Congregation Of Mission Research Articles

Evangelism as an invitation to missional discipleship in the kingdom of God

Evangelism, for various reasons, is once again back on the agenda of the church and theology. As a result of negative experiences and practices of evangelism in the past, it is now necessary to rediscover evangelism in a post-Christendom context to enable the theological recovery of evangelism. This new understanding of evangelism can then contribute to the recovery of authentic practices in spreading the good news. To achieve this, evangelism must be rediscovered as essential to mission (participation in the missio Dei). Further to this, evangelism is rediscovered as an invitation to missional discipleship in the coming of the kingdom of God (missional discipleship as participation in the coming of the kingdom). This research was based on the starting point that evangelism takes place through an integrated missional congregation as the evangelist. This implies that evangelism is not an additional extra practice by a few members but an integral part of congregational ministry. Evangelism is then understood and integrated holistically as martyria by the entire faith community. The gospel of the kingdom is then embodied in their faithful presence (being), loving service (deeds) and words of hope at appropriate times (speaking). This holistic approach will free evangelism from reductionisms and dichotomies that have added to the fact that evangelism has fallen out of favour. These practices of evangelism are determined by the theology (content) and serviceable style of Jesus and contextually discerned in faith as participating in God’s mission. The empirical research was based on 49 questionnaires received from 43 Dutch Reformed (DR) congregations from the Northern Synods and 6 other churches. The qualitative research comprised structured interviews with 10 pastors from participating DR congregations. Simple random sampling was used to select the participants of the study.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This research was conducted from the perspectives of practical theology and missiology. However, it also leaned into systematic theology (dogmatics) about missional ecclesiology and the identity of the church. The understanding of the integrated missional congregation (faith community) made use of systems theory, which is an interdisciplinary approach. The ethics of the practices of evangelism have points of contact with ethics.

Free for Mission

Working at the intersection of ethnographic and missional theology, this essay argues for the central role of fieldwork for discerning missional identity in congregations. Recent developments in ecclesiology and ethnography have clarified the embodied nature of theological knowledge, disclosing the practical wisdom and cultural locatedness of the researcher and congregation. While ethnography has been used to help congregations understand their context and discern a missional vocation, the ongoing theological and formational nature of such practices are often undertheorized in relationship to missional church. Drawing from Robert Jenson’s notion of the Spirit as God’s freedom, liberating God and creature for God’s future, this essay suggests ethnographic fieldwork as a liberative practice for the congregation, freeing it to participate in the boundary-crossing and sensemaking work of missional church. In working with congregations, I’m often greeted by some version of the question: “Are we (meaning, the congregation I’m working with) missional yet?” The question comes loaded with curiosity and concern. What, they ask, is a missional church, and would we know one if we saw it? Even more significant: how will we know when the work we are doing to renew our theological imagination and develop partnerships with our neighbors will pay off? The question comes from a good place, but it also leads into a deceptive trap, for any answer will betray the dynamism that “missional” tries to name (Guder 1998, 3–5). And yet, the question also unveils a theo-practical ambiguity at the heart of the missional church. The problem is not just that missio Dei theology holds together unreconciled tensions between the God-church-world relationship, but that the boundary-crossing practices that shape the missional vocation of a congregation are viewed instrumentally, as a means to a missional end. Congregations, seeking to identify as “missionary by [their] very nature,” and reorient congregational life through practices of missional discernment, can be forgiven for thinking of “missional” as a fixed arrival point (Guder 2015, 9). In what follows, I explore the theological significance of ethnographic practices for missional congregations. A staple of many approaches to missional renewal and missional church plants, church leaders and steering committees regularly employ the basic tools of ethnographic fieldwork to better understand their own community and their context or neighborhood (Croft and Hopkins 2015; Roxburgh 2011). In descriptive terms, these practices equip congregants for deep listening, attentive observation, and disciplined curiosity. They also place congregants in new places and with new people, drawing these experiences into congregational reflection and discernment. While neither professional ethnographers nor academic theologians, congregants are given through these practices new connections to neighbors and offered new vantage points from which to reflect upon the life and ministry of the congregation. As such, they are not simply a means to a missional end, but rather practices that already participate in God’s missional future. Congregational ethnographic fieldwork can cultivate new social realities which glimpse—and perhaps even liberate—the congregation for God’s mission in its particular context.Of course, ethnographic fieldwork is not a theological practice by itself, nor can missional theology be collapsed into ethnography. At stake in this discussion is how otherness is reconciled with the missio Dei, how one envisions the relationship between God and God’s creation, the church and God’s present and coming Reign (see Swart et al. 2009). Drawing from Robert Jenson’s understanding of the Spirit as God’s freedom and God’s future, I suggest a liberative approach to missional church. Rather than a fixed identity or a future telos, the missional church is liberated for God’s mission by and through the neighbor, the stranger, the other in and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The church sent into the world recognizes and receives God’s “preferred and promised future” in the concrete relationships cultivated (Keifert 2006, 16). Ethnography, shaped by this missional intention, becomes an ongoing practice for missional theology, not only a step toward a missional identity.

Integrering en koördinering van bedienings in identiteitsontdekking en -ontwikkeling

Integration and coordination of ministries in identity finding and identity development. In this article Nel’s argument that ministries (in the building up of the local congregation) need each other to facilitate the discovery and development of identity is tested. The role that the integration and coordination of ministries in a systems approach play in the discovery and development of a missional congregation’s identity is investigated and research is done to see whether scholars agree with Nel’s theory that all the ministries can facilitate identity finding and identity development. This empirical research (quantitative as well qualitative) was conducted among the ministers of the Highveld Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. Hundred and thirty nine of the 144 ministers agreed to take part in the quantitative research, followed by partly structured interviews with 16 randomly selected ministers. During the empirical study (which formed part of PhD research) every attempt was made to obtain data in connection with the understanding ministers have regarding the building up, identity and missional being of a congregation as well as the integration and coordination of the ministries that are present in their congregations. Most of the ministers are aware of the fact that they need to develop their congregations as missional congregations, but the ministers do not always have the knowledge and experience to make the move. It was clear that not all the ministers understand the role that the ministries play in identity finding and identity development. Nel’s theory has therefore been affirmed by the empirical research. The research has shown that some of the ministers seem to show a flawed understanding that identity is a relational reality. At the same time there exists quite possibly a defective understanding that a congregation’s reason for existence originates in its identity, and it is clear that the role that the integration and coordination of the ministry play in the discovery and development of the identity are not fully understood. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Starting from within the framework of Practical Theology, I leaned into Dogmatics to learn more about the identity of the church. Dogmatics led me to a missiological ecclesiology that forms part of the study field of Missiology. The integration and coordination of ministries in a local congregation is basically systems theory. Systems theory is an interdisciplinary study of systems.

NOBILES PAUPERES: THE CLIENTELE OF THE CONGREGATION OF MISSION HOSPITAL IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VILNIUS

In 1695, Jan Teofil Plater and his wife Aleksandra founded a hospital for six impoverished nobles in Vilnius. Situated near the newly built church of the Ascension and the convent of the Congregation of Mission in the Subocz suburb beyond the city walls, this hospital was the first and, until the end of the eighteenth century, the only charitable institution providing care for individuals of particular social status. The article, based on the hospital’s registry book and other sources, examines the quantitative, as well as qualitative characteristics of the institution’s clientele, such as its fluctuations in size, its social composition, and the causes of its inmates’ impoverishment. The research revealed that, despite the demand for care, the overseers managed to maintain a stable number of inmates, rarely admitting more than one or two persons every year, and thus ensuring a steady operation of the hospital (see table 1). However, in contrast with other charitable institutions in Vilnius, the clientele of the Congregation of Mission hospital changed frequently because of expulsions (39.6 percent of all cases) and inmates leaving the hospital on their own initiative (20.1 percent) already in the first year of their stay. The mortality of inmates (27.8 percent) affected the size and turnover of the clientele to a much lesser extent than observed in other hospitals. Although there are no reliable data on the inmates’ age and health, such statistics show that they probably were younger and healthier than the clients of other charitable institutions in Vilnius. Moreover, the Congregation of Mission hospital’s inmates differed from the clients of other institutions in respect of social composition. Impoverished petty nobles, originating mainly from the districts of Lida and Oszmiana, constituted the majority (56.25 percent) of the hospital’s inmates whose social status is noted in the registry book (62.5 percent). The nobles became clients of the Congregation of Mission hospital either because of old age, disability, as well as other accidental causes, or because of increased social vulnerability outside mutual aid networks, comprised of family members, kin or neighbours. The article argues that the foundation of a hospital designated to provide care primarily for impoverished nobles shows that the poverty of nobles was recognized by contemporaries as a social problem that should be tackled. Keywords: poverty, charity, hospital, the Congregation of Mission, Vilnius, nobles, eighteenth century.

Die opbou van ’n missionale gemeente: ’n Verkenning van die invloed van Godsbegrip en liturgiese ervaring

The building up of a local missional congregation: The understanding of God and liturgy. The purpose of this article is to investigate the understanding of God by members of the Netherdutch Reformed Church (Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika [NHKA]), their liturgical experience and its influence on the development of a missional congregation. The world is currently in the midst of a wave of changes that have far-reaching implications for the church and, specifically, for the NHKA. In a changing world it is imperative that church members understand the value of the different metaphors of God as well as its value for the development of the missional congregation. From a practical-theological approach, this article aims to look at the influence of the liturgy of life on the development of a missional congregation.

Called and sent to make a difference: Radical missionality

The concept ‘missional’ is well established within the so-called missional conversation. It is however often ‘questioned’ by scholars and pastors for different reasons. Sometimes it is almost dissected from the rest of theology, especially systematic theology. Recent developments in this field are given an account of in this article. The main purpose of the article is not to argue a case for the concept again. The purpose is to focus on whether theology and ministry in any way understand the radical implications if and when we are missional in being and doing. My assumption within the field of research on rediscovering discipleship in the development of missional congregations is that none of us have thought through how radical missionality is, especially over and against a ‘volkskirchliche’ understanding and practice of church. The article will also touch on some radical changes in philosophy of ministry and doing ministry within a missional paradigm.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article focuses mainly on Practical Theology and specifically Congregational Development (‘Missionarische Gemeindeaufbau’). This field stands in a direct relationship with Missiology. The article contributes to a growing understanding of the radical nature of missional thinking and practice in congregational life and ministry.

Some thoughts around developing missional South African congregations based upon the church rediscovering its identity in the grace of God

The UPCSA have established the development of missional congregations as the overarching goal of the denomination. The UPCSA is a reformed church and as such attaches great importance to theology, especially that which originates in the character and nature of God. It is therefore suggested that a contextual practical theology based upon the perfection of the grace of God may enable missional congregations to be developed, as they rediscover their identity in that grace. This then will be the basis for building congregations that are truly missional at heart and not just superficially so. The study will be contextualized to the South African scene and applied to local congregations in order to try to help them rediscover their true identify in Christ, and to provide a basis for understanding “missional” and thus what transformation may entail.

Lederskab og spiritualitet i en missional kirke

Leadership and spirituality in a missional church: Missional perspectives on the responsibility of the leadership to develop the spirituality of the congregation The thesis of this article is that leadership and spirituality in a biblical perspective are intertwined and closely connected. In the life of the leader this has to do with calling, discipleship, a life of faith, and a discovery of one’s spiritual gifts. The same pattern applies to the congregation: The growth and spiritual maturity of the congregation depend on an understanding of leadership where the center is equpping the saints for service, to build up the body of Christ. The thesis is thus that the precondition for developing a missional congregation is to develop the spirituality of the congregation. This calls for a missional leadership which is able both to develop missional congregations and able to bind together missional with a living congregational spirituality.

Reclaiming Evangelism

AbstractThis paper introduces approaches to reclaiming evangelism, noting the challenges and opportunities of our changing global context, and stressing the importance of authentic witness. The author draws on the Council for World Mission's work promoting the development of missional congregations as life‐affirming communities and its statement identifying six conversation threads (the absence of God; secularism; issues of identity; how we affirm life; the sources we use to shape and nurture our faith; and how we overcome fear and violence in our societies and in the world) that need to be developed on Christian witness in a pluralist world.

Missional Congregations as Public Companions with God in Global Civil Society: Vocational Imagination and Spiritual Presence

This article explores the intersection of missional ecclesiology and civil society studies and proposes that the Holy Spirit is calling emerging missional congregations to the vocation of public companions with God in global civil society. This congregational vocation of public companion entails four dimensions of missional congregations’ spiritual presence within civil society: perichoretic communion, prophetic speech, sapiential wisdom, and pacific action.

Missional Congregations in Civil Society: An Imagination for God's World

This article provides glimpses of the emerging missional church within the civil society arena from the perspective of congregational case studies. Civil society studies offer five potential community contributions that provide congregations expanded possibilities for discerning and fulfilling their missional vocations in their communities. Framed within trinitarian missional theology, these create a meaningful framework for congregations to expand their imaginations and strengthen their public participation with God's mission in today's world.

The missional renaissance: Its impact on churches in South Africa, ecumenical organisations, and the development of local congregations

This article focuses on three matters pertaining to the conversation of missional churches. Firstly, it looks at the impact of missional awareness in South Africa and Africa. Here the article explores what is meant by missional congregations in the South African context. Secondly it looks at the ecumenical understanding and development of the missional church and how this has started to shape ecumenical organisations and, thirdly it concludes with some suggestions of how missional congregations and denominations can be developed. In this final section the article offers some strategic principles for developing missional churches.

A missional study of Ghanaian Pentecostal churches’ leadership and leadership formation

Church leadership plays an important and irreplaceable role in the planting and the configuration of the missional congregation. The key to the formation of missional communities is their leadership. In that regard, this article explores Classical Ghanaian Pentecostal Churches’ leadership and leadership formation from a missiological perspective. This was done through an exposition on their leadership system (structure). It was argued that Classical Ghanaian Pentecostal Churches’ leadership is based on the Fivefold Ministry (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher). These leadership functions were therefore discussed in the light of their missiological implication. The conclusion arrived at is that it is not enough to discover one’s spiritual gift or calling; these gifts should be developed and nurtured through mentoring and proper theological education, with the ultimate purpose being to participate in the Missio Dei.

Book Review: Created and Led by The Spirit: Planting Missional Congregations, edited by Mary Sue Dehmlow Dreier,

Book Review: Created and Led by The Spirit: Planting Missional Congregations, edited by Mary Sue Dehmlow Dreier,

Informed by Science, involved by Christ, How science can update, enrich and empower the Christian faith, K. Nürnberger : book review

Men despise religion, wrote Blaise Pascal. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive so that good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. As someone who has a degree in Geology, has been a minister in a mainline denomination for 40 years, and aspires to develop missional congregations I believe that this should set the agenda for Christian apologetics in today's, increasingly secular and scientifically influenced, world. It is my experience that many (although not all) who accept the validity of much of what science has discovered in the last two centuries despise the gospel because of what they perceive to be the ridiculous reasons many Christians give for rejecting the assured results of honest research especially in the areas of biology, geology and astronomy. This is all the more galling since many have a totally literalist view of interpreting the scriptures that quiet frankly, biblical hermeneutics demonstrate, is not warranted. Then, in addition, many Christians claim experiencing miracles and answers to prayer that are either trivial, can be explained as coincidental or on occasions may even be palpably false.

지역사회에 대한 선교적(missional) 교회의 접근법 - 한국의 문화적 상황을 중심으로

Korean societies nowadays is experiencing rapid changes. Traditional cultures based upon Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shamanism are currently mixed with modern and postmodern cultures. The processes of globalization turned the Korean society into a multicultural one. The revolutions in the area of internet and mobile network added diversity to the Korean society. The cultural differences between old generations and young ones are becoming greater. Many people in the society today are becoming more antagonistic towards Christianity than before. These rapid changes in Korean society produce new problems and needs in the Korean communities. Missional approach takes the cultural context in the communities seriously. Missional congregations recognize the cultural difference between the people in the churches and the people outside the churches. They took the incarnational posture when they reach the unbelievers outside the churches. They try to make contact with the unbelievers and take time to listen from them. When they can understand the viewpoints of the unbelievers, the encounter between the Gospel and the culture of the people in the community begins inside the minds of the congregations. At this moment, trying to find the commonalities between the Gospel and the culture becomes very important, as it is the commonalities that provide contact points to applicate the Gospel in the culture. Especially nowadays, Korean communities try to rehabilitate themselves with efforts like ‘village revitalization movement,’ ‘community business’ and ‘social enterprise.’ This atmosphere is good soil for the missional congreations to create and participate in the common projects for the community with diverse subjects like government, enterprises, social institutes, civil societies etc.But the more important aspects in the encounter between the Gospel and Korean culture are in the areas of differences beteen them. In these cases the missional congregations are required to repent from their positions of receiving the cultural influence and to renew their thinking based on the Gospel. Once these kinds of encounters between the Gospel and the culture happen inside the minds of the missional congregations successfully, they are prepared to reach out to the people in the communities. They are in the position to interprete the Gospel to the people in the community using their language and concept. They can translate the Gospel in regards to the main concerns and stories of the people in the communities. Korean churches have the urgent task of becoming ‘contrast societies’ where the authentic community is actualized in the sight of the people in the community like the ‘village in the mountain’ or ‘salt and light’ as Jesus mentioned in the Bible (Matt. 5:13-14). They have the mission to become the sign, the instrument, and the foretaste representing the rule of God in the community.

CWM Perspective on Missional Congregations as Life-Affirming Communities

The Council for World Mission (CWM) describes itself as a partnership of churches in mission. Its 31 member churches around the world work collaboratively, sharing resources of people, money, and ideas, and understanding themselves to be partners together in God's mission. Our common life takes shape around our vision--fullness of life through Christ for all creation--and our mission statement: Called to partnership in Christ to mutually challenge, encourage and equip churches to share in God's mission. Enabling members to develop missional congregations has been identified as the central focus of CWM's current strategy. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The strategy, which is drawn as a diagram to convey the dynamic relationship among the various parts, seeks to promote the idea that all the key elements should both inform and be informed by each other. Furthermore, CWM, as a global partnership of churches in mission, seeks to acknowledge in its strategy the influence of our external environment, and more importantly how we should be seeking to witness to the wider world based on our accumulated experience of working with our members to develop missional congregations, or what we are now describing as life-affirming communities. As such it builds on CWM's theology statement (2010), Mission in the Context of Empire, in which we set out our understanding of our calling today: naming our context as Empire; describing our approach (and alternative paradigm) as partnership; and setting out our vision of fullness of life through Christ for all creation. (1) Our focus on enabling our members to develop missional congregations does not stand apart from the other elements; rather it is the touchstone of all our efforts. If the congregations we all serve and support are not missional, then how can we describe ourselves as partners in God's mission? Our congregations, the local churches to which we all belong, stand at the interface between the celebration and nurturing of our faith and our witness to the world. At the end of worship each Sunday in the benediction, we are commissioned to be apostles, bearers of good news to the communities we call home. So let us go to the world again in confidence; playing our part in God's mission and never losing heart. Let us put our faith in Jesus, our companion traveller, who will match his stride to ours until our journey's end. And the blessing ... So important is this element to our strategy that we have been engaging our members on it from the very outset, developing a programme that is focused on congregations and how they can be assisted to assess what it would mean to be engaged in mission--that is, to be life-affirming in their context--and supported as they develop the capacities and responses that their situation calls for. As part of this we have been drawing on the new WCC statement Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, as well as our own theology statement, Mission in the Context of Empire (2010). Both speak of the need to understand the nature of mission as embedded and transformative, that is, that mission should proclaim and offer fullness of life that speaks to people's life experiences. This is to go beyond simple contextual understandings of mission, to challenge us to see mission as the practical outworking of our faith, so that it is rooted (takes shape) in our communities and grows from there, engaging and transforming the challenges we face and gradually realizing the fullness of life that God promises. To this end we have developed a working definition of a missional congregation as a life-affirming community, drawing on the work of our members as they have explored this theme over the last couple of years: A life-affirming community-- * Lives a spirituality of engagement, which is reflected in its worship, and in the nurture and support of its members; * Is attuned to the communities in which it is set and alert to the needs of the world, so that it is willing to stand alongside and speak out with those who are suffering or are marginalised; * Does not work alone, being in active partnership with other groups who share similar concerns; * Is a learning community, with its members taking seriously their re-reading of the Bible and their reflection on their experience, both as individuals and as a community. …

The Missional congregation in the South African context

The term missional has come into use over the last years in the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and the Department of Science of Religion and Missiology of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria. This term refers to the role of the local congregation in the local community or communities and is used with, or in the place of, the term missionary, which traditionally referred to the sending out of a missionary to some or other place. The use of the term missional includes specific views on the goal of mission, what mission is and how it should be done. In this article it is argued that this approach can be seen as a new wave of mission within the South African context, and that it is related to developments in many parts of the global church.

Missional theological curricula and institutions

The article argues in favour of an all-embracing missional framework for curriculum development for theological institutions. When the curriculum of a subject such as ecclesiologyhas a missional hermeneutic, it will naturally lead to missional congregations. The authors use issues raised by the Network for African Congregational Theology (NetACT) institutions and the decisions of the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town (2010) as reference points in this article. They argue for a broad understanding of the concept �missional� and are of the opinion that curricula that are integrative, normative, contextual and missional will lead to spiritual maturity and will result in a positive impact on church and society as a whole. The missio Deias the work of the Trinitarian God is seen as being God�s initiative. The incarnational modelof Jesus Christ forms the basis for a theology and missiology where humility, vulnerability and servanthood play a pivotal role in curricula. An appeal is made for holistic missions with a strong emphasis on social engagement and the inclusion of community development. The Holy Spirit is seen as the empowering presence of the missio Dei, and the role of pneumatologyin missional curriculum development is underscored. Theological institutes should become�proclamation� institutions. Curricula should be ecumenical by nature and should include reaching the unreached and unengaged people groups. Theological education by extension is presented as an alternative way of decent ralised theological education.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article calls for theology to be done with a missional hermeneutic, both intradisciplinarily and interdisciplinarily. The article involves theology and education and calls for all disciplines dealing with community development to collaborate.

Contextualising theological education in Africa by doing theology in a missional hermeneutic

This article originated at curriculum development workshops for seminaries at different venues in sub-Saharan Africa. Its goal was to provide guidelines towards finding a hermeneutic key to practising theology contextually as a response to a process of spiritual discernment which would lead to a contextualised, missional theological curriculum and training. It briefly described elements of the history and context of theological training in the Christendom paradigm. It has little faith in the future of this paradigm, and argued that the southern shift of the heartland of Christianity points us in a new direction. The article said: look at the changing context, the influence of globalisation and the information revolution and revisit key theological parameters in Scripture. Observe what is happening in missional congregations and let all of these developments guide us on a journey to discover a new hermeneutic to do and teach theology in Africa.