The missional church movement argued that mission can only be understood as actual engagement. Without action our global engagement is reduced to cheque writing or altruistic tourism that lacks transformative power. Missiologists are therefore asking how domestic missiology can lead to global involvement. They pose a vital question that is usually overlooked in the ongoing conversations of the missional church movement. This article will endeavour to suggest some starting points from which to address the issue of a truly global missional vision.

II.The First Step
As a first step we need to agree on and clarify what we mean by the “missional church”. In essence we need to define the nature and mission of the church. Without a clear understanding of who we are and what we are meant to do, the church will be prone to unthinkingly follow cultural trends. We therefore need to be particularly vigilant against pure pragmatism or simply re-branding existing programs using fashionable, culturally relevant language.

III.Learning to Follow Networks
In Matthew 28: 18-20 and Acts 1: 3-8 we learn that the flow of mission is from Jerusalem to Judea, then Samaria and finally to the rest of the world. The apostles model this movement in the book of Acts and we are called to emulate their pattern. It calls us to engage our neighbour before moving out into foreign territory.

For the 1st century church moving from familiar environs to the gentile world was extremely difficult. In the 21st century we, however, live with the legacy of Christendom which gives rise to different concerns. We are more apprehensive about engaging those around us with the gospel than going to unfamiliar areas. Consistent character is vital if we are to invite our neighbours to watch our lives. Such a calling competes with primary cultural values like individualism and privacy. As a result, our preference is to simply bypass our neighbours. The Christendom assumption that local evangelism is simply reclaiming backsliders therefore has tremendous appeal. In this context mission is reserved for crossing a border and both local and overseas outreaches are approached by means of appropriate programs.

Mission, however, works best when we follow networks. Rodney Stark argues that Paul’s primary mission strategy was to initiate a contact and then nurture the networks that developed as a result. “Although the very first Christian converts in the West may have been made by full-time missionaries, the conversion process soon became self-sustaining as new converts accepted the obligation to spread their faith and did so by missionizing their immediate circle of intimates” (2006, 14). As a result of this strategy, Paul was free to advise and mentor while local amateurs led the church. In these early years of the church we see no reflection on missiology as such. The process was always one of being sent out and entering into the lives of others.

We see this strategy continue into the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Nowhere is an intentional missionary program evident. The good news was spread intuitively but intentionally as people went out, proclaiming and enacting the gospel. For this approach to work the character of those announcing the good news had to match the message. Records indicate that the counter-cultural freedom, justice and joy witnessed in the lives of the converts attracted people. Origen wrote that people joined those early communities because Christians were attractive people. “The churches of God which have been taught by Christ, when compared with the assemblies of the people where they live, are as ‘lights in the world” (Contra Celsum, 3:29). Justin Martyr reports that people’s hesitations were overcome “by observing the consistent lives of their neighbours, or noting the strange patience of their injured acquaintances, or experiencing the way they did business with them” (1 Apol. 16).

These observations were made in the context of significant disincentives to convert. Some of these pressures came from the larger society that viewed the Christian communities as illegal and imposed serious penalties on them. Other demands were self-imposed to discourage cheap conversion. Because there was great concern for the way believers lived, converts were required to take part in a lengthy catechetical process by means of which their character was formed in conformance with the gospel. The goal of the catechism, Hippolytus writes, was to form people whose lives “may shine with virtue, not before each other [only], but also before the Gentiles so that they may imitate them and become Christians” (Canons of Hippolytus 19). In addition, the objective was to keep the believers to their commitments to “attractive deviance” (2 Clement 13).

IV.Learning new Skills for Decision Making
I believe that to accomplish its mission in the 21st century the church will need to give up many of the traits adopted from the modern era. At the heart of this task is releasing the desire for control, symbolized by reliance on long range strategic planning. Rather, planning needs to be grounded in a capacity to listen to God collectively. The task of the people of God then becomes learning to discern what God calls us to and to become a group of people who are sent out and who enter into the lives of others in order to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Under these circumstances the move outward occurs very naturally because the focus is on God.

Tim Dickau of Vancouver has developed a way of reflecting on mission based on a series of trajectories (these are from a forthcoming book). His work examines how the discernment process might work on the ground. The first trajectory moves from isolation to community and finally to radical hospitality. We understand the first step, but the last one is more difficult to grasp. Hospitality in scripture is always two-way process, involving both giving and receiving. We like to give because it allows us to maintain control. Jesus, however, received as well and usually from the most marginal and despised in the society. The second trajectory concerns moving from homogeneity to diversity to integrated multicultural living. Opening our communities makes sense to us, but we expect that they will become communities of diverse backgrounds where ultimately the newcomer will become like us. Learning to live in a way in which we are truly receptive to the gifts brought by those who join us is much more challenging. Thirdly charity needs to turn into friendship and advocacy, finally leading to freedom in Christ and seeking justice for the least. We have long lauded cheque writing as valid mission. Our next step is to move into deep personal involvement and speaking on behalf of the least, in particular the enemy. Finally, Dickau describes the trajectory of confronting idolatries and repentance leading to pursuit of deeper participation in the work of God. We too often get caught at repentance because we fear what we think might be the arrogance of living in partnership with God. The intentionally cultivated trajectories that Dickau describes actively engage the stranger and alien, redefine the neighbour and draw us into global networks.

My experience as a pastor corroborates Dickau’s theory that if we are fully committed to local mission we will eventually engage globally. It is, however seldom a smooth transition. During the 1980s our congregation started building relationships with refugees from Somalia. As friendships grew and became more reciprocal, we found ourselves beginning to pray for and help support their families in Somalia and in the refugee camps. Eventually members of the congregation began to travel to Somalia to live among and care for the communities from which our friends had come. In the process our congregation was transformed. Local friendships led to a deeper awareness of a vulnerable marginal community in our backyard which in turn generated global engagement as we followed the networks inherent in these relationships. In order to sustain this type of work we started having conversations with missions groups with experience in Somalia thereby expanding our local connections.

As I mentioned the transformation did not proceed smoothly. As we discovered the need of the local Somali community we began to re-allocate funds from our global projects which initially diminished our contribution to international missions. As the congregation however began to travel and build relationships overseas, global engagement received a new level of buy-in and financial support started growing again. The process took time and required patience but it resulted in a much deeper commitment to mission in general.

V.Conclusion
There needs to be intentional wrestling with tensions between local and global missions to overcome the tendency toward tribalism that lurks in our hearts. Fear of the other is increasing in our Canadian cities and the Church too seems to favour homogeneity. As we, however, intentionally move out into our neighbourhoods we have an opportunity to practice radical hospitality that welcomes the stranger and alien, breaking down the walls that separate us. As we build deep relationships and follow the networks they draw us into, we will find the line between domestic and global missions blurred and come to realise that a truly domestic missiology must by its nature be global.

For further reading:
For some working definitions of the “missional church” visit;
http://www.tyndale.ca/sites/default/files/What%20is%20Missional.pdf

        

In his programmatic essay “The Strange New World of the Bible [1917]” (Barth 1957), Barth asked: What do we find in the Bible: History? Morality? Religion? He answered that in the Bible a strange new world opens up and projects itself into our ordinary world. As such it is not something appearing on the margins of culture. The Bible testifies to a history with its own distinct grounds and possibilities, a wholly different kingdom with its own moral logic and politics. Faith cannot be traced to any historical foundations. The Bible does not concern itself with our morality, our knowing and our piety, but God as God, God’s history and God’s reign. According to Barth, this focus does not lead us away from this world. On the contrary, it leads us deeper into the truth of this world. The Bible does not offer thoughts about a distant God, but rather witnesses to the divine perspective on humanity and the world. It testifies that God in Christ is establishing a new reality, a new heaven and a new earth, and that the Holy Spirit “will not stop nor stay until all that is dead has been brought to life and a new world has come into being” (Barth 1957, 50).

These are the reflections of a young Swiss pastor who struggled with the task of preaching the new reality in a world that was collapsing around him. In these reflections, Barth began to identify the contours of that “really” new world, as well as the critical theological and hermeneutical tools which, I believe, are still of service as we seek to orient our own churches, almost one hundred years later, in a post-modern, post-Christendom context.

Barth’s break with the liberal Protestantism of his teachers and his theological re-orientation in the early part of the last century can, at one level, be summarized simply as a shift “back to the Bible.” As is so often the case, re-orientation came through crisis; Karl Barth was one of only a few young pastors who was profoundly disturbed by the fact that the churches and their theologians were identifying Christianity almost completely with the cause of their own nation. This modern syncretism shocked these young preachers “back to the Bible”, a major shift in theology, which Lesslie Newbigin identified as a search for a new form of Christian presence in Europe for the 20th century (Newbigin 1989, 196).

What Newbigin does not make sufficiently clear is that this was, above all, a hermeneutical shift. The crucial element in Barth’s new theological foundation and orientation for the church was the discovery of that eschatological reality, the “strange new world,” witnessed to in the Bible.

What does the Bible offer if not historical, moral or religious facts and insights? It witnesses to the ultimate concrete reality, namely the in-breaking eschatological reality of the risen and living Christ and his reign. This reality is utterly foreign to the mundane world which we create, shape and measure with our empirical tools. It is a personal reality that actively interrupts the settled continuities of our life and draws us and everything else into its sphere through judgement and grace.

No one who has read Barth’s early writings (especially in the original German!) is left unmoved by the excited, expressionistic character of Barth’s language, discovering and breathlessly sketching draft after draft of a very different interactive map which depicts a world immediately present to all, but one which only a few are truly seeing. Barth writes in a sermon from this early period, that God is no …

… strange word on the margins of existence, but existence itself, which breaks forth powerfully through everything that is without being. No fifth wheel on the wagon, but the wheel that drives all wheels. No sanctuary on the periphery, but the one who enters mightily into the midst of all that is. No dark, mysterious power … but the clear power of freedom which is above all and in all and seeks to be honoured through human beings. No thought or notion, but the power of life that conquers the powers of death …! No decorative embellishment of the world, but a lever that moves the world! … A living God; that is what living means! A God who is really God! (Barth 1999: 276f.)

God is God. Early, and then relentlessly, Barth put his finger on the problem of modern theology: Christian faith is “entirely and completely eschatology” (Barth 1968: 314), that is, it is caught up in and oriented to the coming reign of God. Christendom’s eschatology, by comparison, is a realized eschatology where the Kingdom of God is identified with the structures of this world which we build and extend. For Barth, however, God’s reign is a coming reality which determines what ultimately counts as real and what does not, what is finally marginal and destined for destruction and what is essential. This means that this strange, new eschatological reality has ontological and epistemological priority over our commonly shared experiential reality, including the church’s present experience of marginality. In other words God’s in-breaking kingdom determines and reveals what is actually real and this might contradict present appearances.

The theological task is therefore twofold. First, the church must be true to the eschatological reality to which scripture witnesses. This requires a sustained listening to the biblical narrative of the coming of God’s reign. Back to the Bible! When we follow this advice, we will realize in new ways just how alive God actually is (Barth 1999: 276f.). According to Barth, this is the starting point for good Christian theology.

The second task is to interpret all of our individual experiences and our shared public reality through the framework provided by the eschatological reality of God’s in-breaking reign. This entails placing what we know to be true by experience and reflection, using the tools of sociology, anthropology or psychology, into the world of meaning which God’s reign creates. In short, the logic of this “strange new world of the Bible” requires that we turn our conceptual machinery upside-down. Everything which we experience of the world is to be placed into the interpretative frame of reference of Christian convictions (that is, in light of that coming, eschatological reality).

In this way Karl Barth challenged the accommodation of Christian theology to the presumed conditions of truthful speech determined by the world. Barth’s achievement is a recovery of the grammar of Christian speech. He refuses to separate our most fundamental Christian confession of Jesus as the Messiah, as Lord and Saviour, as the Coming One, from how we describe all of God’s good creation and how we orient our lives ethically. In this sense Barth’s “school,” in my opinion, continues to offer the best available training for discovering that strange new world of the Bible and for training Christians how to employ Christian speech confidently and with integrity in the strange world of the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Barth, Karl. 1999. 12. August: Psalm 42,2-6, “Wo ist nun dein Gott?” In Predigten 1917, ed. H. Schmidt, 269-282. Zurich: TVZ Verlag.
_______ . 1968. Epistle to the Romans. Tr. C. Hoskins. London: Oxford University.
_______ . 1957. The Strange new Within the Bible (1916). In The Word of God and the Word of Man, tr. D. Horton, 28-50. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957.
Newbigin, Lesslie. 1989. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

        

The practice of hospitality has a long and rich history in the bible. The well known account of Abraham, a foreigner in Canaan, extending hospitality to three men associated with God is narrated in Genesis 18:1-8. The event is set in the context of the covenant that forms the basis of the establishment of the people of God. (Gen 17: 11-14). Abraham is depicted as leaving the comfort and safety of his tent, hurrying towards the men lingering near his abode, bowing before them and imploring them to “not to pass him by” (Gen 18:3). Abraham’s lavish provisions for his guests included water so that the men “may wash their feet” (Gen 18:4, 6-8). He arranged for a feast to be prepared for them, slaughtering a “choice calf” (Gen 18:7) which he served to his guests. Upon completion of the meal the men announced the good news that a son will be born to Abraham and Sarah (Gen 18:10). Isaac was the promised seed from whom were born the people of God later known as Israel. It is significant that the bible juxtaposes Abraham’s right action towards the strangers and the blessing of life bestowed upon him and Sarah with the injustice and immorality, indicative also of a lack of welcome, of Sodom and Gomorrah that precipitates their subsequent destruction (Gen 19).

The Gospel of John takes us to another scene of hospitality, this time in Jerusalem. It is set in the context of the Passover festival, a meal that commemorates the deliverance of Joseph’s descendants from enslavement in Egypt and their formation as the people of God in the wilderness (John 13-17). The meal had commenced but Jesus suddenly got up and started washing the feet of his disciples, taking on the role of the host who welcomes his guests by cleansing them of the dirt accumulated along their journey thereby preparing them to come to his table (John 13:1-17). It is against the background of the foot washing and the meal that Jesus announced that he was going to prepare a place for his disciples in His Father’s house (John 14:1-14). These acts of hospitality framed Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit which become the way through which the new household of God was established, set apart for God in Christ (Coloe, “Welcome into the Household of God”, 411-415). Seen against this backdrop, the many meals Jesus shared with those barred from the temple, can be understood as foreshadowing the messianic banquet (Torrance, Atonement, 416,417) as the scattered people of God are gathered to him after being cleansed by the host. Jesus’ words, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9) to Zaccheus, a tax collector despised by the Jews, indicate the restoration inherent in inclusion among the people of God.

When Jesus sent his disciples and the seventy two as emissaries proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom it became clear that receiving them amounted to receiving the King and his blessing while rejecting them invited destruction similar to Sodom (Luke 9,10). Early Christians therefore considered hospitality towards Christian strangers imperative since receiving them was tantamount to receiving Christ himself. (Arterbury, “The Ancient Custom of Hospitality” 56). Itinerant evangelists such as Peter and Paul spread the gospel in the context of hospitality and it is not incidental that the most prominent conversion in Acts involved an act of welcome. In this instance Peter played the part of the host who received Cornelius’ emissaries thereby in effect accepting Cornelius, a gentile, among the people of God (Acts 10:23 ff). This was a powerful act that signaled a breach in the barriers that had heretofore prevented non-Jews from being included among God’s chosen.

Today we celebrate the Lord’s supper as one of the two sacraments of the protestant church. This meal at which Jesus is still host is central to understanding the nature and function of the church. At this meal the church is anchored firmly in the historical event of Jesus’ death and resurrection which made the way for table fellowship with God. This is symbolized by the breaking of the bread that signifies “ratification into a spiritual covenant and initiation into religious fellowship” in accordance with ancient Hebrew custom. (Cohen, Abraham’s Hospitality, 171).

The current era inaugurated by Jesus’ life, ministry, cross, resurrection and ascension is one of hospitality. At this time the proclamation of the good news of God’s kingdom comes in the form of an invitation to become part of the household of God, by placing our trust in Christ as the one through whom relationship with God is restored. But as Jesus’ commission to his disciples and his visits with people like Zaccheus demonstrated, belief is signified by welcoming the king and his emissaries. This means making room for them, setting aside usual routines and goals to cater to them, following Abraham’s example who interrupted his rest to attend to his guests with the best of his time and resources. It means allowing the king to set the agenda, rearranging priorities and bringing our time, resources, space, talents and gifts and letting him determine what to do with it. In return the church is assured of his sustaining presence and power as they labour under often discouraging circumstances.

For the church to exercise the ministry of hospitality means living out its call to invite people to enter into and share the Christian story as Jesus invited the outcasts, the misfits, the prostitutes and sinners to share in God’s kingdom. The church is meant to symbolize God’s welcome by receiving the stranger and welcoming them into his story, the narrative of the bible. This can be threatening as the alien brings with him or her, views, beliefs and behaviours that are different from ours and it requires that we hold in tension the need to be faithful to Christ while being in relationship with those outside the covenant as the early church had to do. While an obedient relationship to Jesus safeguards our identity as the family of God, the practice of hospitality to the stranger and alien assists us to fulfill the commission to spread the gospel (Matt 25: 28 ) and care for the foreigner and the marginal, bringing God’s justice to bear in a money and power oriented world. It also prevents the church from deteriorating into a pious ghetto as long as we remember that the intent is for all who enter Christ’s domain to leave behind the story that they were living, the narrative that dominated and determined their lives, to embrace life that unfolds in accordance with his will and purpose.

Bibliography

Arterbury, A. “The ancient custom of hospitality: the Greek novels, and Acts 10:1-11:18.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 29 (2002): 53-72. Retrieved from ATLA Religion Database.

Cohen, J. “Abraham’s hospitality.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 34 (2006): 168-172. Retrieved from ATLA Religion Database.

Coloe, Mary L. “Welcome into the Household of God: The Foot Washing in John 13.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 66 (2004): 400-415. Retrieved from ATLA Religion Database.

Koyama, K. “Extend Hospitality to Strangers” : A Missiology of Theologia Crucis. Currents in Theology and Mission 20 (1993): 165-176. Retrieved from ATLA Religion Database.

Torrance, T. Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ. Edited by Robert T. Walker; Milton Keynes ; Colorado Springs : Paternoster ; Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, c2009.