Cultural Insights for Christian Leaders (Mission in Global Community)

New Directions for Organizations Serving God's Mission

Douglas McConnell, Sunquist, Scott W., Yong, Amos, Scott W. Sunquist, Amos Yong

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780801099656
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493414543
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Christianity Today 2019 Book Award Winner

This volume helps leaders and leaders-in-training become students of culture who can then contextualize what they learn for their own organizational settings. Douglas McConnell, a respected leader in the worlds of missiology and higher education, enables readers to understand intercultural dynamics so they can shape their organizational cultures and lead their organizations in a missional direction. This is the latest volume in an award-winning series emphasizing mission as partnership with Christians around the globe.

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Thinking Missiologically

Implications for Leadership and Organizations

During a particularly frustrating faculty senate meeting tasked with vetting a proposal for a new international doctoral program in global leadership, an esteemed colleague defended her opposition, exclaiming, “Of course I am committed to God’s purposes!” Her opposition came from the observation that new initiatives draw funds and personnel away from the already stretched programs that are core to the mission. A new faculty person in Old Testament concerned for continued funding of his position asked, “Are we sure this will be budget neutral?” After other similar questions, the senate chair, pushing to clarify the issues, responded, “We need to focus here, so let’s get back to basics by answering the question, ‘What is our mission?’” Sensing the need for a lighter moment, the vice chair led the faculty members in an impromptu recitation of the college mission statement: “To prepare men and women for worldwide service to Christ and his kingdom.” After things quieted down, a popular professor, reflecting on the scope of the school’s mission, stated the obvious: “Is there anything ruled out by that statement?”

These are tough questions, frequently asked in organizations that are clearly committed to God’s purposes. Mission statements, though important expressions of the vision and purpose of the organization, cannot answer every question. That task falls to leaders, who must ensure that a discernment process protects and furthers the organizational mission. In this particular case, the tension was between the established programs, recognized as vital to the core of the mission, and a promising new initiative that would inevitably require and attract more resources. This common problem for leaders of Christian organizations is due in large part to the collision of the ever-changing context of the world around us with the finite resources of our operations. It follows that changes in the context require changes to our organizational practices, including strengthening core practices, adding new initiatives, and discontinuing practices that are no longer effective. The result is that leaders are regularly forced to make hard decisions.

The key question to consider in this chapter is, How should leaders of Christian organizations approach the tough missional decisions about what we should do and how we do it? Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, missiology helps guide us to a better understanding of the world around us. By thinking missiologically, we will learn more about mission and culture that will help us as leaders of Christian organizations in shaping, catalyzing, and propelling our organizations forward missionally. In this chapter we focus on the contribution of missiology to the tough missional decisions, beginning with what it means to think missiologically about God’s mission. Next we explore the world of Christian organizations as missional in nature, with unique attributes as part of God’s mission. Then we survey some of the contributions Christian thinkers have made to a missiological approach to leading organizations across cultures. The final section of the chapter will introduce a number of related disciplines that contribute to our understanding of culture, leadership, and organization from a missiological perspective.

Missiology Can Help—Thinking Missiologically

Mission begins in the sending heart of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The mission is first God’s mission, often referred to by the Latin term missio Dei, meaning “the mission of God to bring about the redemption of the world.”1 This is the critical starting point. It is through God’s unending love that God the Father sent the Son to redeem the world through his death on a cross. God’s mission did not stop with the crucifixion and resurrection. The resurrected Christ ascended into heaven, whereby God sent the Holy Spirit to continue the work of redemption and reconciliation in the world. Redemption is God’s mission from the beginning to the end. In the words of theologian Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “Christian faith proposes a solid, historically based but also history-transcending hope based on the faithfulness of God, who raised from the dead the crucified Son in the power of the Spirit.”2 That mission will continue unabated until the return of Christ. Thus we have hope, and in the words of Revelation 22:20, we say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”3

God’s Mission and Our Missions

Beginning with the missio Dei as the reason for all mission, we turn to the Bible to build the foundation for missiology. Missiologists tend to view the Bible through the redemptive narrative of God’s mission through history, beginning with creation and ending with the eschaton. To focus our attention, consider the following passages as God’s mandate for mission, as Christians frequently cite them when illustrating God’s redemptive mission.

The Cultural Mandate

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Gen. 1:28)

All the Peoples

Let the peoples praise you, O God;

let all the peoples praise you.

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,

for you judge the peoples with equity

and guide the nations upon the earth. Selah. (Ps. 67:3–4)

The Amazing Love

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)

The Good News

[Jesus] unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:17–19)

The Evangelistic Mandate

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18–20)

The Global Witness

He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:7–8)

In these passages, we gain the perspective that the Triune God is working redemptively through history in and through God’s own people. God commanded humans to “be fruitful and multiply . . . and have dominion,” which we understand as stewardship of all creation. All the peoples of earth are called to praise God. God’s amazing love sent Jesus to bring the good news of redemption for all the world. The resurrected Christ in turn sends his disciples into all the world. And as witnesses, believers are indwelt by God the Spirit, who gives power for witness to the “ends of the earth.” So many other illustrative passages could be included, notably Genesis 12:1–3; Matthew 22:37–39; John 20:19–23; Acts 4:8–12; Philippians 2:5–11; and Revelation 7:9. The message is, “Mission is from the heart of God, to each context, and it is carried out in suffering in this world for God’s eternal glory.”4

Missiologists approach the entire Bible as the story of God’s mission.5 By building an understanding of mission on the Bible, missiology fosters a wonderful global conversation that further expands and refines our biblical worldview.6 The global nature of missiology is exemplified in the work of biblical scholars and theologians around the world in further developing mission theology.7

Studying the mission of God in history, as well as the Bible, helps us understand that the locus of mission is in particular contexts and continues to be incarnational. God revealed his love for the world in Jesus Christ, coming to a particular place at a particular point in history. As we view the mission movement historically, we see the continuing work of God spread through particular people in particular places: our missions in God’s mission. If we define the missio Dei as redeeming the world, it follows that “mission is through all of time and into all of creation.”8

As the heading of this section reminds us, we serve God’s mission in the world so that our missions, whatever they may be, are in fact part of God’s mission in the present generation, according to God’s timing. At the outset, God’s mission of redeeming the world instructs our approach by asking how our particular mission is redemptive and how it relates to creation. While we will explore this in depth in the chapters ahead, it is essential that we move beyond the individualistic understanding of our particular mission to the broader, divine mandate of the missio Dei, which includes all of our individual and collective missions.

Culture as a Missiological Constant

The importance of historical reflection is exemplified in the work of Andrew Walls, historian of mission and world Christianity. In his book The Missionary Movement in Christian History, Walls provides a foundational insight into the cultural diversity of Christianity. “This diversity exists not only in a horizontal form across the contemporary scene, but also in a vertical form across history. Christianity is a generational process, an ongoing dialogue with culture.”9 His critical observation supports our understanding that the role of culture is a historical constant as well as a contemporary reality. This is also true in theology. Theologians throughout the ages have systematically posed questions of ultimate reality and human experience based on their engagement with culture at a particular time. Much is to be gained by engaging in this ongoing intercultural theological reflection because it expands our understanding of God. Three current examples of the great value of this global work are the Global Dictionary of Theology, the Africa Bible Commentary, and the Africa Study Bible.10

The “ongoing dialogue” between Christianity and human cultures through the interaction of the Bible, history, and theology highlights the interdisciplinary nature of missiology...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Thinking Missiologically
• 2. Culture and Human Nature
• 3. Caring about Members and Others as People
• 4. Learning Culture Naturally
• 5. Authority and Culture
• 6. Intercultural Realities
• 7. Leading in Context
• 8. Responding Missionally
• Index
• Back Cover