Contents1. The Church's Identity and Role: Whose Story? Which Images?2. God Forms Israel as a Missional People3. Israel Embodies Its Missional Role and Identity amid the Nations4. Jesus Gathers an Eschatological People to Take Up Their Missional Calling5. The Death and Resurrection of Jesus and the Church's Missional Identity6. The Missional Church in the New Testament Story7. New Testament Images of the Missional Church8. The Missional Church in the Biblical Story—A Summary9. What Might This Look Like Today?

A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church in the Biblical Story

Michael Goheen

Fideles Ecumenical Conference 2011

Redeemer Pacific College

Langley, B.C.

Why this book?

Contract to write broader missional ecclesiology

Challenge of a few pastors to focus on biblical story in light of missional church conversation

Key to book

‘. . . the Bible does not offer a definition of the church or provide us with a doctrinal basis for understanding it. Instead, the Bible relies on images and narrative to disclose the meaning of the church.’

- Wilbert Shenk

About our identity as church

‘When we, the church, are confused about who we are and whose we are, we can become anything and anyone’s.’

‘ . . . we need ecclesiology—the doctrine of the church—to clarify our minds, motivate our hearts, and direct our hands. We need ecclesiology so that we can be who and whose we really are.’

- John Stackhouse

Conviction of book

Our identity is fundamentally missionalMissional doesn’t say everything about our ecclesial identitySays something very centralHas been muted in Western church but is now being recovered

Imagery of mission

Mission: Often cross-cultural ministry or outreach activity

Not simply something church does but who the church is

Church is “missionary by her very nature” (Ad Gentes, Vatican II)

Ecclesiology of Vatican II is “missionary through and through” (David Bosch)

Mission—nature of church

‘What we have to learn is not that the church ‘has’ a mission, but the very reverse: that the mission of Christ creates its own church. Mission does not come from the church; it is from mission and in the light of mission that the church has to be understood.’ (Jurgen Moltmann)‘. . . the church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.’ (Emil Brunner)

Two emphases of missional

Missionary consciousness: oriented toward world, exist for sake of the world (inward)

Missionary encounter with culture: called to live in different story and challenge idols of culture (outward)

- Wilbert Shenk

Why ‘mission’ to designate this?

Two things about cross-cultural mission and missionaries: Missionary knew lives directed outward

to the unbelieving world Missionary knew they were to live in

different story than culture and called to challenge cultural story with gospel

So the whole church . . .

Two starting definitions

‘Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of the world for the redemption of God’s creation.’

- Chris Wright

Three important facets of definition

Mission is not first of all what the church does; rather mission is defined in terms of participation in the mission of the Triune GodThe communal nature of mission—it is a mission first of all of God’s peopleScope of mission is as broad as creation since God’s mission is the redemption of his whole world

‘God’s mission involves God’s people living in God’s way in the sight of the nations.’

- Chris Wright

Two Starting Definitions

Living in God’s Way in the Sight of the Nations

‘. . . mission is not primarily about going. Nor is mission primarily about doing anything. Mission is about being. It is about being a distinctive kind of people, a countercultural . . . community among the nations.’ (Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra)

Facing in three directions at once

Four Main Sections of Book

Opening chapter: Trace historically why the missional identity of Western church has been diminishedFive chapters: Trace the role of church in biblical story One chapter: Five clusters of images that need to be understood in missional way (people of God, new creation, body of Christ, temple of Holy Spirit, diaspora) One chapter: 13 ways this might be fleshed out today

Church in Biblical Story

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessing

‘What is being offered in these few verses is a theological blueprint for the redemptive history of the world, now set in train by the call of Abram.’ (William Dumbrell)

Church in the Biblical Story

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people

Israel is to be ‘a display-people, a showcase to the world of how being in covenant with Yahweh changes a people.’ (John Durham)

‘The history of Israel from this point on is in reality merely a commentary upon the degree of fidelity with which Israel adhered to this Sinai-given vocation.’ (Dumbrell)

Church in the Biblical Story

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessing

Exodus 19.3-6: Display people

Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nations

The ‘visibility of Israel was part of its theological identity and role as the priesthood of yhwh among the nations.’ (Chris Wright)

Church in the Biblical Story

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophets Failure of Israel to live up to their identity to be light to the

nations. Promise of prophets: End-time kingdom when Israel would

be gathered and renewed, and then nations incorporated

Old Testament theology has paid scant attention to the motif of “gathering,” whereas ‘the “gathering of the scattered people of God” has been . . . one of the fundamental statements of Israel’s theology.’ (Gerhard Lohfink)

Church in the Biblical Story

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophetsJesus gathers and renews IsraelAlready-not yet era of kingdomTime of gathering

Jesus gathers a people

‘After a history of more than a millenium [sic], the people of God could neither be founded nor established, but only gathered and restored.’ (Lohfink)

‘. . . the only significance of the whole of Jesus’ activity is to gather the eschatological people of God.’ (Joachim Jeremias)

‘That God has chosen and sanctified his people in order to make it a contrast-society in the midst of the other nations was for Jesus the self-evident background of all his actions.’ In Jesus we see God’s ‘eschatological action’ to ‘restore or even re-establish his people, in order to carry out definitively and irrevocably his plan of having a holy people in the midst of the nations.’ (Lohfink)

Church in the Biblical Story

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophetsJesus gathers and renews IsraelGathersForms into display community

Jesus forms followers into display community

Jesus restores them to be a distinctive peopleInvitation to centre life in HimSummons to be part of what He is doingTeachingModelling

‘Thus, there arose in the midst of ancient Israel—unobtrusively at first and yet irreversibly—the new society planned by God.’ (Lohfink)

Church in the Biblical Story

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophetsJesus gathers and renews IsraelAlready-not yet era of kingdomTime of gatheringForms into display communityRenews them in death, resurrection, and Spirit

Death and Resurrection

Cosmic scope: Turning point in historyDeath: Decisive defeat of powers of old ageResurrection: Inauguration of renewed

creation

Spirit brings life of new creation

Gathered end-time community participates in life of kingdom/new creation

Church in the Biblical StoryGenesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophetsJesus gathers and renews Israel Already-not yet era of kingdom Time of gathering Forms into display community Renews them with death, resurrection, and Spirit

Gathered renewed Israel sent Commissions community Acts tells story of newly configured mission

Acts 1.1-11

Now the kingdom will come, right? (1.6)

Jesus’ answer:Already-not yet will continue

‘The meaning of this “overlap of the ages” in which we live, the time between the coming of Christ and His coming again, is that it is the time given for the witness of the apostolic Church to the ends of the earth. The end of all things, which has been revealed in Christ, is—so to say—held back until witness has been borne to the whole world concerning the judgment and salvation revealed in Christ. The implication of a true eschatological perspective will be missionary obedience, and the eschatology which does not issue in such obedience is a false eschatology.’

- Lesslie Newbigin

Acts 1.1-11

Now the kingdom will come, right? (1.6)

Jesus’ answer:Already-not yet will continueYou will be my witnesses

‘When the Spirit comes to them and gives them the gift of power, their very identity will be transformed into that of witnesses.’ (Guder)

Acts 1.1-11

Now the kingdom will come, right? (1.6)Jesus’ answer:Already-not yet will continueYou will be my witnessesGift of Spirit as foretaste of new creationTo the ends of the earth

Spontaneous Expansion of Church in Acts

Attractive life of the community

Spontaneous evangelism by common members of the church

Planting new churches

- Roland Allen

Four Main Sections of Book

Opening chapter: Trace historically why the missional identity of Western church has been diminishedFive chapters: Trace the role of church in biblical story One chapter: Five clusters of images that need to be understood in missional way (people of God, new creation, body of Christ, temple of Holy Spirit, diaspora) One chapter: 13 ways this might be fleshed out today

Thirteen Priorities1. Church with faithful and relevant worship2. Church empowered by the gospel and immersed

in the biblical story3. Church devoted to communal prayer4. Church with well-trained leaders5. Church with parents trained to take up the task

of nurturing children in the faith6. Church with small groups that nurture for

mission in the world7. Church that seeks unity of the body of Christ

Thirteen Priorities8. Church that understands its cultural context9. Church trained for missionary encounter in

their callings in the world10. Church deeply involved in the needs of their

neighbourhood and world11. Church trained to do evangelism in an organic

way12. Church committed to missions13. Church striving to live as a contrast community

‘They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer: and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!’

- Friedrich Nietzsche

A contrast community looking more redeemed today

A community of justice in a world of economic and ecological injusticeA community of generosity and simplicity (of ‘enough’) in a consumer worldA community of selfless giving in a world of selfishnessA community of truth (humility and boldness) in a world of relativism and uncertaintyA community of hope in a world of disillusionment and consumer satiationA community of joy and thanksgiving in a hedonistic world that frantically pursues pleasureA community who experiences God’s presence in a secular world