the “sent” church 3

May 30, 2008

MISSIO DEI INTRODUCED

In 1934, Karl Hartenstein, a German missiologist, first expressed the notion of Missio Dei. The Missio Dei notion surfaced way before this time, but it emerged in a specific way in 1938 when the International Missionary Council (IMC) gathered at Tambaram (Madras) in India to have one of its most theologically alert conferences.

One of the chief outcomes of the Tambaram conference was the suggestion that “church and mission are one.” And by “mission,” they concentrated on the “sentness” of the church. In his book, Edinburgh to Salvador: Twentieth Century Ecumenical Missiology, T.V. Philip, a church historian and a former professor at the United Theological College in Bangalore, India, explained, “The main conclusion of the Madras Conference was that church and mission are inseparable… It is the church that is God’s missionary to the world.” (1)

THE MISSIOLOGICAL DEBATE: PAST AND PRESENT

According to Ed Stetzer, director of Lifeway Research and Lifeway’s Missiologist in Residence, the dispute about “church and mission” was probably the essential missiological debate of the first 60 years of the last century. (2) The fundamental concern of theses debates has commonly been over the nature of mission. (3) From the late 1800’s, however, the ascent of theological liberalism, the early world mission conferences – i.e. Tamambram and Willengen – and the consequential ecumenical movement began to dilute the Missio Dei beyond Philip’s aforementioned stance that church and missions are inextricable. (4)

Missio Dei is a term still used today in evangelical circles, though not as broadly as in ecumenical conversation and without the loss in focus on the church as the method God has established for His missionary work. (5) But in today’s dialogue, the evangelical rendition of Missio Dei is typically replaced with the word “missional.”

For the remainder of this series, when the term Missio Dei or “missional” is used, it highlights the elemental nature and calling of the church as God’s called and sent people. Charles Van Engen, Professor of Biblical Theology of Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary says it this way:

The genesis of my view of Missio Dei and of “missional” is the Bible…and the “traditional view of mission” that assumes…the nature of the church as being most fundamentally God’s instrument to call the nations to reconciliation with God in Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit… (6)

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1) T.V. Phillip, Edinburgh to Salvador: Twentieth Century Ecumenical Missiology [book on-line] (Delhi: CSS& ISPCK, 1999; accessed 10 May 2008); available from http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1573&C=1519; Internet.

2) Ed Stetzer, “Meanings of Missional – Part 1,” EdStetzer.com – A Lifeway Research Blog, 14 August 2007, available from http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2007/08/meanings_of_missional_part_1_1.html; Internet; accessed 10 May 2008.

3) Walter Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Second Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 782.

4) Phillip, Edinburgh to Salvador; Internet; accessed 10 May 2008.

5) Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 782.

6) Charles Van Engen, “Meanings of Missional Part 5,” interview by Ed Stetzer, EdStetzer.com – A Lifeway Research Blog, 2 October 2007, available from http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2007/10/meanings_of_missional_part_5_1.html; Internet: accessed 10 May 2008.

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