as the prime or inseparable conduit of the gospel message.

Plurality, Christian Faith, and the Word of God

Some may see this affirmation of plurality as a capitulation to the mood of contemporary cultural. However, it actually emerges from some of the most central claims of scripture and beliefs that have been commonly held by Christians over the centuries.

For example: the belief that the Bible is the inspired word of God and that the teachings and promises it contains are trustworthy (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The belief that God will provide guidance for the church as it goes on its way through the world and give wisdom generously to all who ask (James 1:5). The belief that the Holy Spirit will guide the followers of Jesus into the truth (John 16:13-14). How do we account for Christian plurality in light of these beliefs?

Thesis: Christian witness that is faithful to the mission of God will be characterized by irreducible plurality and missional multiplicity. If diverse Christian communities are missionally faithful to the places and contexts in which they are situated, their beliefs and practices will constitute a manifold witness to the gospel.

A Theology of Christian Pluralism

The Life of God (Trinity)
Difference and otherness are part of the divine life. While Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together are one God, their unity is not an outgrowth of sameness. Rather, they are one in the very midst of their difference.

Figure 4.1: The Word of God in Three Forms

The Word Revealed: Revelation (God Speaks)
The creator/creature distinction and the accommodated, experiential, and indirect character of revelation.

The Word Written: Witness to Revelation (Scripture)
As the Word of God and inspired normative witness to revelation, scripture is truth written and its pages bear manifold witness to the plurality of truth. As the Word of God and paradigmatic human witness to revelation, scripture also invites greater plurality than that contained in its pages in order that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the church to the gospel may be continually expanded to all the nations in keeping with the mission of God.

The Word Proclaimed: Witness to Revelation (Church)
The global witness of the Christian community to the revelation of God results in numerous expressions of Christian (missional multiplicity). This constitutes the expansion and proliferation of the Word of God in the world and is a faithful expression of the mission of God.

Multiplicity and Truth: Figure 4.2

The Shape of Missional Theology

Dialogical

Open and Committed to the Other

Beyond Foundations

Against Totality

Chapter 5: Missional Solidarity

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In the midst of proclaiming the polyphonic (many voiced) character of the one faith, scripture also extols the concept of unity or solidarity. A commitment to plurality and difference allows for a healthy freedom of expression that is important for true harmony. However, one of the great dangers of the freedom engendered by plurality is that it easily becomes the basis for discord and hostility as each asserts their freedom over against others.

Paul warns about this in his letter to the churches in Galatia (5:13-15): “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”

In response to the danger of plurality and freedom turning into strife and violence, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament promote the goodness and importance of unity.

John 17:20-23: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

The sort of unity that we often imagine is a community in full agreement around a universal theology and/or common liturgy. It is also suggested, implicitly by some and explicitly by others, that the church cannot manifest this unity apart from such a common theological expression. The danger here is equating unity with uniformity.

Missional theology maintains a conception of unity that affirms the value of multiplicity and also connects it directly with the mission of God as a necessary component of living God’s love in the world. From this perspective, we should not expect agreement and commonality on matters of theology and biblical interpretation.

Andrew Walls and five case studies concerning historic Christian faith: In exploring the multiplicity of Christian expression, Walls asks what conclusions we might draw from the observations concerning the diverse communities, beliefs, and practices that constitute historic Christianity. “It is not simply that these five groups of humans, all claiming to be Christians, appear to be concerned about different things; the concerns of one group appear suspect or even repellent to another.”

Walls answers in the affirmative and mentions two aspects that have shaped the common Christian tradition, a historical connection rooted in the proclamation of the Gospel and an essential continuity. “There is, in all the wild profusion of the varying statements of these differing groups, one theme which is as unvarying as the language which expresses it is various; that the person of Jesus called the Christ has ultimate significance.”

Walls suggests that the history of Christianity has always been a struggle between two opposing tendencies that have been part of the missionary expansion of the church and its witness and that find their basis in the very substance of the gospel itself. He refers to these as the “indigenizing” principle and the “pilgrim” principle.

Missional Christology

The Presence of Christ, the Work of the Spirit, and the Way of Love

“The circle of the Christian tradition has an unusually wide circumference without ceasing to have a single, unifying center. It is Christ’s living presence that unites a diverse tradition, yet that single presence is experienced in richly different ways. Christ’s presence is experienced sacramentally by the liturgical traditions, spiritually by the charismatic traditions, as morally inspiring by the liberal traditions, as ground of social experiment by the pietistic traditions, as doctrinal teacher by the scholastic traditions, as sanctifying power of persons and society by the Greek Orthodox tradition, as grace perfecting nature by the Roman Catholic tradition, and as word of Scripture by the evangelical tradition. All of these traditions and the periods of their hegemony have experienced the living and risen Christ in spectacularly varied ways. But nothing else than the living Christ forms the center of this wide circumference.”—Tom Oden

Christian Solidarity: The living presence of Christ and shared participation in his mission. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Epilogue

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A phrase that occurs several times throughout the book is “a world where everyone has enough and no one needs to be afraid.” This is a brief summary statement for the kingdom of God intended from the beginning, initiated in the covenant with Abraham, and inaugurated in Jesus Christ.

The end of missional theology is participation in the calling to turn this divine intention into a lived reality for the people of the world. A reality in which the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Missional theology must be lived in the life of a community for the sake of the world. It has to do with formation and engagement; with the practices of hospitality, care, forgiveness, advocacy, justice, and worship. In this way, missional theology is always be both practical and public: practical in the sense that it must be acted upon and lived; public in the sense that it is for the common good of all and not simply a matter of private concern among those who share its convictions.

This means that while missional theology is practiced and embodied in the life of the church, its intent is always beyond the horizons of the Christian community. It calls the church to look beyond itself to the common good of the larger society in which it is situated. In the pluralist and interconnected world we share with others the only way to ultimately establish the peace and tranquility envisioned by God in creation is to enable the flourishing of all people. Working toward the fullness of that vision is the heartbeat of missional theology.

With that end in view, the book explores five elements or questions that are of particular significance in the work of establishing this missional approach to theology:

  • What is the mission of God?
  • How does the church participate in the mission of God?
  • How do we reimagine theology for the mission of God?
  • How do we account for the multiplicity that arises from this approach?
  • Where do diverse communities find solidarity in this missional multiplicity?