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MISSIO DEI 2009

I recently received a copy of Christopher J. H. Wrights book The Mission of God:

Unlocking the Bibles Grand Narrative. This is a 581 page volume that begins with

this statement, Mission is what the Bible is all about; we could as meaningfully talk

of the missional basis of the Bible as the biblical basis of mission. There is a

phrase that has been circulating in an ever broadening circle of the church over thepast half century that was coined by Karl Hartenstein in 1934: missio Dei. It is a

Latin phrase and can be translated, sending of God or mission of God thus the

title of Wrights book.

The phrase is meant to underscore a critical component in our identity as theChurch. One author puts it this way, When kept in the context of theScriptures, missio Dei correctly emphasizes that God is the initiator ofHismission to redeem through the Church a special people for Himself from all of thepeoples of the world. He sent His Son for this purpose and He sends the Churchinto the world with the message of the gospel for the same purpose. The Germantheologian, Jrgen Multmann puts it this way, "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 Spiritthrough the Father that includes the church."This is why someone can say, Mission is not primarily an activity of the church,

but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. One more quote, this one form

David J. Bosch, 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 Gods love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love.

Because of this reality and to the extent that we come to understand, embrace

and live out of the centrality of the missio Dei as our reason for being as acongregation we will experience congregational vitality born of the Holy Spirit. The

word that we use to capture this central reality for our congregational life is

missional and I invite you to pray together that the Lord will help us grow in our

understanding and living out that missional reality right here in Calaveras County as

we look forward to 2009.