Foundations for a Mission-shaped Church by George Lings

June 2006, Australia  

Why do all churches need to be Mission-shaped is a pressing question. Some give pragmatic answers. We are a declining fishing fleet, fishing in a shrinking pond. The De-churched who know our story and might take our bait are decreasing. In England that decline is 8% per decade.  Moreover the church is disconnected from how most people live their lives. However hear me clearly. Pragmatism is not the best justification.  It can lead to guilt or failure as motivation and creates an anxious church. Worse it can create syncretism in the results.  Neither are acceptable. Are there pressing theological reasons why church should be mission-shaped?   

I take 5 related major themes  

1       Trinity and Missionary Ecclesiology  

            “Any theology of the church must ultimately be rooted in the Being and Acts of God.”[1]  

This is the first quote from the theological chapter of MSC.   We understood that the inner life of the Trinity and revelation in salvation history show God himself to be community-in-mission.   

“Mission comes from the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Spirit”. MSC p 85   

You might say Mission is a God send. For the theologians I add we learn from both the immanent and the economic trinity, but we must always take those categories in that order. The being of God is prior to the activity of God. Being comes before doing.  Church is to express the same dynamics.  In that sense mission is not the starting point. Mission itself proceeds from the inner loving community of God.  

Realization that there is a core to the being of church, but that it could take, and has taken many forms, led to the helpful analogy of DNA.  So we speak of Church having a DNA. There are enduring values of church. We sought to be consistent with the theological stand point that ecclesiology should take its shape from who and how God is, and how the Trinity have acted in mission. In Anglicanism there has been helpful work on naming five strands of what is mission. The so called 5 marks of mission. We offer 5 strands of the DNA of Church. This is the 1^st Strand .   

We have called them a Trinitarian focus, insisting that how the church is, must be reflection of Trinitarian life. The report here argues for the priority of worship. I would argue that this is only response to the Trinity, not learning in imitation from them. To learn from then teaches the priority of loving community before all else, and an instinct to express that inner life by outward loving mission – as do the Trinity in Creation, Salvation and Transformation.  

Thus the 2^nd mark is Relational Life, again echoed what is found within the Trinity. Mention of perichoresis here is appropriate. I just wish we used simpler language to express that depth of the interpenetration into one another’s lives that is exemplified by the Trinity. Perhaps the 3 Musketeers catchphrase “One for all and all for one“ does part of it. Unless Church is deeply and effectively relational, we shall neither follow the example of the persons of the Trinity, nor connect with God’s world.

3^rd comes incarnational instincts.  The divine community in mission willingly underwent change and loss to enter humanity. The laying aside is notably celebrated in Philippians 2 and John 1.

But sacrificial entering of, and identification with any different culture is not enough. A subversive operation is at work. Proclamation of a different Kingdom is accompanied by the call “follow me.”    

So Christ-like disciple making is the 4^th DNA strand. This is both following his example and deliberately creating community – which is outworking of the first and second strand of DNA. Disciples are a community following Jesus.   

Just like the divine community the process does not stop there and seeking transformation of creation is the 5^th strand.  Just as the divine community reach beyond themselves, so the Jesus community look beyond themselves to a kingdom centered, counter-cultural affect upon society.   

You may notice I have adapted the order of the five marks given on pp. 81-82 – as on the slide -  to focus on ontology being prior to activity.  It helps us insist that we need greater certainty over what church is – and less focus on what it does.  

If we know more what Church is,  if we are confident in the DNA, then there is less need to worry about what it will produce.

// Let me show you pictures of my wife Helen and myself.  Then I pose a question. What will our children look like?  If you have never met them, of course you cannot know.  However when you see them, the links become obvious – facial features, face shapes, even casts of mind. Looking back we can see the family likeness, but we also encounter individuality. So it is with DNA and Fresh Expressions of Church.  You can’t know what they will be like at the start. When they are grown, the parentage is apparent.  

Behind all this is an essential change of mind, or of centre that is being set out in MSC.

Nicholaus Copernicus was a polish astronomer who wrote a booklet - The Little Commentary - in 1514.  He proposed among other things that the earth was not the centre of the universe; rather it went round the sun. It was – excuse the pun – revolutionary.  

The Church is entering a Copernican revolution.  We are being forced to shift away from thinking that the Church is the centre of life to which we draw others, to realizing the Son's mission – that’s S O N of God - is the centre.  Jesus’ ongoing mission is the centre. It is discerned and disclosed in the world, outside the existing church. So only being in the mission context can properly shape what the resultant church will be.   

Mission-shaped Church is not a catchy lecture title; not even at heart a Church of England report, it is actually a divine process.  Mission shaping what the people of God do, and how they are, is quite a revolution.  Yet mission changing the missioner is exactly what happened to Jesus himself. The doctrine of it is called the Incarnation. Philippians chapter 2 is an early Christian hymn that celebrates it.  John 20 verse 21 is Jesus telling us that the same should happen to us. “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.”  I am now surprised that we have so easily missed this.  We have tended to domesticate incarnational thinking into cultural sympathy and minimized the inherent changes upon ourselves.  

The Copernican change makes sense of something we have long suspected, but often not done. Realizing the centre is different, changes the inherent direction of the missionary journey.  “Come to church” made some sense when church was the centre of society.  It is certainly a sociological fact, but maybe also it is a parable,  that the church now finds itself at the margins of society.  The Copernican revolution means joining the outward mission of God and that He is the centre.  This changes all mission to a basic “go” shape.  In the past, churches have played with this “go” language.  But they left themselves in the centre of the frame of understanding, so all such talk has become subverted once more into “come” practice.  

2       The Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection  

You might agree with me that Anglicans think the Incarnation is important.  So let’s work with that.  I take the Incarnation because of the conviction that Christology should lead to Ecclesiology, rather than the other way round. If we are looking for evidence as to whether genuinely Fresh Expressions of Church are theologically possible,  it is relevant to explore our understanding of Christ.  Philippians 2 celebrates glorious and sacrificial changes.  Out of a divine love, which the passage calls us to emulate in spirit,

He who is by nature God made himself nothing, 

He who was equal with God took the form of a servant,

He who was in nature God was found in human likeness.

He who is eternal became obedient to death.

He who is glorious, died a shameful death.  

All these willingly embraced changes are not a million miles away from the language of Fresh Expressions.  This life of the God/Man was a fresh expression of being the second person of the Trinity.  It only took the church about 300 years to get their heads round how. My point is that the divine was not distorted or eclipsed, but this incarnation had not been seen before. In that sense it was change. It was not a change that destroyed or compromised God the Son’s identity but rather, could we say, freshly expressed it?  

Then Jesus the God/Man seems to live out a reality that life is open, not all pre-planned. John’s Gospel shows him actively seeking and responsively following what the Father is doing.  Jesus also experiences changes.  He appears limited by the lack of faith in Nazareth , disappointed from time to time with his disciples, surprised and delighted by the faith of the Roman Centurion.  His suffering and struggle in Gethsemane are presented as real, not pretended. And throughout the Crucifixion narratives, though the suffering is quietly understated, it is equally clear. This Jesus is passible. He suffers.  Then supremely comes a change that happens to him. In the words of the hymn “this mystery all the immortal dies.” Moreover the pattern of change continues, in that he is raised; it is always a passive tense in Scripture.    

The continuities are in his divine identity, his relationship to Father and Spirit, his moral integrity, his commitment to the mission and to the disciples. The changes are in whatever was set aside by becoming Incarnate, the becoming enfleshed, the ups and down of where the mission took him and notably through his own predicted process of dying to live.  How we handle holding change and continuity together is a key issue behind MSC.   I suggest that continuity and change can be held together.  Jesus is theologically the crucial example of this.    

So then church also is called to hold onto its foundational ecclesial identity, but to follow in the steps of Christ and become incarnated, not just photocopied, into various cultures through its mission calling. It is the incarnation that opens up the possibility of principled change whilst keeping continuity.  Fresh Expressions is about holding onto both. But the changes may be as far reaching and surprising as was the incarnation, when the angels were first told that this is what the Trinity had in mind.  “It hasn’t been done before” might have been an objection even then.

 Let us operate the theological method that patterns of God the Son in mission do determine what the church should be and do. Following the patterns of Jesus, this section roots the incarnational entry to any culture, as necessary before the later counter-cultural engagement with a culture.  Jesus entered human culture even to the depth of death by it’s hand. Loving engagement with a culture leads to incarnational processes. However, in that process the miracles and parables began to reveal a counter cultural kingdom at work. This was supremely demonstrated in the Resurrection and focussed for early Christians in the classic confession: Jesus is Lord not Caesar.  So it is Lordship that underpins being counter cultural. Thus it is plausible to affirm that Incarnation and Counter cultural are not opposed. Rather it is the case that they have a Christ given shape and order.  The Church is called to follow that pattern in all its expressions.  Such a shape includes, at its centre, a process of dying to live.    

Here I want to put a caveat on how much we can take from the Incarnation, rich though this seam is for mining material for missionary ecclesiology.  The NT talks of the relationship between Christ and his people in a number of ways. Head and body, Branches and Vine. Bridegroom and Bride. Temple and cornerstone. New Adam and new human race.   In a variety of ways our union with Christ is described. What is the central and determining mark of this union?  Put in a question; is it about the Incarnation or about Death and Resurrection?  I share the view expounded by Newbigin[2] against Mascall that the textual evidence and the liturgical practice is massively in favour of the latter. Mascall asks “is Lady Day or Good Friday the supreme commemoration of our redemption?” While dividing the Incarnation and the Passion is always folly, we must ask which of the two is given as our pattern for union with Christ.   

Here the evidence stacks up. Romans 6 is all about our union with Christ, in his death and Resurrection.  Baptism from then, till now has celebrated our union, not into Incarnation, but into Christ’s death and Resurrected life.  Communion centres around his death and the life he now offers. Within it, Incarnation is barely mentioned.  The Christian sign dominantly has been the Cross.  The sign of the hoped for victory which at present still is hidden, is the Resurrection, which is the in breaking of the future, the first fruits of the Kingdom. Paul speaking about his life and identity in Galatians 2 exclaims “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live and yet no longer I but Christ lives in me.”  

Conversely the NT knows of no extension of the Incarnation; Jesus returns to the Father. Indeed it is necessary that he goes away. There is no command that the incarnation is to be continued in us.  As already enfleshed and human, we could not take that road even if we wished.  Newbigin concludes 

“The corporate life of the Church is no other than this profoundly mysterious life of Christ in us, which is to be described only in terms of  paradox – as a dying yet a living.“[3] 

It looks like dying to live is truly central; in Christology, in describing the nature our union with Christ and so also for ecclesiology.  

3       The relationship of church to mission and the kingdom  

MSC was written in reaction to a distortion that held church as central and primary. At best mission was one of her important tasks, at worst it was ignored. All of this we challenge, following thinkers like Dearborn, Moltmann Bosch

 “It is not the Church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a Church in the world”[4]  

I confess MSC is less consistent than I would wish – due I am sure to hurried editing. I agree the Church is the fruit of the Mission of God in Christ.  But thereafter it is also the bearer of the Gospel – it becomes the sower, as well as the fruit. What began as a straight line drawn from mission to church does help justify the claim that historically mission shaped church.  However thereafter the progression is more complicated – perhaps like a spiral or helix in which mission and church follow on after one another.  

This is because the church is not just the bearer of the message, it also embodies the message.  This is related to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, through whom we experience the first fruits of being in Christ and the life of the Trinity and of heaven.  I however think it is a dangerous mistake and presumptive to talk of the church as the agent, of either mission or of the kingdom.  I agree we are part of the process, but do not believe we ourselves can confer that which has grasped us.   I believe Lesslie Newbigin is right to insist this role of agent belongs to the Holy Spirit. God alone brings life. However to talk of the church as a sign of the kingdom – like a city on a hill or a light in the house - is entirely acceptable. So I find in David Bosch  

“Jesus’ ministry of erecting signs of God’s initiatory reign was emulated by the early church. Christians were not called to do more than erect signs: neither were they called to do less.”[5]  

4       Inculturation

This term is close to another, more familiar to some, known as “contextualisation”.  Both terms are about how the gospel and the church truly enter a culture from below, in order to transform it from within, rather than acting from outside and above and so imposing values upon that culture. These are classic errors from past mission practice.    

Are inculturation and contextualization exactly the same? They overlap but perhaps the differences are as follows. Inculturation has tended to be used by Catholic sources and focused on a two way process between culture and church.  Contextualisation has been the language of evangelicals and focused upon a one way process by which gospel, from beyond, becomes truly indigenized. The sharp questions then are:  are both ways valid?  And does inculturation apply to church and gospel?  

I think it is a pity that the Mission-shaped Church   report does not read as evenly as it should at these points.  It can read occasionally as though gospel does not need to be incultured, but only church must be – or vice versa.  It can read as though either gospel or church are givens which can be simply imposed.  I am clear that both the gospel and the church must be incultured if they are to be comprehended and effective. Neither of them should escape this process and neither can, because they are intrinsically bound to each other. Let me amplify that. The gospel is carried by the church, encountering church should be to meet the gospel; responding to the gospel leads to church.  They are chicken and egg.  

Clarity I think was given by the wording of the MSC definition of the Church Planting process, which includes hints of inculturation.

            “Church planting is the process by which a seed of the life and message of Jesus, embodied by a community of Christians, is immersed for mission reasons, in a particular cultural or geographic context. The intended consequence is that it roots there, coming to life as a new indigenous body of Christian disciples well suited to continue in mission.”[6]  

The wording shows us clearly that seed, containing both gospel and church, enters the soil of the mission context. From this the plant grows.  Neither the gospel nor the church, brought in through the planting process, can assume a fixed or prior form.  Hence the processes are two way. The soil affects how the seed grows.  We must not fuse the meaning and the form of the Gospel, as was upheld by the Lausanne Haslev Consultation of 1997. But this principle applies to church as well.

The danger to avoid is syncretism – especially the current lure of consumerism  

5       Marks of the Church  

There is in MSC a reworking of the historic four marks one, holy, catholic and apostolic from a mission-shaped church perspective.  MSC then includes how fresh expressions fit in with specifically Anglican issues and categories of being authentic church like the Lambeth Quadrilateral – with its focus on Scripture, Creeds, Dominical sacraments and Episcopacy locally adapted.  The last has historically being the ecumenical sticking point.  

We do need values expressing the essence of church that can be applied to any context and with any size of church grouping – a small cell or a large Minster. They help us create what is healthy and valid. MSC suggests one way of thinking of them as being like four dimensions of a journey, none of which exist without reference to the others.  

All expressions of church are drawn into a journey with an UP dimension – the journey toward God in worship. It must equally be about seeking God himself and about becoming like him in his holiness. Without the transformation that should gradually result, we are only playing liturgical games. Then our worship will be hollow. Here is expression of the church seeking to be Holy.  

Church community is led into a journey containing an IN dimension. It is a quality and unity in relationships. It exists to express, in practice, the oneness of the Trinity and of the body of Christ. The Trinity show us the quality of diversity held in unity because of their eternal love. Unless such love is the base of oneness in community, gatherings of the church, at whatever size, and of whatever antiquity, will only be held together by organisational artificial glue. Here is demonstration of the church seeking to express its being One.  

The nature of the church includes that it is sent onto the journey OUT. The sending in mission embraces with the breadth of the holistic mission of Jesus. This journey outward is fulfilment of our apostolic call; we but follow Jesus the Apostle. Without this the church is not only in danger of introspection, becoming fixed and complacent, but enters the realm of disobedience. Here is manifestation of the church seeking to live out being Apostolic.  

To be church, it is called to walk the journey which has an OF dimension. None in the Body of Christ exist for themselves, or by themselves. All of us came from some part of the wider church. We are called to relate together. This connects local church to the wider church now. ‘OF’ also celebrates the connection of the church of earth with the church in heaven and the church of now with the church from history.  There is a history of which to be proud, in part, and from which to learn. It’s part of what MSC calls double listening.  It is expression of a deliberate interdependence. Paul urges this value in 1 Corinthians 12 within his image of the Church as a Body. This is the church seeking expression of being Catholic – being whole and interconnected.  

I would add that a community following the dynamic balance of these UP IN OUT OF journeys may find different ones have greater emphasis at different points in the story. But eventually all four aspects of the journey need to be playing a part.  Even then the four may well also have their own seasons of prominence. Health is determined not by an instant snap shot but by observation of longer rhythms and discernment about adjustment and emphasis. This is how dynamic balance is followed.  

Not only that, but the four journeys are not the whole reality. 

It would be possible to imagine an Al Quaeda group claiming to be Holy is pursuit of Allah, one with other Muslims, Apostolic in being sent to do Holy War work and Catholic in relating to the wider Muslim world.

The journeys in themselves do not fully explain or validate the centre from which they all spring. Here are the 2 core values that inform the content of the 4 journeys. To be Christian, we are talking about a Jesus centered community.   As Archbishop Rowan has put it in minimalist language: “Church … is any expression of the life of Jesus in communal form “  

Jesus Christ is the head, he is the inspiration,

His value in relating UP to God the Trinity is normative

Growing trinity-like loving community, IN with each other is an aim.

Joining his OUT mission is a task.

And being part OF his wider body is an indispensable part of our identity.

Knowing, loving and following him is the centre.  

This 4^th value or journey, of catholicity, is I find that one which is most often ignored, both by other writers and also by practitioners of Fresh Expressions of Church.  Even the excellent Frost and Hirsch book 'the Shaping of Things to Come' draws a triangle on p 77 of what the essence of Church is.  

I applaud the titles of the sides of the triangle Communion, Community and Commission. They are warm responsive and corporate – but none of those does the OF work. You can’t get an OF from an IN – it is it’s own category – and utterly necessary theologically. Why?    

At heart because there is only one body of Christ as the scriptures reveal and commend. Further more those passages urge conscious interdependent relationship, with those very other parts of the body that are not like our part. That is the instinct of Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.  So I humbly suggest to Frost and Hirsch some possible C words; communicate if it must be a com word. I’d actually prefer better words like connectedness or continuity.  

Let me summarise in a few sentences

• We know what mission shaped Church is – by focusing first on who God is and how the Trinity conduct their life and mission.

• These instincts not only cover firstly Church identity, but also missionary practice, in which we must not treat the gospel and church totally separately.

• Accurate DNA thinking about church will give us better instincts and freer practice.

• Incarnation under girds the legitimacy of continuity and change through fresh expressions of mission-shaped church

• Incarnation and Lordship will take us into a particular Jesus shape, to the mission process.  From entry, to counter cultural challenge.

• Incarnation must not be used to mask the centrality of death and resurrection thinking

• Terms like fruit and sign offer us accuracy and modesty about the church’s role in mission, but do not confuse it with Christ and Spirit’s life giving work.

• Two way Inculturation, of Gospel and church  beckon us on the Mission-Shaped journey

• The historic marks of the church also guide the journey, which must be from Christ and for Christ.

That’s a sketch of foundations within MSC. I think something worthwhile could stand on it.

Here is a basis for a change of mind, from which a principled change of practice could be built.