Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

mission

4 Ways God Shapes Us For Mission

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clay shaping

“Dead orthodoxy cannot fuel a movement. We need a living theology.”

What powerful words on the opening pages of Chapter 5 – Missional Theology in JR Woodward and Dan White Jr.’s latest book, The Church as Movement: Starting and Sustaining Missional-Incarnational Communities. I was privileged to speak into the development of this book at a few different levels, first as an anonymous reader, and second over my kitchen table with JR. Here’s both a summary and my wholehearted endorsement as quoted from the first pages of this book:

Practitioner led, biblically based, and theologically sound. In this book, JR and Dan have been able to navigate the line between missiology and strategy by presenting a team guide for discipleship and church planting. So buy this book, gather your friends together, and learn how to start a movement that will change your city!

This article is Part 5 of a Blog Tour for this book. You can look up #churchasmovement for links to the other articles, as well as go to their website for additional resources and downloadables.

There are four ways that God shapes us for His mission.

That pronoun, His, is key because the mission that we are on is ultimately not ours or about us. Mission is not what we can do, it’s what God is doing in this world and how we can join Him! The South African Missiologist, David Bosch, in his epic primer on all things missional, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, says this about the mission of God, or missio Dei, as he refers to it.

Missio Dei has helped to articulate the conviction that neither the church nor any other human agent can ever be considered the author or bearer of mission. Mission is, primarily and ultimately, the work of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, for the sake of the world, a ministry in which the church is privileged to participate. Mission has its origin in the heart of God. God is a fountain of sending love. This is the deepest source of mission.

So if this is ultimately God’s mission and not ours, how can we participate in it? How does God get us ready for it? And how does this concept shape the way we need to approach ministry and mission? Here are four ways that God shapes us for mission, as outlined in Chapter 5 of The Church as Movement. I’ve built upon their ideas here.

1. He Initiates

Instead of strategizing on how your church can make the biggest missional bang in your city, the better way to join God in His mission is to first grow in your listening and noticing skills.

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Book Review: The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission – Lesslie Newbigin

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The following is an analytical review on Lesslie Newbigin’s The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission Revised Edition.

Leslie Newbigin (1909-1998) was a theological missiologist/missionary and a missiological theologian. There are over six decades worth of his writings on mission theology and practice. Thus, he is considered to have had one of the greatest influences on the theology of mission in the twentieth century. Furthermore, Newbigin was a scholar practitioner since his works were always rooted in his living relationship with Jesus Christ; after all, he modeled what he wrote. He was also a Western missionary to India from 1936-1974, and upon returning to Great Britain, his missionary focus turned to the West (Shenk 1998).

The thesis of this book is that Christian mission is an open secret. It is open in the sense that the gospel is proclaimed to all without any boundaries, but it is a secret in that “it is manifest only to the eyes of faith” (Location 2556). As a result, mission cannot be relegated as a side task of the church, but it is the central calling and purpose of the church, yet the church does not own the mission, the mission is God’s (Location 256). Newbigin’s prophetic call to the church is for it to reemphasize its missionary character “to bring all things to their true end in the glory of the triune God” (Location 2556).

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Spiritual Warfare and Mission

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“Our missional motivation, therefore, needs to be carefully examined. Spiritual warfare is not a matter of triumphalism pervaded by a horrid spirit of gloating superiority, in which we become obsessed with “winning a victory.” Rather it is a matter of deep compassion for those oppressed by the forces of evil and idolatry – with all their attendant social, economic, political, spiritual and personal effects. We battle with idolatry because, like the God whose mission we thereby share, we know that in doing so we seek the best interests of those we are called to serve in his name. We combat idolatry not only to glorify God but also to bless humanity. Spiritual warfare, like all forms of biblical mission, is to be motivated by and exercised with profound love, humility and compassion – as modelled in Jesus himself.”

– Christopher Wright, The Mission of God