Monday Matters

Welcome back to Monday Matters!

Our reading this week comes from the book Missional Theology by John Franke. We’re grateful to have an established relationship with John here at CCF–he serves on our board and is gracious enough to share his time and expertise with our cohorts! 

In this text, John challenges us to think about “mission” as not merely something God does, but an essential characteristic of who God is. Just as God is holy or loving or good, God is also missional. The church’s mission, therefore, is not solely about evangelism and not relegated to a summertime activity in foreign countries. Instead, we can think of our mission as engaging with God’s work and dialogue with humanity and all of creation. Mission becomes whatever work contributes to God’s kingdom–in which everyone has what they need and no one is afraid.

As you read this brief excerpt, take some time to reflect on how you have conceived of Christian mission in the past and how a new understanding of God’s mission in the world might impact your work.

“[Early in the church’s history,] Mission was assumed to be evangelism, and its practitioners were predominantly Western missionaries connected to Western missionary societies. In that era the tendency was to associate Christianity with the West, distinguishing Christianity from the rest of the non-Christian world. Mission work was understood to be the work of evangelizing the non-Western, non-Christian world. 

…Missio Dei theology asserts that God has a particular desire, arising from God’s eternal character, to engage with the world. 

…There is a distinction between asserting that God has a mission and asserting that God is, by God’s very nature, a missionary. In the first instance, the action of mission may be incidental to and disconnected from the being of God; in the second instance, however, the action of mission is consistent with the very being of God because mission is one of the divine attributes.”

Food for thought:

Often, when Christians think about what it means to live out their faith in the workplace, they think only of evangelism. Does a wider conception of God’s mission change the way you think of your own mission?

Share your thoughts below!