Aotearoa New Zealand Association for Mission Studies

Missiology for a small church: thinking about who we are and what we do. 

Abstract

Small churches enable people to know each other well, but conflict over theological issues affecting identity and mission may or may not be easy to handle. This paper suggests that in areas where contested interpretations threaten the identity of congregations, the intercultural theological skills of missiology may be as important as the traditional promise of missiology to provide clear direction for Christian mission.

John Roxborogh

What we do is an important statement about who we are, and talking about what we do is often easier than talking about what we believe. The culture of our lifestyle helps lay a foundation for relationships, sharing, and witness. It also says something about our identity. Small churches may find thinking about missiology difficult. The word itself may be off-putting. Other issues dividing Christians can also be difficult to handle. On the other hand small communities of faith may enjoy a level of trust between people where discussion of issues is actually possible. Are there tools which can help people have confidence about their mission and identity, and improve the quality of their understanding about issues which divide the wider church and community? 

Different visions of Christian identity have often taken shape around different visions of Christian mission such as evangelism or social action. Part of the attraction of missiology was that it offered the promise of a resolution of these competing visions. However over time Biblical missiology failed to give much support to the prioritising of different dimensions of mission in any absolute sense. What then is the role of missiology for the church? What did people do when missiology did not give them the answers they wanted?  

One effect was to use other points of distinction as markers of Christian identity. Some of those markers were to do with ethnicity, others with tastes in music, and others again by positions on issues such as the ordination of Christians in committed same-sex relationships. Another level of response has been to avoid contentious issues, perhaps assuming that all true believers were of the same mind, and talk about what enables people to get on with life. Statements such as the “Five Faces of Mission” and concepts such as “healthy congregations” have sought to affirm diversity and avoid dissension. Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven” lists are appreciated by many people and congregations, but they take for granted views about mission and ethics which at some point actually do need to be addressed.   

In these situations the contribution of missiology is not so much the promise of a definitive solution, as the offer of an additional framework for working through critical issues. Can missiology - the study of God's purposes for the world and the church in different cultures and historical circumstances - serve the church in helping provide cross-cultural discernment tools, not just the clarification of mission goals?  

The cross-cultural awareness that comes through a commitment to understanding the cultures and commitments of global mission is an important ingredient in understanding the incarnational nature of the Christian faith. Things like reading the missions publications and keeping in touch with missionaries or other people we know working in other cultures can provide concrete examples of what it means to try and sort out what diversity in human experience is due to the goodness of Creation reflected in a variety of cultures, and what is caused by sin.  

This is not just about tolerance and acceptance, it is about sorting out the enduring principles of Christian life and faith. Costly and controversial decisions still have to be made about what it is to follow Christ. We may also discover that some things we see as absolutes, are affecting by timing and context. Some things were right the past that are no longer seen as the best way of dealing with a dimension of human life. Some things may be right for us in the future that are not right for us now. Discernment is an ongoing responsibility for Christian leadership and it does not always come up with the same answers. 

Missiology is well placed by its breadth of experience and commitment to bring together a range of experiences of lived Christian faith in all corners of the world. Gay ordination and drums in church may not sound like the same category of concern in the church, but as divisive issues in congregations they have some parallels. Many cultures wrestle with issues of sexuality, standards appropriate for leadership, and what things from popular culture are OK in church. When these issues are framed not only in terms of universal Christian beliefs, but also in terms of being about what is right for different cultures, then quite different angles of discussion open up. In a small congregation where differences are sometimes painfully felt because they are so close, the concept of culture and the question of mission may provide ways of engaging with those differences rather than burying them. 

The category of culture, and the question of mission across cultures, also enable us to talk about what may be sin and what may be not, something that theologies of inclusiveness (despite their helpfulness in terms of challenging attitudes) are not able to do. A missiological approach which takes culture seriously does not take "sides" (on gay ordination, non-Western cultures are mostly opposed for instance) but it does enable conversations to take place at a different level. It allows for respect, for patience, and the possibility that God may address us in unexpected ways.  

Paying attention to the fundamental reality of cultures within which God may be known, allows for conversion and transformation within those cultures. It avoids proselytism - the form of mission which achieves orientation towards Jesus Christ primarily by the change of the culture of the convert into the culture of the missionary. It also allows other cultures besides those dominant in Western intellectual history to contribute to our understanding of what it is to be Christian. 

There is of course more to missiology than awareness of cultural difference. Missiology includes the recognition of the presence of the Church and the necessity of mission in other cultural settings. It actually demands that as different cultures read the same Scriptures they challenge each other with what they hear God saying. That applies to the ethical and liturgical dilemmas congregations face when different groups discern Christian obedience in different ways, as well as to many other issues in which people of committed faith do not see things the same way. 

Of course the category of culture is not an excuse for the uncritical acceptance of everything that is "out there". To label a set of behaviours as cultural does not place them beyond critical comment. Careless acceptance is not a whole lot better than the imperious rejection of things we don't understand, we don't like, or which press painful buttons from our own experience of life.  

Nor is recognition of culture just about a taste for the unusual. Missionary boards and agencies have long lost their dominant position as channels of information about the exotic, the strange, the needy and the interesting. CNN and other media do that with resources the church cannot match. There is a sense of familiarity in these mediated cultural differences, but not always the threat, or the invitation to participate, to learn as well as to contribute, which is Christian mission rooted in the New Testament commitment to taking the Good News about Jesus’ death and resurrection out of its Jewish world and into the different cultures of the Gentiles. 

These issues are not easy in small congregations, where there may not be space for more than a few cultural groupings, and the very idea of culture may seem to be playing with words more than wrestling with what the Bible means in our time. Differences of class and generation may provide enough of a challenge without opening up other cultural divides.  

We certainly need to respect the right of congregations to determine what issues they are strong enough to handle. There are valid reasons (which we need to understand better than we do) why individuals find stuff difficult. Forcing debate onto people – especially a captive audience on a Sunday morning - is not helpful whether it is framed missiologically or any other way. At the same time, if there is a fear of the intellectual, the overly intense, the political and the too personal in our worship, there is also a valuing of the thoughtful which we do not always recognise. Not only culture and other terms used by missiology, but also major Biblical and theological themes such as creation, covenant, incarnation and redemption, can help turn difficult conversations into something constructive.  

Congregations also need to think about how they support those in leadership who are called to the responsibility of sharing in the informed decision-making of the national church. The quality of our discussion about a whole raft of issues is affected by what we do about cross-cultural mission in our own churches. Small congregations, like others, may need to start all over again with mission groups who re-engage with the concrete experience of the church in other parts of the world. The rediscovery of active engagement in global mission is important for all sorts of reasons. 

Perhaps in this we can talk about a "servant missiology" - one which will see its future not simply in encouraging the church to take up its agenda for what God's people ought to be doing in the world, but alongside other theological disciplines be offering tools to help process the debates that God's people actually find themselves involved in.  

Missionaries have long had to deal with things strange and repulsive and have learnt that discerning what is of sin, what is neutral, and what is acceptable to God in a particular culture takes a bit of doing. A missiological and missionary commitment in our churches large and small might lead us into a whole different way of approaching some of our very real difficulties. It could even be fun.

 John Roxborogh  

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