probing a missional hermeneutic: mission as a central interest and goal of biblical story michael...

Probing a Missional Hermeneutic: Mission as a Central Interest and Goal of Biblical Story

Michael Goheen

Vancouver, B.C.

Canada

A missional hermeneutic is a way of reading Scripture . . .

. . . in which mission is the hermeneutical key .

. . not simply a study of the theme of mission in the biblical writings, but a way of reading the whole of Scripture with mission as its central interest and goal . . . which seeks to understand what the church’s mission really is in the world as Scripture depicts it . . . which inspires and informs the church’s missionary praxis

Mission as key that unlocks biblical story

‘Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about, only a bit more urgently than some. Mission is, in that much-abused phrase, what it is all about.’

‘Mission is a major key that unlocks the whole grand narrative of the canon of Scripture.’ (Chris Wright)

Framing the Old TestamentThe canonical Old Testament frames the entire story of God’s people as the divine answer to the problem of evil: somehow, through this people, God will deal with the problem that has infected his good creation in general and his image-bearing creatures in particular. Israel is to be God’s royal nation of holy priests, chosen out of the world but also for the sake of the world. Israel is to be the light of the world: the nations will see in Israel what it means to be truly human, and hence who the true God is. (N.T. Wright)

Two texts as hermeneutical lensGenesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessing (cf. Gen 18.18-19)Backdrop of creation and sin

‘This broad foundation on which Israel's election rests does remind us, however, that her election cannot be the end goal. God's revelation, which becomes focused on Israel, has the nations in its ultimate purview’ (H. Bavinck).

“Twofold agenda”—recipient then channel

‘What is being offered in these few verses is a theological blueprint for the redemptive history of the world, now set in train by the call of Abram.’ (William Dumbrell)

Two texts as hermeneutical lensGenesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display peopleRedeemed: Liberated from Egyptian empire (1-

18)Bound to God in covenant (19-24)

The purpose of the covenant was never simply that the creator wanted to have Israel as a special people, irrespective of the rest of the world.

To forget the aim of the covenant is for the sake of the nations is to betray the purpose for which that covenant was made. It is as though the postman were to imagine that all the letters in his bag were intended for him. (NT Wright)

Two texts as hermeneutical lensGenesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display peopleRedeemed: Liberated from Egyptian empire (1-18)Bound to God in covenant (19-24)

Israel’s vocation: Three titles (19.3-6)

Israel is to be ‘a display-people, a showcase to the world of how being in covenant with Yahweh changes a people.’ (John Durham)

‘The history of Israel from this point on is in reality merely a commentary upon the degree of fidelity with which Israel adhered to this Sinai-given vocation.’ (Dumbrell)

Torah and presence of God (20-23; 25-40) [cf. Deut 4.5-8]

People of God in Old Testament

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessing

Exodus 19.3-6: Display people

Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nations

A display people visible to the nations

The ‘visibility of Israel was part of its theological identity and role as the priesthood of yhwh among the nations.’ (Chris Wright)

“God’s people living in God’s way in the sight of the nations.” (Wright)

“Israel knew that it lived under constant surveillance of the then contemporary world.” Israel was to live out its history “as something enacted before the eyes of the surrounding peoples, ever conscious that the glory of God was at issue.” (JH Bavinck)

People of God in the Old Testament

Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophets Failure of Israel to live up to their identity to be light to the

nations. Promise of prophets: End-time kingdom when 1) Israel

would be gathered and renewed, and 2) then nations incorporated

Old Testament theology has paid scant attention to the motif of “gathering,” whereas ‘the “gathering of the scattered people of God” has been . . . one of the fundamental statements of Israel’s theology.’ (Gerhard Lohfink)

Church in the Biblical Story




Failure and prophets

Jesus gathers and renews IsraelAlready-not yet era of kingdom

Spirit MessiahSpirit Messiah

SinDeathEvil

Satan

Knowledgeof GodLoveJoy

Justice

AGE TO COME

Rabbinic HopeRabbinic Hope

OLD AGE

Powers of sin death evil Satan

Power of Spirit’s renewingwork

AGE TO COMEOLD AGE

New Testament FulfillmentNew Testament Fulfillment

Already-not yet as time of mission

One may say thus that the interim is preoccupied with the command of mission, and it is the command of mission that gives the interim meaning. . . . mission and the interim are inseparable. (JH Bavinck)





Failure and prophets

Jesus gathers and renews IsraelAlready-not yet era of kingdomTime of gathering (sheep, harvest, people to banquet)

Jesus gathers a people

‘After a history of more than a millenium [sic], the people of God could neither be founded nor established, but only gathered and restored.’ (Lohfink)

‘. . . the only significance of the whole of Jesus’ activity is to gather the eschatological people of God.’ (Joachim Jeremias)

‘That God has chosen and sanctified his people in order to make it a contrast-society in the midst of the other nations was for Jesus the self-evident background of all his actions.’ In Jesus we see God’s ‘eschatological action’ to ‘restore or even re-establish his people, in order to carry out definitively and irrevocably his plan of having a holy people in the midst of the nations.’ (Lohfink)


Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophetsJesus gathers and renews IsraelGathers during already-not yet periodForms into display community

Jesus forms followers into display community

Jesus restores them to be a distinctive peopleInvitation to centre life in HimSummons to be part of what He is doingTeachingModelling

‘Thus, there arose in the midst of ancient Israel—unobtrusively at first and yet irreversibly—the new society planned by God.’ (Lohfink)


Genesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophetsJesus gathers and renews IsraelAlready-not yet era of kingdomTime of gatheringForms into display communityRenews them in death, resurrection, and Spirit

Death, Resurrection, and PentecostCosmic scope: Turning point in historyDeath: Decisive defeat of powers of old ageResurrection: Inauguration of renewed

creation

Spirit brings life of new creationGathered end-time community participates in life of kingdom/new creationCosmic-communal-individual

Church in the Biblical StoryGenesis 12.2-3: Blessed to be a blessingExodus 19.3-6: Display people Placed on display in the land to be visible to the nationsFailure and prophetsJesus gathers and renews Israel Already-not yet era of kingdom Time of gathering Forms into display community Renews them with death, resurrection, and Spirit

Gathered renewed Israel sent Commissions community Acts tells story of newly configured mission

Acts 1.1-11Story of Jesus’ continuing mission (1.1)Resurrection, kingdom, Spirit: End time!Now the kingdom will come, right? (1.6)Jesus’ answer:Not yet!Already! Spirit will give foretaste of kingdom Until then you are a community that witnesses to the coming of the kingdom starting here to the ends of the earthTo the ends of the earth [change of direction]

‘When the Spirit comes to them and gives them the gift of power, their very identity will be transformed into that of witnesses. . . . Be, say, do good news.’ (Guder)

‘The meaning of this “overlap of the ages” in which we live, the time between the coming of Christ and His coming again, is that it is the time given for the witness of the apostolic Church to the ends of the earth. The end of all things, which has been revealed in Christ, is—so to say—held back until witness has been borne to the whole world concerning the judgment and salvation revealed in Christ. The implication of a true eschatological perspective will be missionary obedience, and the eschatology which does not issue in such obedience is a false eschatology.’

- Lesslie Newbigin

Gathering and mission in Acts

Already-not yet as time opens up for mission

Time of gatheringFirst the Jew (first part of Acts)And then the Gentile (last part of Acts)

Model Churches

Acts 2.24-27: Church in JerusalemDevote themselves to Word, Lord’s

Supper, fellowship, prayer

Apostles’ teaching

Fellowship

Prayer

Breaking of bread

Life of Spirit

ACTS 2.42

Model Churches in Acts

Acts 2.24-27: Church in JerusalemDevote themselves to Word, Lord’s

Supper, fellowship, prayerAttractive life in midst of communityLord adds to their number

Acts 11, 13: Church in AntiochFaithful, like church in JerusalemMissions to the ends of the earth

Spontaneous Expansion of Church in Acts

Attractive life of the community

Spontaneous evangelism by common members of the church

Planting new churches

- Roland Allen

Ministry of Paul

Pioneer church planting (Rom 15.20, 23)

Nurture communities to faithful display peopleThrough return visitsThrough letter

Mission and missions (Newbigin); Organic and sending mode (Shenk)

Jerusalem Council: A Church Among the Cultures of the WorldGrowth of new communities raise critical questions about God’s people and culture‘. . . not even the original, divinely sanctioned culture of God’s elect nation has the right to universalize its particular expression of Christianity.’ (Flemming)Missionary encounter with culture: Redemptive tension as church lives as distinctive people

Continuity and Discontinuity with Old Testament

Like Israel: Missionary encounter with idolatrous cultures which embrace insight and rejects idolatry

Unlike Israel: Sent to live in the midst of the cultures of the world and so becomes a people with many cultural expressions

Ending of Acts: 28

Why so abrupt? Loose ends?

Story of Acts has not ended

Continues today until Christ returns. . . the ending of Acts is truly an opening to the

continuing life of the messianic people,as it continues to preach the kingdom and

teach the things concerning Jesus bothboldly and without hindrance (Johnson).

Mission of the church today

Being a light to the nations: Continuing the mission of Israel (Ex 19.3-6 cf. 1 Pet 2.9)

Making known the kingdom: Continuing the mission of Jesus (John 20.21)

Bearing faithful witness: Continuing the mission of the early church

Probing a Missional Hermeneutic: The Nature of Mission and Implications for

Pastoring and Church-Planting

Lecture Two: Calvin Seminary MISS 664

Michael Goheen

Vancouver, B.C.

Canada


. . . in which mission is the hermeneutical key . .

. not simply a study of the theme of mission in the biblical writings, but a way of reading the whole of Scripture with mission as its central interest and goal . . . which seeks to understand what the church’s mission really is in the world as Scripture depicts it . . . which inspires and informs the church’s missionary praxis

Nature of mission

Oriented to world

Participation in God’s mission involves two orientations

Chosen by God for the sake of the world

“. . . oriented toward two fronts: toward God and toward the world.” (M. Barth)

“It is a matter of the church’s very being to turn towards the world . . .” (GC Berkouwer)

Nature of mission

Oriented to world

Demonstrating what it means to be truly human: Facing three directions

New being: A witness as wide as life

“. . . model genuinely human existence” and “demonstrate what it means to be truly human” (NT Wright)

Facing in three directions

Nature of mission

Oriented to world


Missionary dimension and missionary intention

Missionary dimension and intention

Missional dimension: “Because the Church is the mission there is a missionary dimension of everything that the Church does. But not everything the Church does has a missionary intention.”

Missional intention: “. . . an action of the Church in going out beyond the frontiers of its own life to bear witness to Christ as Lord among those who do not know Him, and when the overall intention of that action is that they should be brought from unbelief to faith.”

Nature of mission

Oriented to world


Missionary dimension and missionary intention

Preview and instrument

Preview and Instrument

Preview: Embodies new creation in its own life

Instrument: Agent of renewal in life of society and culture

The church is designed—it isn’t too strong a word—to be a sign and foretaste of what God wants to do for the entire cosmos. What’s more, such people are not just to be a sign and foretaste of that ultimate salvation; they are to be part of the means by which God makes this happen in both the present and the future. (N.T. Wright)

We move from worship straight into tasks like humanizing and harmonizing beauty in architecture, work in office and shop, shaping public life, campaigning for decent libraries and sporting facilities, discussing town planning, running playgroups for children of single working moms, organising credit unions for the poor, and creative and healthy farming methods, among other things, and then repeats the refrain three times: ‘This is not an extra to the church’s mission. It is central.’ (NT Wright)

Nature of mission

Oriented to worldDemonstrating what it means to be truly human: Facing three directionsMissionary dimension and missionary intentionPreview and instrumentMissions to the ends of the earth

Missions

Establishing a witness where there is none

Horizon of mission: Ends of the earth

Missions eclipsed

Every congregation shares in this missionary task

... every church, however small and weak, ought to have some share in the task of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. Every church ought to be engaged in foreign missions. This is part of the integrity of the gospel. We do not adequately confess Christ as the Lord of all men if we seek to be his witnesses only among our neighbours. We must seek at the same time to confess him to the ends of the earth. The foreign missionary enterprise belongs to the integrity of our confession. (Newbigin)

Nature of mission

Oriented to worldDemonstrating what it means to be truly human: Facing three directionsMissionary dimension and missionary intentionPreview and instrumentMissions to the ends of the earthRooted in the gathered worship life of the church

‘All will need to be nourished by the central, worshipping life of the church, and the central life will itself be nourished and renewed as the friends of Jesus come back to worship from their mission in the world. . . . to be truly effective in this kind of mission, one must be genuinely and cheerfully rooted . . . within the life of the church. There is no use . . . trying to get fruit from a tree whose roots you have systematically dug up.’ (NT Wright)

Implications for pastors and church planters

1. Worship that nurtures our missional identity

2. Preaching the gospel of the kingdom3. Devoted to communal prayer4. Nurturing a contrast community

Countercultural community

‘. . . mission is not primarily about going. Nor is mission primarily about doing anything. Mission is about being. It is about being a distinctive kind of people, a countercultural . . . community among the nations.’ (Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra)

‘They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer: and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!’

- Friedrich Nietzsche

A contrast community looking more redeemed today

A community of justice in a world of economic and ecological injusticeA community of generosity and simplicity (of ‘enough’) in a consumer worldA community of selfless giving in a world of selfishnessA community of truth (humility and boldness) in a world of relativism and uncertaintyA community of hope in a world of disillusionment and consumer satiationA community of joy and thanksgiving in a hedonistic world that frantically pursues pleasureA community who experiences God’s presence in a secular world

Implications for pastors and church-planters

5. Understanding cultural context

6. Training members for missionary encounter in their callings in culture

Callings in public squareNewbigin speaks of the “deep-seated and persistent failure of the churches to recognize that the primary witness to the sovereignty of Christ must be given, and can only be given, in the ordinary secular work of lay men and women in business, in politics, in professional work, as farmer, factory workers and so on.” His conviction is that “enormous preponderance of the Church’s witness is the witness of the thousands of its members who work in field, home, office, mill or law court.” (Newbigin)


7. Training members to do evangelism in an organic way

8. Involvement in the needs of neighbourhood and the world

9. Commitment to missions


10. Training leaders

11. Training parents to take up the task of nurturing children in the faith

12. Small groups

13. Expressing and seeking the unity of the body of Christ

Probing a Missional Hermeneutic: The Church’s Missional Praxis

Public Lecture

CalvinTheological Seminary

Michael Goheen

Vancouver, B.C.

Biblical authority and mission of church

Biblical authority is a “sub-branch . . . of the mission of the church.” Biblical authority defined by its place and role in the biblical story

• God’s “self-revelation is always to be understood within the category of God’s mission to the world, God’s saving sovereignty let loose through Jesus and the Spirit and aimed at the healing and renewal of the creation.” (NT Wright)

• To understand biblical authority we must grasp how it works to shape a missional people and through them the healing of the world

Scripture forming churches for mission

The writings that became the canonic New Testament all functioned basically as instruments for the continuing formation of these communities for the faithful fulfillment of their missional vocation. . . . a missional hermeneutic . . . constantly asks, “How did this written testimony form and equip God's people for their missional vocation then, and how does it do so today?” (Darrell Guder)

Record and tool

• “The apostolic writings . . . were not simply about the coming of God’s Kingdom into all the world; they were, and were designed to be, part of the means by which that happened.” (NT Wright)

• Record of God’s mission and tool to effectively bring it about

Old Testament and formation of missional people

• Old Testament as tool of God’s missional purposes “. . . a full account of the role of scripture

within the life of Israel would appear as a function of Israel’s election by God for the sake of the world. Through scripture, God was equipping his people to serve his purposes.”

Equipping is “inadequate shorthand for the multiple tasks scripture accomplished.”

Equipping and forming a people to be a light to the nations

• Torah ordered national, liturgical, and moral life• Wisdom shaped daily conduct in conformity with

God’s creation order• Prophets were covenant enforcers that called Israel

back to missional vocation with threats and promises• Psalms nourish faithfulness and universal horizon in

worship (Boda: “psalms as missional collection”)• Historical books retold Israel’s story reminding them

of their place in the story

A distinctive people that encounter pagan cultures

• Story of Exodus confronts rival religious claims of Pharaoh and Egypt

• Story of creation is polemic against creation myths of Ancient Near East

• Historical narratives and pre-exilic prophets depict Israel’s struggle with religious cultures of Canaan

• Exilic and post-exilic books emerge to define Israel’s identity amidst large pagan empires

• Wisdom texts engage pagan wisdom traditions “with a staunch monotheistic disinfectant”

• Psalms and prophets nourish calling of Israel to be a distinctive people in midst of nations

Central question

“How did this written testimony form and equip God's people for their missional vocation then, and how does it do so today?”

Scipture and formation of missional people

• Old Testament as tool of God’s missional purposes

• New Testament as tool of God’s missional purposesJesus fulfils the purpose of the Old Testament

Jesus fulfils purpose of Old Testament

• Purpose: Form and equip people for missional calling [salvation in them for nations]

• “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son . . .” (Rom 8.3-4)

• “Jesus thus does, climactically and decisively, what scripture had in a sense been trying to do: bring God’s fresh Kingdom order to God’s people and thence to the world.”

• Heightens importance of centrality of Christ in preaching, also missional implications

Scripture and formation of missional people


• New Testament as tool of God’s missional purposesJesus fulfils the purpose of the Old TestamentApostolic proclamation of Jesus:

Transforming power of God

Apostolic verbal proclamation• “It was the story of Jesus (particularly his death and

resurrection), told as the climax of the story of God and Israel and thus offering itself as both the true story of the world and the foundation and energizing force for the church’s mission.”

• Proclaiming Christ: Making him present to accomplish purpose of forming and equipping people

• Powerful word: calls into existence a missional community, shapes them to be faithful people, works through them to draw others to faith

• Marturia, kerygma, didache (Ridderbos)

Scripture and formation of missional people


• New Testament as tool of God’s missional purposesJesus fulfils the purpose of the Old TestamentApostolic proclamation of Jesus: Transforming

power of GodNew Testament canon: Literary expression of

apostolic proclamation

New Testament canon and formation of missional people

• Proclamation, witness, teaching of apostles takes literary form in NT

• NT “carried the same power, the same authority in action, that had characterized the initial preaching of the word.”

• Same power, same purpose: to sustain, energise, shape, judge, and renew church for mission in world

• Epistles of Paul

Mission as hermeneutical prerequisite

“. . . if the questions to which ancient authors sought to respond in terms available to them within their cultural horizons are to be ‘heard’ today with something like their original force and urgency, they have first to be ‘heard as questions that challenge us with comparable seriousness.” (N. Lash)

Implications for preaching

• Preaching gospel:ChristocentricMissional logic

Luke 24.45-47: Messianic and Missional Hermeneutic

He [Jesus] seems to be saying that the whole of the Scriptures (which we now know as the Old Testament), finds its focus and fulfilment both in the life and death and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah and in the mission to all nations, which flows out from that event. Luke tells us that with these words Jesus ‘opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures’, or, as we might put it, he was setting their hermeneutical orientation and agenda. The proper way for disciples of the crucified and risen Jesus to read their Scriptures is from a perspective that is both messianic and missional. (C. Wright)

Messianic and missional

‘. . . down through the centuries it would probably be fair to say that Christians have been good at their messianic reading of the Old Testament but inadequate (and sometimes utterly blind) at their missional reading of it.’

- Chris Wright

Questions regarding preaching• Have we reduced salvation to individual

savedness?• Have we reduced the church’s mission to

the maintenance of individual’s salvation?• Have we stressed salvation in and for

church to the neglect of through the church?• Have we separated an individual salvation

from the cosmic scope of the kingdom?• Have we treated passages apart from books,

and books apart from whole story?

Implications of missional hermeneutic for preaching

• Preaching gospelChristocentricMissional logic

• Salvation: in and for us as well as through us [e.g., Ps 63]

• Metanarratival• Cosmic-communal-individual• Missionary encounter themes [Col]

Mission and theological education: Some questions

• Two sources:Missionary tradition (Conn, Newbigin, Bosch)Young pastors and theological students

• Mutually enriching and correcting dialogue• Background: my theological education• Important distinction: Missionary

dimension and intention

In the dimensional aspect of mission, missiology should provoke theology as a whole to discover anew that mission is not simply a more or less neglected department of the church’s life . . . Missiology is not simply yet another subject but a dimension of theology as a whole, an indispensable dimension which must preserve the church from parochialism and provincialism. It constitutes a “test of faith” . . . for church and theology. This implies that missiology has in the first place a critical function and operates as a leaven in theology — sometimes as a gadfly. (Bosch)

Concerns about theological education

• Character, competency, disconnected from local congregation, pedagogy, curriculum

• Curriculum that forms leaders that lead the church in mission: Content and division

“A major problem is that the present division of theological subjects was canonized in a period when the church in Europe was completely introverted.” (Bosch)

Theological education in history

The period in which our thinking about the Church [including theological education] received its main features was the period in which Christianity had practically ceased to be a missionary religion. . . . It was in this period, when the dimensions of the ends of the earth had ceased to exist as a practical reality in the minds of Christians, that the main patterns of churchmanship were formed. (Newbigin)

Missional curricular logic• Missional ecclesiology (derived from missio Dei)“. . . the church’s mission is not secondary to its being; the church exists in being sent and in building up itself for the sake of its being.”

• Missional hermeneutic: “How does this part of Scripture form the people of God for its mission in the world?”

• Theological education should follow Scripture’s lead“The formation of the church for mission should be the motivating force that shapes and energizes our theological labors in all their diversity and distinctiveness.” (Guder)

Biblical studies• Has biblical studies served the preaching

ministry of the church? (Christocentric, missional, people for sake of world, metanarratival, cosmic-communal-individual, encounter)

The academic guild of biblical scholars has a largely self-generated agenda [that] increasingly excludes the church from its context and implied audience. Biblical scholarship must address the church in its mission to the world and make the church in the West, that is now waking up to its mission, not simply its audience but its dialogue partner. (Richard Bauckham)

Biblical studies• Have various levels of criticism been made

subservient to the missional purpose of Scripture?

‘“How did this written testimony form and equip God’s people for their missional vocation then, and how does it do so today?” All the resources of historical, critical, and literary research on the biblical testimony can and must contribute to the church’s formation by illumining all the dimensions of this fundamental question.’ (Guder explicating Bosch)

Theology• First theological work done in gospels and

epistles—model for theology today? ‘The oldest mission became the mother of

theology.’ (Martin Kahler)Theology is ‘an accompanying manifestation of

Christian mission’ in New Testament.’ (Bosch) • Character of that theological work

Equipping church for mission in that placeBringing gospel to bear on particular contextEncountering threatening idolatrous, cultural

powers (need for more cultural studies?)

Theology• Have we been sufficiently aware of contextual

nature of theology especially confessions in our study of historical theology?

“Our creedal formulations, structured to respond to a sixteenth-century cultural setting and its problems, lose their historical character as contextual confessions of faith and become cultural universals, having comprehensive validity in all times and settings.” (Conn)

• Has our theology sufficiently engaged various cultural theologies that can critique our own cultural blindspots?

Questions about church history

• ‘We have to ask in all sincerity whether the study of the history of the church ought not to be completely redesigned.’ (Bosch)

• Have we been too focussed on doctrinal controversies and polity issues separated from contextualisation?

Church history• Has our teaching of church history

sufficiently taken into account . . . the missionary nature of church?an encounter with culture in its missional

engagement?

‘Church history was not taught in terms of the missionary advance in successive encounters of the gospel with different forms of human culture and society, but rather as a story of the doctrinal and other conflicts within the life of the church.’ (Newbigin)

‘Practical’ theology• What does term ‘practical’ say about our

curricular division?• Are these subjects simply a matter of tactics

and skills, methods and practices, how-to techniques, and not rigorous theology?

• Have the subjects in these areas (homiletics, liturgics, polity, counselling, pastoral care, etc.) been taught from standpoint of maintenance (i.e., pastoral separated from missional, salvation in/for but not through)?

Place of mission?

• Is missiology simply about world evangelisation and the strategy and technique to do it?

• Is missiology a ‘dispensable addendum’ isolated from the ‘real’ theological work of the seminary?

‘. . . missions maintains its toolshed appearance behind the “stately mansions” of theology.’ (Conn)

probing a missional hermeneutic: mission as a central interest and goal of biblical story michael...

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