Two vital questions that missional pastors obsess about
Pastors who lead their churches into the mission of Christ don’t do so by accident, it seems to me. These pastors are obsessed—obsessed by two questions. Two vital questions dominate the life, study and ministry of missional pastors:
- What is the shape of the mission of the church (biblical and contextual)?
- How do I mobilize my church into the mission of Christ?
The first question reflects a pastor’s concern for a deep understanding of mission. How are we to understand the shape of mission biblically? For example is mission just another thing the church does, or is it fundamental to the identity of the church—as a sent people (John 20:21)? And is mission central to the biblical story? And is it central to ecclesiology? And what can Leslie Newbigin teach us about a Trinitarian missiology? And what does it mean, as Guder writes, to, ‘be the witness, do the witness and say the witness’, etc...
And how are we to understand the shape of mission of Christ contextually? What does it mean, for example, to live as a signs to the Lordship of Christ in the west in 2013? How do we live gratefully in a culture of consumerism? And how do we live communally in a culture of individualism, etc... For those interested, Newbigin’s, ‘The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society’ provides a great starting place for our journey into these questions.
The second question is: how do I mobilize my church into the mission of Christ? I will leave this question to another blog, though do please feel free to contribute your answer! I finish be repeating these two questions for you to obsess about:
- What is the shape of the mission of the church (biblical and contextual)?
- How do I mobilize my church into the mission of Christ?