God’s Holistic Mission: Fullness of Parts,Participants,and Places

Fullness and Integration of Three Parts

In his inaugural sermon in Nazareth, Jesus used words of Isaiah to define his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord … has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19). His mission included proclamation of the good news (evangelism), compassion, and justice. In order to embrace the fullness of God’s holistic mission, we must honor each distinct part of it.

Integration through Missionary Dialogue

Evangelism, compassionate service and social justice are distinct, but intertwined parts of mission. An ongoing missionary dialogue between those who practice them can lead to a dynamic creative integration and expanding partnerships.

Latin American missiologists have helped me understand this integration. In dialogue with liberation theology in the 1960s and 1970s, Orlando Costas, René Padilla, and Samuel Escobar developed “integral mission” as a new contextual paradigm.

Padilla and Escobar made a significant contribution at the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization and helped John Stott change his mind about the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility. Stott declared,

As partners [social action and evangelism] belong to each other and yet are independent of each other. Each stands on its own feet in its own right alongside the other. Neither is a means to the other, or even a manifestation of the other. For each is an end in itself. Both are expressions of unfeigned love. (1975: 27)

“The Fullness of Mission” for Padilla includes evangelism and discipleship, partnership and unity, development and justice with “models of mission centered in a prophetic lifestyle, models that will point to Jesus Christ as the Lord over the totality of life, to the universality of the church, and to the interdependence of human beings in the world” (1985: 141). At the 1982 Consultation on Evangelism and Social Responsibility, Padilla affirmed that “evangelism and social responsibility are inseparable” and that as long as both “are regarded as essential to mission, we need no rule of thumb to tell us which comes first and when” (1985: 197, 198).

Orlando Costas contributed to this dialogue and integration in The Integrity of Mission. He wrote,

The true test of mission is not whether we proclaim, make disciples or engage in social, economic and political liberation, but whether we are capable of integrating all three in a comprehensive, dynamic and consistent witness. We need to pray that the Lord will … liberate us for wholeness and integrity in mission. (1979: 75)

José Míguez Bonino proposed a new trinitarian missiology beginning with the “intratrinitarian” communication, then moving to the “other direction of this dialogue” with “the world, human beings, history.” We are included in God’s “missionary dialogue,” affirms Míguez Bonino. We should emphasize both the unity of God’s mission and the distinctions of its dimensions. He explains,

To honor the unity of [God’s total work] and respond to the diversity of those distinctions is at once the task of the thought and practice of the church. There are precise and necessary distinctions in the way in which the inseparable unity of the triune God’s work, and our participation in it in the cultural, social, political, economic, ecclesial, and evangelizing task, is at once recognized and respected, and the particularity of each of these tasks is taken into account. (1997: 140–42)

Míguez Bonino laments that we have “failed to participate in the fullness” of God’s mission and says that an understanding of the parts of the “total ‘mission’ of God can guide us to correct our mistakes” (1997: 143).

David Bosch modeled missionary dialogue. As a result of his conversations with Roman Catholics, the Lausanne movement, and the World Council of Churches, Bosch introduced “An Emerging Ecumenical Missionary Paradigm” with a “comprehensive,” “integral,” “total,” or “universal” view of salvation. We must “minister to people in their total need” and “involve individual as well as society, soul and body, present and future in our ministry of salvation” (1995: 399). When Bosch describes mission as “a multifaceted ministry, in respect of witness, service, justice, healing, reconciliation, liberation, peace, evangelism, fellowship, church planting, contextualization, and much more” (1995: 512), he opens the door for holistic integration and missionary dialogue.

Bevans and Schroeder build on Bosch and move beyond. They seek a synthesis for this “single but complex reality” and propose “prophetic dialogue” as a model for mission. I would propose “evangelistic and prophetic dialogues.” Seeing the multidimensional nature of mission presented by Bosch, Kirk, Dorr, and Escobar, they suggest six key components of mission as prophetic dialogue: witness and proclamation; liturgy, prayer and contemplation; justice, peace, and the integrity of creation; interreligious dialogue; inculturation; and reconciliation. They conclude that the six elements are “all distinct from one another and yet intricately intertwined as well” and that “there is one mission: the mission of God that is shared, by God’s grace, by the church” (2005: 394).

Dialogue partners focus first on the unity of God’s mission—the totality of God’s work in the whole creation at the service of the fullness of God’s realm. Salvation addresses the whole person and seeks fullness in all areas of life: spiritual, physical, psychological, material, social, economic, ecological, and political. We cannot ignore the personal, social, or cosmic dimensions or the historical context of mission. By our common baptism all Christians are called to witness and all forms of witness are equal indispensable parts of the whole. All are partial and incomplete. There is no priority.

Then we move to the diversity of gifts in the body of Christ and the complexity of situations that lead us to engage in evangelism, compassionate service, and social justice at different places and times. These aspects of holistic mission are not mutually exclusive. Each must honor and be accompanied by the others. They should “walk hand in hand, complementing and reinforcing each other” (White, 1991: 1). We need all three. We need each other. Missionary dialogue leads to mutual support and correction. Our fuller participation in God’s mission helps overcome reductionisms, priorities, dichotomies, fragmentation, and competition.

Fullness and Cooperation of Participants

God’s holistic mission includes a fullness of participants in ecumenical partnerships. All are included in the triune “missionary dialogue” as “actors” or “co-actors.” God’s mission “enables, demands, and incorporates the ‘partner[s]’ God has chosen into its own dynamic” (Míguez Bonino, 1997: 141). I have stated that “Partnership is a fundamental dynamic of the triune missionary God of love who is, acts, and relates in mutual partnership in sending the Son, the Spirit, and the church into the world as instruments of God’s saving mission” (George, 2004: 1). After studying holistic mission in Ephesians, I go one step further. I believe that ecumenical partnerships of multiple mission participants within and beyond the “one, holy, catholic, apostolic church” are fundamental dynamics in God’s one mission. Ecumenical endeavors are reshaping our understanding of partnership, networking and structures of ecclesial mission.

Ephesians teaches us that God’s holistic mission envisions “the whole structure,” or church, “joined together” (2:21). The wholeness of the church in all its diverse mission practices is “joined and knit together by every ligament … as each part is working properly” (4:16). ³ The body is a living organism in relationships that grows into “that perfect organic union with Christ which is possible only when every part of the organism is fulfilling its own distinct function in harmony with the rest” (Caird, 1984: 71). The big picture in Ephesians of God’s cosmic redemption leaves no doubt that God’s mission is ecumenical. We all are brought into the trinitarian love, unity, and mission partnership with God and with one another.

In the 1970s Padilla preferred the terms “partnership and unity” to describe “the fullness of mission.” He says,

When Christians fail to work as partners in mission, they also fail to manifest concretely the new reality that they proclaim in the gospel. Because there is one world, one church, and one gospel, the Christian mission cannot be anything other than mission in partnership …. Mission is inseparable from unity, and unity is far more than a question of structures. (1985: 136)

Today he speaks more about ecumenism, advocating dialogue and cooperation between “evangelicals” and “ecumenists.” “If the mission of the church is the mission of the Reign of God, it has to be so for evangelicals and ecumenists simultaneously” (2006: 124).

Collaborative ecumenical partnerships in mission are not options for the church. They are obligations and gifts of the triune God, essential characteristics of the one Body of Christ. Dietrich Werner reminds us that

“ecumenical” should always be used to describe—in accordance with its Greek roots referring to all the inhabited earth—everything that refers to the total task of the whole church to proclaim the gospel to the whole world. The unity and apostolicity of the church are both well founded in the biblical witness. Therefore, both the demand for evangelization and for church unity are inseparably linked. To tear both apart is to violate the integrity and authenticity of the Christian witness. (2007: 186)

During the 20th century the church rediscovered that as partners of the triune God, all baptized Christians and all churches are participants in God’s mission and partners of one another. Every denomination and ecclesiastical body is a mission society. In the 21st century, we recognize that with multiple local and global mission participants, potential partners expand exponentially. The local congregation is now the primary locus of mission. Local congregations participate in local ecumenical partnerships, form global ecumenical partnerships, and support their own local–global mission program. Hands-on involvement is facilitated by technology and ease in transportation. There are more short-term mission participants who visit global partners for two weeks than there are long-term mission workers. Mission sending agencies and mission workers from the Global South are multiplying. Paul Pierson acknowledges that “throughout two millennia of the church’s participation in mission, we see tension between the leaders of the established churches and the visionaries on the periphery” (2006: 225). While denominational agencies treasure their historic bilateral partnerships and participation in ecumenical councils, they must also move beyond them and open themselves to new models of cooperation with the plethora of missioners all around us.

An example of expanding partnerships was the merging of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) in 2010. The two bodies joined to become the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC). The new Reformed organization is defined by the call to be a communion and the call to covenant for justice. This new body represents around 80 million Reformed Christians in nearly 230 denominations around the world. “We are intended to be more like a family than a structure,” Clifton Kirkpatrick, former president of WARC, comments. “What you see here today is the commitment of Reformed churches to be together globally” (WCRC, 2010).

Other illustrations are significant documents from meetings in 2010 to celebrate the Edinburgh 1910 conference—“Common Call” from Edinburgh and “Commitment” from Cape Town. Additionally, “Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World: Recommendations for Conduct,” issued in 2011 by the World Council of Churches, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the World Evangelical Alliance is the result of five years of missionary dialogue. ⁴ These three bodies represent nearly 90% of the world’s Christians.

These ecumenical missionary dialogues bring more conversation partners to the table and minimize formal structures, mobilizing a fullness of participants in mission locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. Philip Wickeri says, “Transforming structures of mission requires genuine dialogue among all parties in the relationship–dialogue about mission and dialogue about power” (2003: 19). The practices of sharing information, listening, learning from one another, and multilateral receiving are vital.

Participants in mission organize through “networking.” In 1997 Stanley Skreslet wrote an article, “Networking, civil society, and the NGO: a new model for ecumenical mission.” He describes this model mirrored in the “non-governmental organization.” It reflects the trend to “build relationships, expand alliances, and establish networks of groups and individuals committed to values implied by the biblical reign of God” (1997: 308). Networking is flexible, holistic, and “essentially egalitarian. It assumes no fixed center. Networks do not need hierarchies and function most purely without them. Networking is thus rigorously horizontal in approach, rather than vertical, and is founded on the ideal of interdependent relationships” (1997: 309). Networks gather and integrate parts of the body who participate in God’s mission in relationship to one another. The sum is indeed greater than the parts.

Networks, team efforts, and strategic collaboration all focus on interdependence, informal relationships, and connecting people and peers who cooperate (Pocock, Van Rheenen, and McConnell, 2005). In strategic collaboration, specialized mission organizations and new initiatives are created to supplement, support, and serve churches and other agencies and to give rise to new forms of collaboration and empower new participants beyond present partnerships. Paul Pierson encourages more cooperation with “multidenominational and multinational partnerships” and the “new, cutting-edge movements in the majority world, both to learn from them and to discover how we can serve the missio Dei together” (2006: 233). The increase of multiple mission initiators today requires collaboration within and beyond denominations (Kirk, 2000: 199–201). We need formal and informal structures of connectedness (Guder, 1998) that facilitate mutual accountability and agreement on guiding principles for a unified witness.

Fullness and Convergence of Places in God’s Local–Global Mission

While the full gamut of parts and the full range of participants are recognized in holistic mission, the importance of relating local and global mission is often overlooked.

Ephesians and Colossians were letters written with a cosmic perspective of God’s redemptive plan to Christians in faith communities throughout Asia Minor. Ephesians probably was not written to one local church (“in Ephesus” in 1:1 is absent in early manuscripts). Colossians possibly was written to the larger church in Laodicea mentioned in 4:13 (and maybe others in Rev 1–3) and not to the one in the small town of Colossae, destroyed by an earthquake in 61 ce. However, both letters, from the perspective of a Jewish author, address contextual issues of a majority Gentile church in a large region in the late first century. The ethnic rivalry between Jewish and Gentile Christians, the disappearance of national Israel in 70 ce, freethinking in the Jewish Diaspora, speculative Greek ideas and Gnosticism, all influenced these churches.

While time-specific instructions were directed to Christians in social locations of Asia Minor (including household rules reflecting contextual social arrangements), it is clear in Eph 1:1–23 that God’s action in Christ reaches everything everywhere. God’s plan is “to gather up all things [ta panta] in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:10). Mission is local, global, and cosmic. God has made Christ “the head over all things [panta] for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all [ta panta en pasin]” (1:22–23). There is a movement between cosmos and humanity in this epistle, just as we discern a movement between local and global mission. Colossians says that “through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things [ta panta], whether on earth or in heaven” (1:20). Both epistles make it clear that God’s mission includes the whole universe, all places, and the whole church (Senior and Stuhlmueller, 1987: 281–82).

Leonardo Boff echoes this big picture in Planetary Civilization. He envisions the emergence of a new paradigm where each person in their locale is in step with the greater global walk (2003). In one sense all mission is local. It happens in a particular context. At the same time, in a globalized world of movement and connections, many local communities send and receive information and people to and from other contexts. To find harmony and fullness of mission today, we seek the convergence between local and global mission. This requires focused mission structures and platforms that enable participants everywhere engaged in local or global mission in the areas of evangelism, compassion, or social justice to do so from the perspective of the greater picture of God’s holistic local–global cosmic mission. In this convergence we learn to recognize and value all ministries in all places and the fullness of initiators and participants.

Robert Schreiter asks, “Can the Church of Jesus Christ balance the global and the local, with all the implications implied therein?” (1997: xi). What does it mean for us to work as partners in mutual mission in order to achieve a convergence between local and global mission? This is the third question I posed at the beginning of this essay.

Just as Ephesians addresses challenges facing churches in Asia Minor in the context of the historical division between Jews and Gentiles at the moment of a paradigm shift from Jewish to Gentile Christianity, I now will assume the perspective of the North–South (and East) divide at the moment of a new paradigm shift from North Atlantic to Southern Christianity. Eric Law helped me understand that “we interact with the different parts of the [gospel] story differently depending on our place of power in a particular situation” (1993: 42). He explains: “It is crucial to determine in a given situation which side of the cross we are on if we are to experience the wholeness of the Gospel …. Living the Gospel involves moving through the cycle of death and resurrection, the cross and the empty tomb, again and again” (1993: 43). People enter this cycle at different points. The powerful from the North are invited to take up their cross, which means to give up power and learn to serve, listen, and follow. Those in church and mission from the South and East, historically with less power, understand well the suffering of the cross and are invited to find empowerment in the resurrection to engage and lead in collaborative mission.

In accord with the different situations and perspectives in mission history in the North and South, I now address primarily congregations in the United States. To guide our reflection on the “places” of mission, I offer four summary statements of the interaction of two axes of mission: global–local and sending–receiving. ⁵

“Outside their front door” does not mean we cease using our facilities for missional activities, such as soup kitchens, twelve-step programs, interfaith hospitality for the homeless, second-language classes, and day-care. To the contrary, we should do this more seven days a week. However, we cannot forget that God calls the church to gather for worship and sacraments and then sends us out into the world in mission. Our primary mission field today is not distant lands, but our own “backyard,” our own neighborhood, our own city, our own country. It is hypocritical to participate in worldwide mission and not share the gospel with the invisible groups of people in our communities. How is this global? The world is at our doorstep. The church often unconsciously erects barriers which prohibit us from recognizing, inviting, welcoming, and interacting with people from all nations in our communities. Our international neighbors can help us minister to immigrants and be global Christians who grasp the global implications of the things we consume and of the political actions we support.

While the emphasis on mission is local, there are still the need and opportunity for individuals and groups to join mission efforts in other countries. However, this is done with global partner churches that invite and direct the work. The day is over when Western missionaries go to other countries imposing their own agendas and culture—a practice which missioners from the Global South should avoid. We go with humility as invited guests who show respect for our hosts, and have much to learn from them. This engagement ranges from two-week mission trips by groups, to short-term work by mission volunteers or specialists, to long-term assignments in response to invitations of partners. It does not preclude initiatives with least-reached peoples in places where there is no strong indigenous witness. Though Robert Schreiter suggests that we have moved beyond the “period of solidarity” (1945–1989) to the “period of globalization” (1989–) (1997: 124–27), mutuality and solidarity still characterize the paradigm we must follow. It is for this reason that I insist on dyads of mutual practices: listening and speaking, learning and teaching, receiving and giving.

Global is not only geographical. We view persons from other countries who are in our country for a myriad of reasons whose stay is temporary or generational, not only as persons to be reached and embraced evangelistically, but also as ones who bring spiritual gifts, re-evangelize and teach us. Crucial attitudes in an ecclesiology of multiculturalism are mutual transformation, openness, receptivity, and hospitality. We must open our facilities to immigrant fellowships and venture forth creatively to become multicultural churches. From Korean communities we can learn much about prayer, from African constituencies we can discover new vitality for worship and social justice, and with Latin Americans we can deepen our understanding of hospitality and evangelism. The globalization of theological education has resulted in international exchanges of students and professors.

Every Christian is a member of one global church. With the facilities of transcontinental travel and communication media, members of local congregations experience the global church in other countries. Great care must be taken as individuals and groups spend time abroad to not perpetuate the images of colonialism and imperialism. We must confess and empty ourselves of all attitudes of superiority and condescendence, and learn to listen patiently to our language with foreign accents. As we go, we must open ourselves to hear different interpretations of Scripture and corrective prophetic messages which reveal our blind spots. We will discover gospel values in other cultures and religions that challenge cultural values we hold dear. As we worship, pray, play, work, and have table fellowship with sisters and brothers around the globe, we will be challenged, encouraged, inspired, and transformed.

Conclusion

Missio Dei establishes God’s realm throughout the creation. This kingdom perspective is one of wholeness. The fullness of the triune God which overflows into the world results in a fullness of parts, participants, and places in one holistic mission. God sends the Church into the world to engage locally and globally in three distinct but not disconnected mission activities: evangelism, compassionate service and social justice. We must always see each component as part of the whole and in relation to the other parts. We celebrate unity and diversity in God’s mission through healthy missionary dialogue and thereby give a united witness to the world.

When we practice authentic partnerships of cooperation, complementarities, communication, and consultation with one other, we maintain “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” and become one with the Lord of the church and cosmos who is gathering up, summing up, uniting and integrating “all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:10) and filling and building up the local congregation, the global church, the universe, and the realm of God for the glory of God.