Daily Archives: November 18, 2009

Does Mission Make the Church?

Posted by on November 18, 2009 46 comments

According to the early church’s own self-narration in the book of Acts it would seem so. In Acts 2 clearly it is the pentecostal coming of the Holy Spirit which initiates the new messianic reality through the apostles. But, the logic of the Spirit’s movement is not Pentecost-Church-Mission, but Pentecost-Mission-Church. The Spirit descends upon the apostles (2:2-4) who then proceed to proclaim the gospel (2:14ff). Only after the proclamation, the enactment in the Spirit of their missional vocation, do the apostles baptize those who are caught up into the gospel’s truth. Only after the missional proclamation of the truth about Jesus does the rudiments of a common missional life, the life of the ekklesia, begin to emerge (2:42-46).

The church, then is a response to the pentecostal mission of the Spirit through the apostolic proclamation of the truth about Jesus. And this response is one of being given over to the form of radical love displayed in Christ’s own revelation of Israel’s God. It is a movement of fellowship, solidarity, service, and mutual dispossession (v. 45).

Thus, the logic of mission and church is something like the following: the messianic mission of Christ calls forth the pentecostal mission of the Holy Spirit which brings about the aposolic mission of proclamation in word and deed of the radical love of Jesus. This apostolic mission takes shape in the ekklesia, a movement of communal cruciform love and service to the world.

Tradition and Messianic Liberation

Posted by on November 18, 2009 2 comments

Jürgen Moltmann, in The Church in the Power of the Spirit argues that appeals to the church’s tradition as a source of stable, timeless permanence are misguided on the basis of the very nature of tradition itself:

The tradition to which the church appeals, and which it proclaims whenever it calls itself Christ’s church and speaks in Christ’s name, is the tradition of the messianic liberation and eschatological renewal of the world. It is impossible to rest on this tradition. It is a tradition that changes men and from which they are born again. It is like the following wind that drives us to new shores. Anyone who enters into this messianic tradition accepts the adventure of the Spirit, the experience of liberation, the call to repentance, and common work for the coming kingdom. Tradition and reformation, what abides and what changes, faithfulness and the fresh start are not antitheses in the history of the Spirit. For the Spirit leads to the fellowship of Christ and consummates the messianic kingdom. (p. 3)

The tradition, thus construed, cannot be a stable source of rest, of self-confidence and coherence. Rather it consists in being given over to the ongoing missional activity of the Spirit in transforming the world into the kingdom of Christ.

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