Being Missional

What does it mean to be missional?

I have come to adopt the following as a working understanding of being a missional Christian. I have taken this paragraph out of a recent paper prepared for an Introductory Seminar class at Columbia Theological Seminary. It is an amazing grace to think that the God of creation and salvation would invite us into His missional activity to his creation.

"The church exits by the calling of God to be about the activity of God. Karl Barth understood this reality when he wrote of the action Dei or activity of God; and it has been expressed this way by Moultmann*: “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.” So it is understood that the church is part of God’s missio Dei (mission of God). Mission therefore is not a part of the church but the sole reason for the Church’s existence, to be a part of God’s liberating work. Bosch argues**, “Our mission has not life of its own: only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission. Not least since the missionary initiative comes from God alone … Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa. To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love."

*Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, (London: SCM Press, 1977), 64.

**David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), 389–390.


It is good to be reminded that the God who calls is also the God who equips.