Frank Viola and I are dialogue-ing via an interview he has done on his blog. I’m trying to keep up. Frank’s got more energy than my three-year-old. In response to question 6, Frank gives his take on the whole “missiology precedes ecclesiology” thing. I respond first to this. (I deliberately didn’t get into the whole Christology precedes ecclesiology issue because I addressed that here). Below find Frank’s and then my response.
FRANK VIOLA: Regarding what comes first mission or church — missiology or ecclesiology, I think it boils down to how one defines mission. For instance, if we define “the mission” as God’s Eternal Purpose, as I do, then mission proceeds ecclesiology because it produces the ekklesia. But if we define it through the lens of D.L. Moody, which is so often the case today, then it simply means bringing the gospel to lost souls and seeing them converted. Evangelism flows out of the ekklesia. It’s what she, the organism of the church, does biologically when she is following her spiritual instincts. But it’s not the only thing she does. Nor is it the most important. God’s purpose goes far beyond the saving of lost souls (or whatever language one likes to use for that).
I personally think that within the modern missional movement there’s massive confusion on the difference between what Luke calls “the work” and “the church.”
The work is the regional, traveling, itinerant ministry of apostolic workers. The goal of the work is to produce local, corporate expressions of Jesus Christ (ekklesias). Workers, however, are produced by the church. Which comes first? It’s a chicken-egg situation. The church produces workers and workers raise up the church.
I’m really not sure how helpful it is to argue over what comes first, mission or church. To my mind, that line of thinking often leads us to the same place that fruitless Word vs. Spirit debates take us. Not very far.
I could be wrong about this, but I think it’s far more important to understand what God’s mission is exactly. I’ve done some surveys on this question among my friends in the missional church movement, and one thing stands out. When that question is raised, things get really murky.
That brings us back to the question of the Eternal (or Ageless) Purpose of God, as Paul calls it in Ephesians. I believe that this is the critical issue of the missional church conversation today.
DAVID FITCH: First of all Frank, many thanks for engaging me. If it weren’t for friends like you, I would not be challenged nor grow from interactions as valuable as these.
I think I get what you and others are talking about when you make that distinction between the guiding telos of God being Mission and therefore Mission is prior to the church, versus say D L Moody, who made the evangelism of souls into personal salvation a mission of the church, therefore for him, the church is prior to mission. In this sense, I am very much on board with you and others who follow this same line.
Where I’d like to push for more clarity is just how much the church is God’s chosen means to engage the world. In other words, Mission is unthinkable in God’s economy of salvation, without the church. In response to Gerhard Lohfink’s question from his book of the same title, “Does God Need the Church?”: the answer is “yes” in the sense that God chose to redeem all of creation while choosing to safeguard humanity’s freedom and living as human in history. God’s chosen means therefore to redeem the world was through the creation of a people whose social existence bears witness to the comprehensive scope of God’s salvation for the world. This is where God would show forth (proclaim out of a visible reality) his mighty works into the world (1 Peter 2:9). This is the Story from the beginning of God’s covenant with Abraham to the formation of Israel, and to the culmination of God’s revealing in Jesus Christ thereby birthing a people to embody (“the body of Christ”) and carry on this mission until He returns. To summarize then why the church is so important to us Hauerwasian Yoderian Anabaptist Missionalites (I just made that word up!), I offer the famous quote from Lohfink in his book which I quoted at the end of The Great Giveaway. Here goes:
“It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one single place in the world. There must be a place, visible, tangible, where the salvation of the world can begin: that is, where the world becomes what it is supposed to be according to God’s plan. Beginning at that place, the new thing can spread abroad, but not through persuasion, not through indoctrination, not through violence. Everyone must have the opportunity to come and see. All must have the chance to behold and test this new thing. Then, if they want to, they can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating. Only in that way can their freedom be preserved. What drives them to the new thing cannot be force, not even moral pressure, but only the fascination of a world that is changed.” p 27.
Salvation like this, in other words, demands a concrete place (Lohfink’s words). To me this is why the church must be truly “incarnational” (concrete) in the ways Hirsch and Frost and others talk about it. This church is not attractional so much as attractive. The gospel is lived in a way that is visible to, engaging in and redeeming of the surrounding context. It must inhabit and discern and capture and heal as well as bless the surrounding community with its presence as Christ’s body. In this way it becomes a visible foretaste of the Kingdom that is coming.
But it is never as simple as the cheap modernist contextualization where we go into a context and discern where the hurts are and design a church and translate the gospel message in a way that would meet these needs. This is not what I think Alan (Hirsch) means when he says ecclesiology comes “out the back end” of mission. But it is the way a lot of missional practitioners that I meet all over the country have interpreted him and others. Contextualization must be more incarnational than that. This to me is the problem of inviting an alcoholic into an alcoholics anonymous meeting. The goal becomes overcoming alcoholism. And the alcoholics together largely stay within the frame of other alcoholics calling on Jesus (or another higher power) to achieve a personal goal. Instead all we sin-aholics of all kinds must be invited into a community of God’s all-encompassing Mission, His Story of reconciling the whole world into Himself thereby redeeming all of creation. In the process, every part of our lives (including our addictions) are re-oriented into a way of life born out of the salvation in Christ.
It is scary thing to say (because many of us are so disappointed with our churches) but in the sense described above, the church is the epistemological foundation for doing ministry in the world. I believe Yoder is the primary influence here (the Politics of Jesus), by which Hauerwas becomes more explicit on the epistemological priority of the church in a post-foundationalist world. To say somehow that ecclesiology precedes missiology however is to miss the entire point. For there is no dualism here. Ecclesiology is missiology and vice versa.
I’ve got to go teach, and do some meetings and get two hours of writing in. But I hope to visit the blog today and tomorrow from time to time. I’ll sure try to respond to those other questions about our church today or tomorrow. Hope that is alright. I’m honored.
David Fitch
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[...] Fitch, in a recent interview, made this statement regarding the mission of the Church: “…the church is the [...]
David,
Thanks to you and Frank for posting this. Frank makes exactly the point that went through my mind re: this question in our discussion of ‘pragmatic’ and ‘anabaptist’ missional types a post or two ago. I would identify myself as pragmatic, but would identify the ‘mission’ of God along the lines that Frank does (and it appears you also accept). In which case, mission (the Eternal Purposes of God, the End he has in mind) precedes (yet also necessarily includes, creates and always reforms) church. And not just church however we want to do it, but rather, church shaped (reformed & reforming) in light of God’s mission and, to a secondary extent, the particular context for that mission.
Ironically, my local church has retooled the 12 steps slightly to make them aim for exactly what you describe rather than just overcoming a particular idol. They’re actually a fantastic community ‘rule’ for that very purpose when the goal is changed to entering/cooperating with, to use yall’s language, the Eternal Purposes of God.
Maybe part of the issue is whether the church is an ontological reality or simply a convenient way to organize people into God’s mission.
Is the church to be primarily understood as the instrument through which God will accomplish his purpose in creation, or rather the expression of that purpose itself?
Is the church here to work for the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creation, or is the church itself the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creation?
If the church in the instrument of God’s purpose, then we understand it primarily in functional terms; what it does.
But if we understand the church as itself the expression of God’s purpose, we look at the church in ontological terms; what it is.
These questions are discussed in Simon Chan’s book Liturgical Theology, which I highly recommend.
In the end, it would seem that if you affirm the ontology, you get the function, but if you only affirm the function, the church becomes completely dispensable as an ontological reality.
Oops posted too soon – to finish my thought…
What if the church is both the expression of AND the instrument of God’s purpose in creation? This comes very close to what you seem to be saying when you affirm that missiology IS ecclesiology and vice versa.
I agree that any formulation that seeks to put God’s mission “ahead of” or “prior to” the church is problematic, in that the church always ends up being provisional and/or optional.
Ben, maybe Newbigins classic formulation helps: the church is a sign, instrument and foretaste of the kingdom. Secondly, I think we have to continually resist the tendency to make mission ecclesiocentric rather than theocentric. Alan Roxburgh continues to make this point that so much of the conversation drifts to ecclesiology, betraying that we are still all about church growth though we cloak it in missional language.
len, Newbigin’s formulation is definitely helpful.
Although I might argue that the conversation NEEDS to drift to ecclesiology in order to counteract the church growth stuff. I agree that many so-called “missional” approaches are church growth strategies with new dresses on, but what we need to refute some of it is a robust dialogue about the what the church really is (ecclesiology). In other words, I don’t think church growth theories would survive a strong ecclesiology. I also don’t think missional theology will survive without a strong ecclesiology.
I think the conversation drifts to ecclesiology because it’s an essential piece of the missional puzzle.
Interesting dialogue. I’m more partial to the “Missiology is Ecclesiology and vice versa” formulation. My main reason being that it helps the body of believers throughout church institutions to think of their work as more consequential to the Kingdom. Thus the hope that they’ll quit sweating the inconsequential stuff and take their role in God’s mission more seriously.
But I wonder about the place in these formulas for defining the ecclesia outside institutional settings. Does the ecclesia include those who might not be known to us but are indeed known to God? Does the ecclesia include those who wrestle with the Gospel outside the Church institution? Even if we cannot consider them the ecclesia, can we really say God is not doing mission with them? Maybe I’m existentializing or bringing in that old modernist “anonymous Christian” thing. But I’m fearful of God’s mission getting swallowed up in just what the institutional Church is doing, because sometimes frankly were not doing as much as we think we are. Anyone have a thought on this?
JMorrow
I’ll throw this out, another Hauerwasianism,
Hauerwas says, it is not that church is the only place Jesus is at work. It is just that we know for sure that Jesus is at work here (in the church) from which we can then go out from here and see Him clearly at work elsewhere.
We get a clear interpretive ability to see God through Jesus Christ via the Scriptures, the telling and discerning of the wor of the Spirit as a people committed under His Lordship, and “trained to see” via worship. Out of this space, we enter the world where we affirm God is truly at work, His Mission. We are now equipped to see Him in ways we couldn’t before.
In no way is the Missio Dei denied in the world, the church becomes the means which enables us to thereby participate it.
Do you buy this?
So if I’m understanding correctly, Hauerwas isn’t making Ecclesiology an exhaustive category for Missio Dei. If so I agree, and find a healthy dose of epistemological humility in that approach. I’m also wondering if Hauerwas (or those in his ilk) would go so far as to say that neither is missiology an exhaustive category for Missio Dei? Missiology as a term seems to relate more to the Church’s own understanding of how it pursues the Missio Dei. I don’t know enough to go that far though.
As someone who was raised outside an explicitly Christian community, and interacts socially with non-Christians, I think your missiology ~ ecclesiology formula best addresses a fundamental question Non Christians have: Why be a part of the Church? For most of them, they see the Church’s movements toward social justice and perennial acts of kindness as admirable, but also wholly achievable outside the Church bounds. “Why buy the cow, when you get the milk for free.” right? Because many of them see the Church as this unnecessary middle man in their pursuit of “doing Good”. To continue the analogy, equating missiology and ecclesiology says to me, “You may think what you’re drinking is milk, but its really ‘dairy product,’ come let me show you that you only get real milk from a real cow.”
If you have a moment, could you help me understand:
“But it is never as simple as the cheap modernist contextualization where we go into a context and discern where the hurts are and design a church and translate the gospel message in a way that would meet these needs.”
I grew up in an attractional model of church, and now am in a wonderful community church. If I hadn’t read your blog and I was describing our church to you, I would say with great energy and passion that I was excited that our church is “in the context, understanding of the hurts and needs of the community, and presenting the gospel in a way that is understood and grasped.” Maybe I have been overly accepting of this vision/model without looking critically; why should I be questioning this?
Andrew,
Yes, I think upon reading that sentence, it needs clarification. What I’m taking aim at there is the tendency to build a church around a single issue that is happening in a culture. Building a church around men and their problems thus organizing a “church for real men,” or a church for motorcyclists who have lives built around motorcycle gangs and thus organizing a “motorcycle church.” A church for alcoholics or a church for porn addicts. The problem with this kind of contextualization is that we build it around a particular cultural issue or cultural problem and exalt the issue as the chief concern instead of bringing it into the orbit of our life as a redeemed people. Should we attract people into church based upon hip hop music? It can be part of our church but should we center a church around it? i.e. hip hip church? I think even the triple X church that has been getting so much press lately has some dangers. Sex can only be properly ordered as it is set in the orbit of the whole of life to be lived as God’s people. Thus we shouldn’t have a triple XXX church but a church that inhabits and reclaims all sinners of which there might be porn addicts. This gets back to my alcoholics anonymous example in the post.
Now for sure we are to minister to each one of these people groups, and/or to each one of these hurting people, but we have to reject that life is about riding motorcycles, or that life is only about sex. Real contextualization is when we inhabit a community, live among a hurting community and seek to redeem all of its culture, piece by piece, redeeming some of it, rejecting othe parts. The other kind of contextualziation takes less time, and seems easy in terms of contextualization.
JM, Amos Yong and others have been doing some good work in this area. Newbigin is right that we need a solid Trinitarian foundation, and part of that foundation is recognizing the prevenience of the Spirit going before us in the world. Yong and others take off on this, arguing for a Spirit-Christology to replace the monomodalism we tend to in practice. See this post.. http://nextreformation.com/?p=2364