Missional ecclesiology recognizes that the church’s missionary activity is not simply something that the church does, or which occurs in addition to the church’s proper being. Rather, the church’s existence is missionary. Immediately upon binding together the church’s being and mission in this way, though, a problem arises. If the church’s being is mission, it would seem that mission is simply anything the church does. The problem with such “panmissionism” is that “if everything is mission then nothing is mission.” Panmissionism serves as a convenient alibi for missionary disengagement, ironically in the name of mission—whatever the church does is mission. Were this the case, there would be no circumstance under which the church is subject to the critique of being unmissionary. Whatever idiosyncratic practices carry the day within a congregation or communion will do for meeting whatever missionary obligation the church might bear.
Demarcating what counts as mission is not for the faint of heart. In his seminal book, Transforming Mission, after 500 pages of exposition, David Bosch concludes:
It remains extraordinarily difficult to determine what mission is . . . the definition of mission is a continual process of sifting, testing, reformulating, and discarding. Transforming mission means both that mission is to be understood as an activity that transforms reality and that there is a constant need for mission to be transformed.
Any attempt to give an account of mission must reckon with its own tentativeness and provisionality. Mission has assumed many forms and meant many things throughout the church’s history, and continues to do so today.
As a pluriform reality, mission is particularly susceptible to reductionism. It is all too easy for a church to devote itself to some aspect of mission, yet fail to embrace the whole of the “single but complex reality” that a comprehensively Christian mission is. Only by clarity on the question of what mission is, are we in a position to determine whether or not a church is living faithfully to its missional identity. So, on the one hand, mission must be understood expansively enough that no church can excuplate itself from the demands of its missional identity and calling by focusing upon pet projects and issues. On the other hand, mission must be clearly defined enough to serve as a criterion for judging the church’s faithfulness to this missional identity and calling; otherwise, we are left with the panmissionary conundrum of a procrustean ecclesiology.
There are a number of ways we could pursue this comprehensive yet differentiated account of what mission is. Our point of departure, though, comes from Pope Francis’s programmatic apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium. In chapter 1 of Evangelii gaudium, Francis describes a church that is outwardly directed in mission, always called beyond itself into the world. While the English translation, “A Church which goes forth,” potentially places the church’s outward motion at a certain distance from the church’s being, the original Spanish makes it clear that this movement is a state of being for the church; it is “Una Iglesia in salida [a church in departure].” For Francis, going forth is not simply an ideal he would like to see instantiated in the church; it lies at the church’s foundations. This is another way of saying that the church’s being is missional.
This idea of departure provides our egress from the labyrinth of panmissionism: distinguishing between the church’s life ad intra and its life ad extra. Mission refers to the church’s engagement with the world beyond itself, with its life ad extra, with its ex-cessive movement throughout its pilgrimage. This conception is straightforward in its articulation, and makes a clear distinction, allowing the necessary criterial functions noted above. Further, by focusing on the church’s ex-cessive movement, the worry that the church will remain self-enclosed is addressed. Mission is what occurs as the church moves beyond itself. Hence, it is what occurs extra muros that counts as we evaluate whether or not the church is true to its missional identity.
Scripture: The Church in Departure’s Point of Departure
As Pope Francis explains, the church exists in departure. Turning to Scripture, Francis provides several biblical examples of “this dynamism of ‘departure’ which God desires to provoke in believers.” The call of Abraham (Gen 12:1–3), the Exodus (Exod 3:17), and the call of Jeremiah (Jer 1:7) all demonstrate that going forth lies at the heart of what it means to be the people of God. The saving encounter with God in Christ produces joy, which propels one to spread that joy by sharing the gospel of salvation with others. The church’s existence in departure is not merely for the sake of leaving. Rather, the departure is propelled by joy and aimed at spreading that joy abroad. Of all the biblical foundations for this mission, Francis points preeminently to the missionary commission of Matthew 28:19–20, which “today” represents a “call to a new missionary ‘departure,’” which reaches out all the way to the “peripheries.”
The Mattean Great Commission (Matthew 28:19–20)
In his appeal to the Mattean Great Commission, Francis has gestured toward a touchstone of mission theology, and indicates its continued relevance and fecundity. The Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, with its mandate for mission grounded in the authority of the risen Jesus, has long been a locus classi...
