I'm reading a book right now called, “The Witness of God; The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community." It's written by John Flett.
There's
much written about the "missio Dei" right now, but quite a bit of it resides on a
superficial level. To hear people talk about the concepts basic to the
missio Dei – “…the Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the
Spirit, and the Triune God sends the church,” is good! There has been a wonderful
correction in theology as a result of the missio Dei concept, but often times
the superficiality of describing it misses some essential elements. In this book
there is a deeper, more full-orbed exploration of the notion. This book is not necessarily for the casual reader, but I think a significant contribution to the field of
missiology.
While
I'm reading the book my intention is to insert a quote or two from each section
I'm reading. Here are a few from the first couple chapters:
Flett quoting Bosch:
“’Our mission has no life of its own: only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission.’” He continues (his own words now), “Mission is not something the church does, dependent on ecclesiastical management and developed according to some notion of the efficient use of resources. It is justified by neither human capacity nor historical accident.”
This is also from Bosch:
“’The recognition that mission is God's mission represents a crucial breakthrough in respect of the preceding centuries. It is inconceivable that we can again revert to a narrow ecclesiocentric view of mission.’”
Lastly he writes,
“The church's call to echo in time the communion that is God's life in eternity: she is called to be a being of persons-in-relationship which receives [her] character as communion by virtue of [her] relationship to God and so is enabled to reflect something about being in the world.”
There
you go for now. I will cite
several allusions from Barth that describe his understanding of mission from the next section.
Peace!
