Fall 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 2 · pp. 270–278
Ministry Compass
Recapturing the Voice of Mission
Recently I have been reflecting on my nearly twenty years of cross-cultural church planting and other missional service, followed by my present involvement in a discipleship-equipping ministry. One thing that has become clear to me is how easily I and others in the Anabaptist movement can slip into cultural trends, mission tactics, and even missiological strategies that can undermine our theological values and convictions. We need the church and its theology to remind us of the bigger picture of what we are doing and why.
It is in missiological dialogue that the church finds renewal and understands better what God is doing in the world around us.
At the same time, the church’s mission practitioners have something important to offer the church. As Patrick Johnstone expresses it, “missiology acts as the gadfly of theology.” 1 Johnstone is asserting that missiology often questions and pushes against the status quo of our theology. It is the provoking voice that annoys the assuredness of the church, questioning structures and theological assumptions.
For both of these reasons, we as a community need to engage in open theological reflection with an ever-increasing circle of missional voices, starting in our local context and moving beyond our borders. It is in such a p. 271 dialogue that our mission practices can be corrected, our theology can be strengthened, and we can learn how best to fulfill our missional purpose as the church in our context. It is in this sense that mission and missiology can be the driving force for how we understand who we are in Christ and what the church is called to be.
An Example from the Early Church
The two aspects of theological discernment described above are sometimes called “theology from above” and “theology from below.” An excellent example of a dialogue between them is found in the midst of a serious controversy in the early church. In Acts 15, at the Council of Jerusalem, we observe missionaries Peter, Paul, and Barnabas describing what they saw God doing among Gentiles open to the gospel. Leaders in Jerusalem, for their part, contribute Scripture and traditional understandings. In conclusion, they determine that Gentile believers do not have to adopt Jewish practices in order to be disciples of Christ. The Holy Spirit leads the group to this monumental move by a dialogue that considered their theology in light of what happened when Gentiles heard the message, believed, and received the Holy Spirit just as the Jews had on Pentecost. This was evident both in the witness activity of Peter (Acts 10–11) and in the missionary efforts of Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13–14). In both cases, we see obedience to the leading of the Holy Spirit to fulfill Christ’s command to be witnesses “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8 NIV; 10:9-48; 13:1-12).
As we read further on in the New Testament, this issue crops up several other times as the mission of the church expands to Ephesus, Galatia, Corinth, and even Rome. Paul elaborates on Jesus as Messiah and the role of the Gentiles in God’s plan as he dialogues with his detractors. Our eyes are opened to further understand how God has worked throughout the Old and New Testaments by accepting people by grace through faith. God spoke a corrective word to the church as the Holy Spirit compelled his servants into obedience to his mission.
Inability to Sacrifice Our Sacred Cows: Mistaking Tactics for Strategic Values
Before offering an example of the importance of this dialogue in my own experience as a cross-cultural minister of the gospel, it will be helpful to describe the difference between strategies (mission vision in general terms) and tactics (actions to achieve this vision) for a theology of mission. A good example of a tactic is the incorporation of small groups (or house churches) into a church-planting strategy. James Emery White comments: p. 272
The strategy is to be a biblically functioning community where the practice of the “one-anothers” [the over fifty commands in the New Testament to practice loving community] is manifest. Small groups are simply a means to that end, and perhaps not even the best. 2
The problem becomes more acute when these tactics become ensconced into our missional values (strategy) like sacred cows. This happens when a missionary or mission agency does not have a clear theology of mission or does not let these missional values inform their response to their mission context.
As a “sophomore” missionary in Portugal, I was a victim of this confusion. I had been involved in a successful church plant in Brazil, and I brought the tactics we used and had found very effective there to Portugal and sought to apply them to the Portuguese context. What is worse, I also confused some of these practices or tactics with strategy (a theology of mission). I was convinced that house church networks or small groups were the “biblical pattern” for effective church planting movements. Sociologically, small house groups are difficult in the Portuguese context for several reasons. Among them are the cultural hesitancy of the Portuguese to open their homes to larger groups of people and their historical suspicion of people outside of a small circle of trusted individuals. Neither of these was the case in Brazil. The house church was a sacred cow (tactic) that needed to be sacrificed to find a faithful way to enculturate what it means to be a biblical community of the kingdom in Portugal.
Contextualization
The failure to sacrifice sacred cows brings up one of the important principles for cross-cultural mission: critical contextualization. This principle flows out of our Christology in the form of the incarnation as well as Christ’s sending his disciples just as he was sent (John 20:21). Jesus is incarnated into his own culture, religion, and time; this does not mean that he accepts the receptor culture wholesale, but his message and ministry meet those around him where they are—in language, terminology, rituals, examples, and in contexts that they can understand. He then challenges the receptors’ worldview and understanding of who God is and what he wants them to be and do. But the point of departure is where the culture is—as a manifestation of grace and mercy—and he works from there toward correction or, better, redemption. Even with our deficiencies, we as a community of God’s kingdom can seek to humbly engage those who are far from God in the power of the Spirit. p. 273
In the previous example, more respect for the Portuguese context and culture was required. However, the principle of contextualization is also a way that mission can serve as a “gadfly” to the theology of the church. One of the biggest issues around contextualization is that it can often exist in the culture of our local churches without critical examination. We are blind to our innate contextualization of the message of the gospel. Often it is only as we encounter believers from other cultures and traditions that we perceive how we do this. Sadly, more often than not, our initial response to difference is to be critical of how the other culture or tradition, with its beliefs and practices, has “corrupted” the gospel. Craig Ott affirms that “the question is not whether we will contextualize the gospel. The question is whether we will do good contextualization or bad contextualization.” 3
The apostle Paul boldly states his use of this concept in 1 Corinthians 9:22b, saying that he becomes “all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:22b NIV). Does this mean that Paul set aside all of what was important to the gospel to “win some” converts? If you spend any time reading the Pauline epistles, you find that Paul most definitely maintains lines he will not cross. A core set of beliefs is essential and central to the gospel message. For example, he states in the beginning of 1 Corinthians,
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor 2:2-5 ESV)
Paul affirms a core message of “Christ and him crucified” (certainly including the resurrection, see chap. 15) and a dependence on the demonstration of the Holy Spirit to convict and call the Corinthians to repentance and subsequent new life. What is also of note is what he did not mention as part of this method of presenting the gospel: he put nearly everything up for grabs except for his Christology and dependence on the Holy Spirit. One would do well to be cautious when making assumptions or taking broad conclusions from these verses, but what is salient to our point is that Paul had placed important guardrails around his core of the gospel that limited his contextualization of the gospel. p. 274
Two Contextualization Extremes to Avoid
There are two problematic extremes when it comes to contextualization, and the first is to be noncritical. This leads to syncretism, “the replacement of core or important truths of the gospel with non-Christian elements.” 4 Examples of this vary, from Western materialism to African spiritist/animist beliefs incorporated into the church. If we are to be honest and realistic, all churches are in some form syncretistic. As A. Scott Moreau comments,
The human heart regularly manufactures idols which find homes in the church of the people who generate them. No church in any culture is free of the accretions of culture, and none of us is as objective in seeing syncretism within our own culture as we would like to think we are. 5
The solution for syncretism is more “text,” that is, a more careful reading, exegesis, and communal hermeneutic of the Scriptures and theological reflection.
The other extreme is no or little contextualization of the gospel, which leads to dichotomist Christianity or, as some call it, split-level Christianity. This is a form of Christian expression where
people go to church to address certain questions/issues in life but go to another source (e.g., folk religion) to address other questions/issues in life. Unlike syncretism, the two sources do not blend; rather, they are isolated and used for different levels of questions. 6
It is easy to think that issues relative to split-level Christianity only exist in primitive folk cultures, but Western cultures are also subject to this extreme, particularly when they include concerns of abuse, addiction, shame, guilt, or relational issues. 7 The solution for split-level Christianity is more “context” or a better understanding of connecting the Scriptures with the culture and worldview of those hearing it.
Paul G. Hiebert, et al, suggest a way in which we can correct our over- and under-contextualization tendencies: communal hermeneutics. This is a tried and tested Anabaptist tradition, and one we continually need to return to as we live in an increasingly globally diverse world. Note carefully that the reality that we contextualize the gospel and the Scriptures does not mean that our theology is totally culturally biased. The more we as Christians and the church p. 275
read and carefully study Scripture, the more its categories and logic shape [our] thinking. [We] must also test for [our] own cultural biases by studying Scripture with Christians from other communities and cultures because others often see cultural biases more clearly than individuals do themselves. Such intercultural dialogues help Christians see how their culture has shaped their thinking and their interpretations of Scripture. 8
Our engagement in mission offers the opportunity to enter into this dialogue if we are able to see the value of correcting our theological biases. The problem is that we so often assume that the way we see and experience reality is how it truly is. When we encounter people who experience and see reality or God differently from us, we tend to judge them before we understand the values and context of their expression and experience of faith. These judgments are based on our ethnocentrism or biased theologies. This effectively shuts down communication and the potential growth for both parties. 9
An Example from the Life of Jonah
Sometimes our biases are rooted in something much more sinister. Jonah, as a representative of God’s people, exemplifies a certain heretical slide into a theology that excludes God’s desire for his people to be a blessing to all nations (see Gen 12:3). He believes the Ninevites should be punished and excluded from God’s grace because of their violent abusive sins and idolatry. Jonah maintains this posture even though he knows it to be outside of God’s character: “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (Jon 4:2b NIV). In fact, this was the reason he ran from God’s call to warn the people of Nineveh (Jon 4:2a; 1:1-3). God’s missional call on this prophet clarified Jonah’s hatred of his enemies and his misguided practical theology. He needed to reflect on God’s compassionate character to realize how much he himself needed to change. At the end of the book of Jonah, we are left wondering if the mission “gadfly” will provoke a correction in the heart of Jonah and the people he represents.
Mission workers may be tempted to look at Jonah and say that we would never be so callous and insensitive. We are enlightened. We have the mind of Christ. We live on the other side of the cross. Yet perhaps in subtle ways we might be victims of our own biases as we seek to advance God’s mission and do church—and not just in the way we think but also in p. 276 the character of our hearts. Certainly, these may stand in the way of people hearing, believing, and living out the gospel.
From Pragmatism and Reactionism to Growth and Blessing
I conclude with two additional examples of how engaging with mission can help open culturally biased eyes. In 2012, I conducted several interviews with church planters, pastors, and missionaries in the Paris region in order to better understand the spiritual milieu in which we were to plant a church. One comment from a veteran church planter continues to stick with me to this day. He said,
You Americans are always looking for the “silver bullet” for church planting; in reality, here in France, there is no “silver bullet” in church planting. No church planting technique or strategy works well, yet they all work a little bit. 10
What became clear in this conversation for me was my propensity for ecclesiastical pragmatism. We have seen numerous claimed “silver bullets” over our past, from mission stations, church growth methods, seeker services, and missional church, to holistic church planting and “disciple-making discipleship.” Perhaps not all of these fall directly into the tactics bin, but the question remains whether we have “cut and paste” our tactics, praxis, or even our theology of mission from American evangelical trends and practices. The temptation is to assume these are the right responses to our contexts and communities. But have we done the hard work of thinking, praying deeply, and dialoging with our frontline workers who are effectively making disciples and planting churches?
As a long-term missionary in a number of mission contexts, one of the privileges I had was to receive many short-term church “vision teams.” One of the biggest benefits of these trips was always this dialogue about worldview, contextualization, and the posture of a cultural learner. This always enabled our supporting churches to better understand the realities of our work. It also broadened our visitors’ understanding of who God is, how he works, and what blind spots they bring to the process of knowing God and the activities of his church. Many believers direct significant criticism at short-term mission programs, and much of it may be deserved. But a church vision trip that engages in this level of dialogue and mutual processing will enrich the church and inform how it responds to the lost.
This essay has argued that it is in missiological dialogue that the church finds renewal and understands better what God is doing in the world around us. Listening to mission practitioners and their reports p. 277 (theology from below) can show how the church can best address needs and open doors around it in order to “win some.” The other aspect of this dialogue is to engage the entire community (even the global Mennonite Brethren community) to continue to think deeply about our Anabaptist theological and missional distinctives (theology from above), and to let those convictions and values inform our theology of mission. In this way, our blind spots and biases are more likely to be corrected, making us more relevant and more scriptural.
This posture as a church can help keep us from falling into a “fortress mentality” ecclesiology where we feel we are charged with “protecting the faith” as we know it and have experienced it. This can get expressed in a reactionary attitude toward new contextualizations adapted to reach new generations and cultures. As stated above, this need not open up the door to come-what-may theology; it does mean that there should be an eagerness to enter into humble dialogue, to seek understanding, and to grow together in our understanding of God’s movement.
Notes
- Patrick Johnstone, The Church Is Bigger than You Think: Structures and Strategies for the Church in the 21st Century (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1998), 177.
- James Emery White, “The Danger of Confusing Tactics and Strategy in Leadership” Outreach Magazine, 5 February 2024, https://outreachmagazine.com/features/leadership/41215-danger-confusing-tactics-strategy-leadership.html.
- Craig Ott, Encountering Theology of Mission: Biblical Foundations, Historical Developments, and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 266.
- A. Scott Moreau, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000), s.v. “Mission and Missions.”
- Moreau, s.v. ”Syncretism.” This short article is a good primer for a deeper discussion of the issue of syncretism, its biblical analysis, and guidelines for addressing it.
- W. Jay Moon, Intercultural Discipleship: Learning from Global Approaches to Spiritual Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 33.
- Moon, 32. p. 278
- Paul G. Hiebert, R. Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tienou, Understanding Folk Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999), 24.
- Hiebert, et al., 27.
- Tom Thomas, pastor Église Évangélique Baptiste (Argenteuil, France), interview by author, July 15, 2012.
