Transcript The Yorkshire Ministry Course Theology Mission and Praxis 2009

St Edmundsbury Study Day
God and the World: Opportunities for Mission
1. Theology and Experience in dialogue
(i) Experience: How are churches engaging in
mission at the moment?
(ii) Recent developments in the Theology of
Mission
(iii) How can one learn from the other?
(i) Experience:
How are churches engaging in
mission at the moment?
This
cartoon by
Dave
Walker
originally
appeared
in the
Church
Times.
actually…
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School assemblies and worship
Hospital and prison chaplaincy
Church planting
Street pastors
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Christian Aid collecting
Mums and toddlers groups
After-school childrens’ clubs and services
Community projects
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(ii) Recent developments in the
Theology of Mission
… the loose use of the word ‘mission’ in the last
half century masks a crisis (David J. Bosch,
Transforming Mission, 1991, p.1).
Bosch believes there has been a terrible failure
of nerve over mission (p.7)
and that the churches are not sure any more
what it is really all about.
Cf. Chinese characters for ‘crisis’ - ‘danger’ and
‘opportunity’
Return to the roots of mission: missiology missio (Latin) ‘sending’ & logos (Greek) ‘word’
ie. ‘talk about sending’
But who sends who?
The genealogy of the word ‘mission’
from the Oxford English Dictionary
5. An intensive course of preaching, services,
and other religious activities organized to
stimulate interest in the Christian faith, or in
the work of a parish or particular church.
1772 tr. J. F. de Isla Hist. Friar Gerund I. 287 (note) In the time
of Lent many preachers go about from town to town,
inveighing vehemently against sin, and strenuously exhorting
to repentance, which is called going upon a Mission.
4. a. A permanent establishment of missionaries
abroad; a missionary post or station; a mission
house.
1770 Ann. Reg. 1769 189 An officer that has lived seven years
in the missions of Paraguay. 1825 R.Southey Tale of Paraguay
III. xiv, They..To the nearest mission sped and ask'd the Jesuit's
aid.
3. a. The action of sending men or women forth
with authority to preach the faith and
administer the sacraments; an instance of this.
Also: the authority given by God or the Church
to preach.
1641 J.Jackson True Evang. Temper III. 186 Christ..in the
Mission first of his Twelve, and after of his Seventy. 1656 T.
Blount Glossographia, Mission (says a Roman Catholick
Author) is a giving of Orders, Jurisdiction and power to preach
that Doctrine, which is taught by the Catholick Church, and to
administer the Sacraments.
2. a. A body of priests, esp. Jesuits, trained in
seminaries abroad and sent to the British Isles
to spread the Catholic faith and minister to
the Recusant population; the enterprise or
purpose for which such a body is sent or
established. Now hist.
1598 in H. Foley Rec. Eng. Province Soc. Jesus (1878) III. 723 Ye
continuallie confluence of the rares and bestes [sic] wittes of
our nation to the Seminaires, and ther constance in following
their missions.
1. In Trinitarian theology: the sending into the
world of the Son or Spirit by the Father, or
of the Spirit by the Son, esp. for the purpose
of salvation.
1530 R.Whitford Werke for Housholders G.iiiv, The missyon
or sendynge of e holy ghost. 1610 Bible (Douay) II. Joel ii.
Comm., The mission of the Holie Ghost performed on
Whitsunday.
This draws on pre-Sixteenth century usage in Latin:
eg. The Eucharistic prayer of Hippolytus - earliest
extant version in Latin dating from 215-217 AD:
the Father is thanked for his beloved Son Jesus
Christ ‘whom in your good pleasure you sent
from heaven into the womb of a virgin…’
(in G.R. Evans and Robert Wright, The Anglican Tradition 1991,
p.15).
cf. Romans 8.2: ‘for God…by sending his own
son…’
ie. Mission is fundamentally all about the
relationships within the holy Trinity:
sending of the Son by the Father, and also for
the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Father
and the Son. (see further Bosch p.390)
Recent Ecumenical recoveries
(i) Karl Barth (1886-1968) and the Willingen
Conference of the International Missionary
Council, 1952:
‘The missionary movement of which we are
a part has its source in the Triune God
himself. Out of the depths of his love for us,
the Father has sent forth his own beloved
Son to reconcile all things to himself…
…We who have been chosen in Christ… are
committed to full participation in his
redeeming mission.
There is no participation in Christ without
participation in his mission to the world.
That by which the Church receives its existence
is that by which it is also given its worldmission.’
(ii) Second Vatican Council of the RC Church
(1962-65):
‘the pilgrim Church is missionary by her very
nature…
it has its origins in the mission of the Son and
Holy Spirit…
[ missionary activity is ] nothing else, and
nothing less, than the manifestation of God’s
plan, its epiphany and realisation in the world
and in history’ (Ad Gentes 2, 9)
Hence mission as missio Dei
‘The Latin term is necessary because it holds a
depth and power that English translation
cannot capture:
the mission of God, the mission that belongs to
God, the mission that flows from the heart of
God.
Missio Dei speaks of the overflowing of the love
of God’s being and nature into God’s
purposeful activity in the world.’
(Paul Avis, A Ministry shaped by Mission, 2005 p.5)
Jürgen Moltmann: ‘It is not the church that has
a mission of salvation to fulfil in the world;
it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit
through the Father that includes the church.’
(The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 1977, p.65)
Bosch: ‘To participate in mission is to
participate in the movement of God’s love
toward people, since God is a fountain of
sending love.’
(Transforming Mission, p.390)
So mission is about everything!
Bosch: ‘Since God’s concern is for the entire world,
this should also be the scope of the missio Dei.
It affects all people in all aspects of their
existence.
Mission is God’s turning to the world in respect of
creation, care, redemption and consummation…
…It takes place in ordinary human history, not
exclusively in and through the church…
The missio Dei is God’s activity, which
embraces both the church and the world,
and in which the church may be privileged
to participate.’ (p.391)
Does this affect how you view the ways
churches are engaging in mission at the
moment?
Going deeper…
If Mission is rooted in the Trinity, it is all about
human and divine relationship
Jesus reveals the quality of this relationship
when he addresses God as ‘Abba’ eg. Mark
14.36
This reveals God to be a loving parent ie. someone
who does not exist on his own but only in
relationship with a child, who is Jesus himself:
you cannot be such a parent without the
existence of a child:
you cannot be such a child without the
existence of a parent.
So Christ reveals the familial nature of God the
Father and the Son (and in the Upper Room, the
Spirit)
and therefore the existence of the Trinity, a mutual
participation of three persons.
ie. in the Trinity there are distinct contributions but
unity at the same time: you cannot have one
without the other
Paul Fiddes uses a Greek word 'perichoresis',
first used by Pseudo-Cyril in the C6th,
then by John of Damascus in the C8th
meaning
‘reciprocity and exchange in the mutual
indwelling of the persons’
Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the
Trinity, DLT (2000)
Each person permeates and coinheres with the
others without confusion. There is a
perichoresis of the persons of the Trinity within
the unity of their substance. (p.71)
not persons in relationship,
but persons as relationship (p.50).
Implications
a guiding analogy for human living - persons truly
exist through their participation in each other.
don’t see people as being on the 'ends' of
relationship.
see them as constituted in 'sharing, in speech and
worship, in the flow of relationships themselves'
(p.72)
ie. when people in relationship with each other reaching out in friendship, risk, challenge,
service, sacrifice… they find a new identity in
sharing their lives with another
their lives are being conformed, in this way, to
the life of the Trinity.
But they will not only be like God: they will also
participate within God's life itself – they will
be joining the divine inter-relationship itself.
Within the life of the Church
Fiddes: ‘communion in the body of Christ is not
just a model of the Trinity, but a means of
entering the relational movements of the
triune God'.
there is a reality of participation which allows
the people 'to share in God rather than
attempting to observe God'. (pp.88-89)
So…
when people are in a relationship with each other reaching out in friendship, risk, challenge, service,
sacrifice… finding a new identity in sharing their
lives within the body of Christ
they are participating in and extending the missio
Dei
Putting this into practice
Christian mission expressed and extended above
all through the quality of the relationships in
church and between church and community
Hence people need to come first – giving each
other ‘the time of day’, valuing each other as
people (more than as means to an end)...
A subtle but profound shift esp. for churches
dominated by strategies, action plans, paying
the share, filling the pews... etc.
(iii) How can one learn from the
other?
How can churches currently engaged in mission
learn from recent developments in the
theology of mission, and how can theology of
mission learn from recent experience of
mission?