The Mission of the Church

Five Views in Conversation

Ott, Craig

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781493405770
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Leading Voices from across Christian Traditions Discuss the Mission of the Church What is the mission of the church? Every seminarian and church leader must wrestle with that question. No matter what designation a church uses to describe itself, it must also think critically about why it exists and what it should be doing. In this book, five leading voices representing a range of Christian traditions engage in an enlightening conversation as they present and compare their perspectives on the mission of the church. Each contributor offers his or her view and responds to the other four views. Contributors include StephenB. Bevans, DarrellL. Guder, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, Edward Rommen, and Ed Stetzer. The book's format is ideal for classroom use and will also benefit pastors and church leaders.

Perspective Chapters

1
A Prophetic Dialogue Approach

STEPHEN B. BEVANS

In the last fifteen years, the understanding of Christian mission as a practice, attitude, and spirituality of prophetic dialogue has emerged among Catholic missiologists and missionaries as an important way to think about and to engage in the Triune God’s mission of salvation in creation and history. The term has its origin in discussions among members of one of the Catholic Church’s major missionary congregations, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD), the congregation to which I belong. Understanding mission as prophetic dialogue was a way to affirm that the church’s mission is grounded in the attitude and practice of dialogue (something that the Asian members of my congregation in particular insisted on) and also committed to the clear proclamation of Jesus Christ on the one hand and opposition to all oppression and injustice on the other (this latter perspective insisted upon with equal force especially by my congregation’s Latin American members). As the final document from this assembly expressed it: “We believe that the deepest and best understanding of this call [to mission] is expressed in the term ‘Dialogue,’ or more specifically, ‘Prophetic Dialogue.’ . . . Together with our dialogue partners we hope to hear the voice of the Spirit of God calling us forward, and in this way our dialogue can be called prophetic” (SVD 2000, pars. 53–54).

In Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Bevans and Schroeder 2004), Roger Schroeder and I chose the term prophetic dialogue to describe the synthesis (later characterized as the creative tension) of three ways of thinking about mission that had characterized mission theology in the last half of the twentieth century. The first perspective is that espoused by the Second Vatican Council’s document on mission Ad Gentes (AG) (1965, par. 2) and documents of the Orthodox Church. This perspective speaks of mission as participation in the life and mission of the Triune God. The second perspective appears in Pope Paul VI’s document Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN) (1975) and in documents of the World Council of Churches (WCC) since its Nairobi Assembly in 1975, a perspective that envisions mission as engaging in the liberating service of the reign of God. The third perspective appears principally in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Missio (RM) (1990) and Pentecostal and evangelical documents like those of the Lausanne Movement, in which mission is understood primarily as the proclamation of Jesus Christ as universal Savior. All of these perspectives, we emphasized, were correct; but to articulate a mission theology for today there was need of a term or an idea that would capture the truth of each. Inspired by David Bosch’s powerful idea that mission today needed to be carried out in “bold humility” (Bosch 1991, 489), Roger and I adopted our congregation’s term prophetic dialogue. As we expressed it:

Mission is about preaching, serving and witnessing to the work of God in our world; it is about living and working as partners with God in the patient yet unwearied work of inviting and persuading women and men to enter into relationship with their world, with one another, and with Godself. Mission is dialogue. It takes people where they are; it is open to their traditions and culture and experience; it recognizes the validity of their own religious existence and the integrity of their own religious ends. But it is prophetic dialogue because it calls people beyond; it calls people to conversion; it calls people to deeper and fuller truth that can only be found in communion with dialogue’s trinitarian ground. (Bevans and Schroeder 2004, 285)

Readers will immediately recognize that our choice of prophetic dialogue to describe missionary thinking and practice is not meant to be exclusively Roman Catholic. We developed the term in a thoroughly ecumenical context, appealing to mainline Protestant groups, evangelicals, and Pentecostals. In the closing years of the twentieth century, although their emphases certainly differed, most Christian churches and communities acknowledged that mission originates in the saving presence and activity of the Triune God; must be about the whole person, especially liberation from any oppressive structures; and has as its central core the announcement of salvation from sin and meaninglessness that comes through the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. We proposed prophetic dialogue as a way to think about and practice mission in all Christian traditions. Indeed, among Protestants, evangelicals, and Pentecostals there has been a positive response to the notion, with critiques that have deepened the understanding significantly. Roger Schroeder and I developed the idea of prophetic dialogue more fully in Prophetic Dialogue, in which we acknowledge many debts to the insights and critiques from the spectrum of Christian church communities (Bevans and Schroeder 2011). In 2012, under the presidency of Roger Schroeder, the annual meeting of the American Society of Missiology focused on the theme of prophetic dialogue and featured speakers such as Klippies Kritzinger and Carlos Cardoza-Orlandi, both of the Reformed tradition (Missiology 2013). Cathy Ross and I have also edited a volume on mission as prophetic dialogue, with Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Pentecostal, and evangelical contributors (Ross and Bevans 2015).

Nonetheless, prophetic dialogue does have a particularly Roman Catholic shape to it. The Roman Catholic emphasis on sacramentality and the fundamental goodness of creation affirmed by the incarnation is evidenced by the insistence that mission today can only be done in dialogue. Dialogue is the foundation of mission. In addition, Catholicism’s “both-and” character is reflected in the fact that both dialogue and prophecy are necessary components of missionary thinking and practice (see Bevans 1991). That being said, prophetic dialogue is not an official term that appears in official Catholic documents—although there are many resonances within them. To cite one example in Catholic magisterial documents, Pope Francis in his 2013 Evangelii Gaudium (EG) writes about interreligious dialogue in the following way, balancing both dialogical openness and prophetic truthfulness:

In this dialogue, ever friendly and sincere, attention must always be paid to the essential bond between dialogue and proclamation, which leads the Church to maintain and intensify her relationship with non-Christians. A facile syncretism would ultimately be a totalitarian gesture on the part of those who would ignore greater values of which they are not the masters. True openness involves remaining steadfast in one’s deepest conviction, clear and joyful in one’s own identity, while at the same time being “open to understanding those of the other party” and “knowing that dialogue can enrich each side.” What is not helpful is a diplomatic openness which says “yes” to everything in order to avoid problems, for this would be a way of deceiving others and denying them the good which we have been given to share generously with others. (EG 2013, par. 251)

The Catholic (although perhaps catholic) genius, I believe, is captured well in the term prophetic dialogue.

Prophetic Dialogue: A Closer Look

Employing a great Catholic principle—that theologians may distinguish without separating—a closer look at the dynamic of prophetic dialogue will focus first on mission as dialogue and then on mission as prophecy. This will help us see the dynamic in all its rich complexity as we bring these two ideas together in synthesis, or creative tension.

Mission as Dialogue

In a 2014 interview, Pope Francis spoke of ten tips for a joyful life, and the ninth was, “Don’t proselytize. . . . The worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes: ‘I am talking with you in order to persuade you.’ No. Each person dialogues, starting with his or her own identity. The church grows by attraction, not proselytizing” (Glatz 2014). In 1984 the Vatican body that was then called the Secretariat for Non-Christians spoke of dialogue as “the norm and necessary manner of every form of Christian mission, as service or direct proclamation” (Dialogue and Mission [DM] 1984, par. 29). Dialogue in this sense is more than a practice, as in the practice of interreligious or ecumenical dialogue. It is a basic attitude, indeed a kind of spirituality that underlies every aspect of mission. A Presbyterian colleague of mine, Claude Marie Barbour, speaks of the necessity of engaging in mission “in reverse,” that is, doing mission in a way that is convinced first and foremost that the Spirit is present before the arrival of the missionary. Because of this, the missionary is first open to be evangelized by those she or he has come to evangelize. Mission is about allowing the women and men whom we work among to teach us first—about their questions, their hopes, their dreams, their cultural values, their own sense of God. Our basic stance is openness, an attitude of respect, listening, and docility (i.e., teachableness) (Barbour 1984). It is about a profound “letting go” before “speaking out” (Bevans and Schroeder 2011, 88–100). In one of the most striking interventions at the 2012 Synod of Bishops in Rome on the New Evangelization, Luis Antonio Tagle, now Cardinal Archbishop of Manila, called for the church to listen first before speaking. “The Church must discover the power of silence. Confronted with the sorrows, doubts and uncertainties of people, she cannot pretend to give easy solutions. In Jesus, silence becomes the way of attentive listening, compassion and prayer” (Tagle 2012).

Catholic missiologists in the last few years have begun to rename a major way of talking about mission in a phrase that shows the influence of the dialogical foundation of mission. Rather than using the venerable term “mission ad gentes” (mission to the nations)—clearly implied in Scripture (e.g., Matt. 28:19; Acts 1:8) and the title of Vatican II’s pivotal document on mission—missiologists today are beginning to use the variation “mission inter gentes” (mission among the nations). William Burrows in 2001 was the first to formulate this updated term, pointing to the fact that Christians in traditionally mission countries are involved, through the inspiration of the Spirit, in translating the gospel message into the languages and cultures of their own situation (Tan 2014). They are doing this in many cases because they have come to realize that the religions among which they live are not demonic creations but vehicles of God’s saving power. And so they have come to realize that other religions are not Christianity’s rivals but potential allies in working for the values of the reign of God (see Tan 2014, 1–2). Tan is writing specifically about Asia, but the importance of the shift in terminology goes beyond the Asian context, and even beyond relations with other religions. It calls for dialogue with traditional religions in Africa and for dialogue with popular religious practices among indigenous communities in Latin America. It further calls for attention to the stirrings of the Spirit among the secular cultures of North America, Europe, and Australasia. Mission must be grounded in dialogue.

Mission as Prophecy

But if such an attitude of dialogue is foundational to missionary thinking and practice today, without the cultivation of the spirit of prophecy it lacks any direction or purpose. Prophecy, like its specific form in verbal proclamation, must always employ a “dialogue method” (Zago 2000, 17). This means more than being nice, or learning from others, or even developing relationships and making friends—as essential as these may be. Mission is ultimately about sharing the good news of God’s reign with the peoples of the world. Christians believe that this reign has already been inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is present in the church as its sacrament and celebration of the Eucharist, and is present in secret ways (see AG 1965, par. 11) beyond the borders of the Christian community. The way that the church communicates this good news is through the practice of prophecy.

Prophecy is a highly nuanced activity. On the one hand, it is nonverbal, and so incarnated in the witness of an individual Christian, a Christian community, or Christian institutions. Think, for example, of Jeremiah walking through Jerusalem with a yoke on his shoulders (Jer. 27–28), Isaiah’s description of the servant as a “light for the Gentiles” (Isa. 49:6), or Jesus’s healings and exorcisms narrated in the Gospels. On the other hand, prophecy employs words, in accord with its etymological meaning of “speaking forth,” proclaiming the Word of God. “You must go to everyone I send you to,” God tells Jeremiah, “and say whatever I command you. . . . I have put my words in your mouth” (Jer. 1:7, 9). Jesus preaches in parables and offers words of wisdom such as in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7).

In wordless gestures and witness, and in powerful spoken and written messages, prophets offer comfort and hope in times of persecution and near despair (e.g., Isa. 40:1–11); a vision of God as unsurpassable love, mercy, and compassion (e.g., Isa. 49:14–18); and a denunciation of every form of injustice and oppression (e.g., Amos 8:4–8). Christians in mission create communities of hope, where life together, the quality of liturgical celebrations, commitment to education, and openness to fellow Christians and other religions give witness to how the gospel message can give life to women and men in every situation, no matter how difficult or seemingly hopeless. Such church communities are signs of the already present reign of God and give testimony to the merciful, life-giving, and true God revealed by Jesus. They are also powerful communities of counterwitness in an unjust, individualistic, or life-denying society, bearing witness to the justice of God’s reign in the face of oppression and injustice.

Christians in these communities of “missionary disciples” (EG 2013, par. 24) also speak forth a message of encouragement and hope. They dedicate themselves to developing ways of communicating the gospel message that are clear and focused, relevant and powerful—ways that engage people’s lives and the cultures in which they live. They speak out in all sorts of ways against evil in society: through individuals in daily encounters, editorials, blogs, and tweets; through communities in statements of opposition against oppressive migration laws or cultural practices; and through the institutional church in statements that condemn political injustice, ecological destruction, economic exploitation, or religious intolerance.

Living out mission as prophecy can be as dramatic as Oscar Romero protesting the death squads in 1970s El Salvador, peace efforts of the Sant’Egidio community in civil wars in Africa, an Amish community in Pennsylvania declaring its forgiveness to the man who had killed several of its children during a shooting rampage, or the earth-keeping ministry undertaken by a number of African Initiated Churches in Zimbabwe. It can just as well be as simple and commonplace as a mother telling stories of Jesus to her young children, a community that cons...