Mission restored to the heart of the church

A couple of years ago I completed my MA in missional leadership, the following comes from my dissertation entitled 'An investigation into home based mission in South Wales using historic and contemporary examples; could these examples show a way forward for the welsh churches in the twenty-first century?'

Martin Holland

Mission restored to the heart of the church

David Bosch and others have for some years been emphasising the Missio Dei,¹ the mission of God. This view locates the primary instigator and sustainer of mission in the life and nature of God himself and encourages Christians to participate in the mission in which God is already engaged.

‘Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.’²

One of the key lessons to be learned therefore is that mission should become rooted at the heart of all with which Christians are involved. It should not be some adjunct that certain gifted and qualified people pursue, it is the reason that the Christian community exists at all. What is needed is a ‘fresh commitment by many to restore mission to the heart of the church - not simply as an added extra but as an integral part of the church’s ethos.'³

Alan Hirsch goes one step further than Bosch and possibly offers a different emphasis that possibly could help church leaders. Hirsch talks about Missional DNA (mDNA) and argues that in the same way that DNA carries information necessary for healthy plants to reproduce, so mDNA is present to enable God’s people to reproduce the life of God in other individuals.

'Institutional church attempts to organise through external hierarchical forms whereas organic missional movements organise through healthy mDNA coding embedded into each individual cell then released rather than controlled.' ⁴

Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk argue that lasting missional transformation ‘ cannot be done by large-scale plans imposed on people.’⁵ Alan Hirsch agrees when he says that ‘all great missionary movements begin at the fringes of the Church’⁶ Leaders might do well to look at this emphasis and seek to find ways to embed this missional desire in the lives of the congregations rather than seek to simply organise a structure and hope that mission becomes the result.

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¹ González, Justo L., Essential Theological Terms, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2005, p.111
² Bosch, D.J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Orbis, Maryknoll NY, 1991, p.390

³ Campbell, Alexander, Mission 21 - A Report on Church Planting in the UK since 2000, Mission 21, 2006, p. 4

⁴ Hirsch, Alan, The Forgotten Ways, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, 2006, p.77
⁵ Roxburgh, Alan & Romanuk, The Missional Leader, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2006, p.101
⁶ Hirsch, Alan, The Forgotten Ways, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, 2006, p.30