Missiology
Mission and Expansion
The missio Dei, the history of mission, contemporary missiology
Christian mission (ἀποστολή, sending) finds its ultimate ground in the nature of God: the Father sends the Son, Father and Son send the Spirit, and together they send the Church.
The missio Dei
The concept of missio Dei, articulated by Karl Hartenstein in 1952 and developed by Georg Vicedom, shifts the centre of gravity: mission is not first an activity of the Church but the activity of God himself in and for the world, the Church being its instrument.
| Text | Missionary content | Interpretive tradition |
|---|---|---|
| Matt 28:18-20 | “Go and make disciples of all nations… I am with you always”: a universal mandate joined to a promise of presence. | The classical foundation of Protestant mission. Reformed: mission as the discipling of the nations. Evangelical: the priority of evangelisation. |
| Luke 4:18-19 | “He has sent me to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives”: a holistic mission. | Liberation theology: mission as the liberation of the oppressed. The World Council of Churches: integral human development. |
| John 20:21 | “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”: an incarnational model of mission. | Mission as service, presence and inculturation, patterned christologically on the sending of the Son. |
| Acts 1:8 | “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” | The programmatic map of Acts: a concentric movement from the local centre to the universal horizon. |
The history of Christian mission
| Period | Principal movement | Figures |
|---|---|---|
| 1st-3rd c. | Organic expansion through the Roman Empire by way of households, communities and trade routes. | Paul of Tarsus, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr |
| 4th-7th c. | The Christianisation of the Empire after 313, then of the Germanic peoples. | Patrick of Ireland (†461), Columbanus (†615), Augustine of Canterbury (†604) |
| 7th-11th c. | Byzantine mission among the Slavs and Bulgars; Irish and Scottish mission in western Europe. | Cyril and Methodius, who devised the Cyrillic alphabet |
| 16th-17th c. | Catholic mission bound up with Spanish and Portuguese colonial expansion in the Americas, Asia and Africa. | Francis Xavier in India and Japan, Matteo Ricci in China, Bartolomé de las Casas in defence of the Amerindians |
| 18th-19th c. | Protestant revivals and the first great wave of Protestant missionary societies. | William Carey in India (1792), Hudson Taylor in China (1865), David Livingstone in Africa |
| 20th c. | Edinburgh 1910 and the birth of the ecumenical movement; decolonisation; the growth of Christianity in the global South. | John Mott, D. T. Niles, Lesslie Newbigin, Donald McGavran |
The Basel Mission (1815)
Founded at Basel in 1815, the Basel Mission was the first Protestant missionary society on the German-speaking continent. It worked in West Africa, in Ghana and Cameroon, in India, in Kerala and Mangalore, and in China. It was a pioneer in inculturation, in the formation of indigenous clergy and in the economic development that accompanied its mission. It continues today as Mission 21.
Contemporary missiology
| Question | Evangelical position | Ecumenical position (WCC) |
|---|---|---|
| Priority | Verbal evangelisation is prior: how shall they believe without a preacher (Rom 10:14)? So the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. | Holistic mission: integral human development together with verbal witness. So Nairobi, 1975. |
| Salvation of non-Christians | Exclusivism: salvation in Christ alone (John 14:6; Acts 4:12), whence the urgency of evangelisation. | Inclusivism, as in Rahner’s anonymous Christians, and pluralism, as in Hick. The tension is internal to the Council. |
| Inculturation | Contextualisation in cultural forms, with fidelity to scriptural content (Newbigin). | Deep inculturation extending to theology itself, local traditions being valid theological loci. |
Bibliography
- Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991.
- Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
- Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006.
- Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996.
Quiz — Mission and Expansion
What does the missio Dei denote?
- The missionary mandate entrusted to the Church in Matt 28
- Mission as the activity of God himself, of which the Church is the instrument
- The Protestant missionary societies of the nineteenth century
- McGavran’s church growth strategy
Hartenstein (1952); Vicedom; Bosch, Transforming Mission (1991)