Very helpful conversation starter. I have wrestled over how to describe the flow in linear terms. It seems Ed Stetzer uses some overlapping circles along with a linear progression – something of “crescendo-ing” ellipses.

Even more helpful for me is your exchange with Len over the place of the Trinity. I have long thought it not bad to borrow from the Eastern Orthodox the implications of the social Trinity. It seems a move Grenz was making in his later writings. Your assertion this may come from the economic Trinity rather than deriving a social ontology from the immanent Trinity gives me more to think about.

As always, thanks for the time you take to write.

I haven’t read Hirsch’s original, so I can’t comment on that. But my argument has long been that when we say the church is “apostolic” we’re doing more than claiming a historic link with the apostles. We’re saying that a mark of the church as church is that it is a sent community (“as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”) Missio is a perfectly fine translation of apostello.

All three, christology, missiology, and ecclesiology are inseparable, so the challenge is trying to figure out how they relate, which I thought you have added a very valuable way of thinking about these issues.

Is there also a question of ontology? I thought ontology was the basis of Frost/Hirsch assessments of christ->mission-> church (which seems very much related to Moltmann’s views in Church in the Power of the Spirit. The church exists because God’s mission exists which is exemplified by Christ’s action in the world past, present, and future.
Yet, I do think you bring valid epistemological concerns.

My concern is that when purpose is central, then the motive for the relationship is to achieve the purpose, whereas in a true community it’s mutual affection (love) that motivates the relationship. Using your example, those who are in military combat are there for a purpose, not because they love each other. Granted, community may form out of their experience and they may continue to nourish that community long after the military conflict.

It goes back to the reason for the relationship. The Christian message is that people are an end in themselves and sufficient reason to love and commit to. Like a marriage, the purpose is the relationship. If a couple married for the express purpose of having children, we would consider that aberrant. Children may result, but that’s not the purpose of the marriage. That’s why ecclesiology can’t be a sub-category of missiology. Scottish philosopher John Macmurray has some great things to say about this. See his quote at my blog and my comments about this topic.

You picked some good boundaries to blur, though. I’ve been thinking about missiology is ecclesiology all day, and as much as I originally wanted to argue for the primacy of mission, I have to agree with you. You’ve closed the circle. We need an ecclesiology informed by missiology as much as we need a missiology informed by ecclesiology, and both of them centered on christology. The church is the product of mission, the means of fulfilling mission, and an embodiment of the goal of mission.

I’m not convinced, however, that christology -> missiology -> ecclesiology de facto depends on the primacy of the cogito. Frost and Hirsch always stress the importance of the communitas in incarnating Christ amongst a people, and so presuppose the church. The Apostle Paul did something similar, forming a small mobile ecclesia around a mission. All of them seem to have started with missiology, but assumed ecclesiology. I’m also not sure that stressing ecclesiology as an epistemological foundation will de facto remove the cogito from its place of primacy. In a culture of church hoppers and consumers, beginning with ecclesia is likely to sound just as much like an autonomous choice (which church do I choose to begin with and why? What’s my ecclesiology?) as beginning with mission.