Discipleship in Creative (Un)Certainty

Abstract

The theme of the World Mission Conference 2018 brings together theological terms that do not link with each other easily: mission under the main agency of the Spirit of God, transforming discipleship that involves human participation in God’s mission, and, last but not least, mission from the margins. The article highlights some marks that this tension has left on the conference in Arusha and especially on the final declaration of the mission conference, “The Arusha Call to Discipleship,” and notes an apparent move to a new “messianic” understanding of mission. This article suggests that this understanding presents a one-sided interpretation of mission and strongly contrasts the idea developed in the last decades that the Holy Spirit is the main agent in mission. It continues by exploring how the theology of discipleship, with its wider and stricter interpretation deriving from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the inspirations of Pentecostal pneumatology, and finally the paradigm of the mission from the margins as epistemological shift all have the potential to correct misleading concepts of mission and give new impulses for the understanding of mission today. The paper concludes by proposing creative (un)certainty as an attitude that keeps the balance between the agency of the Holy Spirit in mission – including unforeseen disruptions evoked by the free blow of the Spirit – and human discipleship.