Missional Theology

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Missional Theology

• Attraction or Incarnation

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Engaging Frost Hirsh assumptions

• Incarnation as theological prism for the
  missional church
• Identity
• Locality
• Incarnate/Transcendent presence
• Imago Dei

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Engaging Frost Hirsh assumptions

• The incarnation provides a paradigm for how
  mission needs to be en-fleshed and en-cultured
  into whatever culture it impacts. To implant
  Western music, liturgy and clothing into an
  African mission context is a distortion of
  incarnational mission. Jesus came in flesh into
  a real, living and breathing human place and time.

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• Engaging Frost Hirsh assumptions
• Incarnational mission identifies with and makes
  its home in the cultural context. It seeks their
  perspective, understands their grievances,
  sorrows and joys. The danger of failing to do
  this is the sin of cultural imperialism which so
  blighted mission to many parts of the world in
  the 19th and early 20th C. Such mission takes
  seriously the need for presence which is real and
  abiding not simply a tokenistic identification,
  before retreating to a safe space.

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• Engaging Frost Hirsh assumptions
• Incarnational mission implies a sending impulse
  rather than extraction and withdrawal. God sent
  his Son into the world. Mission is therefore
  centrifugal rather than centripetal.

6

• Engaging Frost Hirsh assumptions
• Incarnational mission means that people will get
  to experience Jesus on the inside of their
  culture, rather than having to learn a whole new
  culture first. Many people see Jesus as being
  identified with a particular strand of
  Christianity bland, respectable, safe, middle
  of the road hence the need for an incarnation
  of Jesus into the myriad of sub cultures around
  us.

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Attractional vs incarnational

• Bounded set
• The lost person seen as a sinner needing saving
  from the world
• Seeks change sinners to be like us
• Looks to get people to profess and sign up
• The evangelist as specialist and in possession
• of the knowledge required
• Christians possess and know the truth

• Centered Set
• Each person viewed as equally flawed, yet loved
  by God, despite their sin
• Sees people as companions on a journey that leads
  and approaches God together
• emphasis on ongoing discipleship and kingdom
  building lifestyle
• All Christians are witness to the truth of Jesus
• We are learning and growing in knowledge of God
  and dont yet have everything sorted out

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Implications for missional church
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Defining the Missional Church
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Missional Church context

• What is the raison detre of the missional
  church?
• What is the cultural context of the missional
  church in North America?

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Missional Church context

• What is the raison detre of the missional
  church?
• Ecclesiocentric ontology
• Theologiocentric ontology
• Missiocentric ontolgy

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Missional Church context

• What is the raison detre of the missional
  church?
• Ecclesiocentric ontology
• The church is at the center of the universe and
  its reason for being is to maintain and replicate
  itself. Mission just one program of many. Sending
  people into mission.
• In a post Christendom world this no longer works.

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Missional Church context

• What is the raison detre of the missional
  church?
• Theologiocentric ontology
• The church exists to preserve a particular
  theological perspective and doctrine. Mission is
  getting people to adopt the right theology or
  believe the right things.
• In a post Christian world this not longer has
  validity.

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Missional Church context

• What is the raison detre of the missional
  church?
• Missiocentric ontology
• The church is inextricably bound to the mission
  of God and purpose in our world.
• Moving from sending to being sent. The church
  does not send and receive people in mission. The
  church collectively and individually is being
  sent on mission in our world.

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Missional Church context

• What is the raison detre of the missional
  church?
• Missiocentric ontology
• Gods mission began with the call of Israel to
  receive Gods blessing in order to be a blessing
  to the nations. Gods mission unfolded in the
  history of Gods people across the centuries
  recorded in scriptures and reached it revelatory
  climax in the incarnation of Gods work of
  salvation in Jesus ministering, crucified and
  resurrected. Gods mission continued then in the
  sending of the spirit to call forth and empower
  the church as the witness to Gods good news in
  Jesus Christ Missional Church pg 4

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context of the missional
  church in North America?
• The Gospel has to be constantly readdressed
  Helmut Theilicke

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context of the missional
  church in North America?
• Gospel communicated through culture
• Modern culture is complex
• Autonomous self
• Consumer self

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Modern culture is complex
• Rational/Autonomous self
• Consumer self
• Constructed society

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Modern culture is complex
• Rational/Autonomous self
• Individual is the highest state of being.
• Knowledge acquired through reason and logic can
  reveal universal truth
• Democracy, freedom and individual rights are
  paramount values.

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Modern culture is complex
• Consumer self
• Individual accumulation of wealth and goods and
  consumption of services self defining. Consumer
  at the center.

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Modern culture is complex
• Constructed society
• Social structures and society constructed to
  support and feed these cultural ideals.
• Race, class and economy all driven by these
  constructs.

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Post Modern culture is complex
• Relative self
• De-centered self
• Pluralist society

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Post Modern culture is complex
• Relative self
• Reason and knowledge can longer to provide the
  answers to all questions. Multiple intelligences.
• From epistemology to hermeneutics.
• All truth is relative to individual experience
  and context

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Post Modern culture is complex
• De-centered self
• The acquisition of wealthy and knowledge by
  individual did not create a just and equal
  society.
• Not just the individual but the individual in
  social context.

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Missional Church context

• What is the cultural context
• Post Modern culture is complex
• Pluralist society
• Constructed society has fragmented.
• Sub-cultures and sub-subcultures
• New forms of community outside of the
  institutional social structures

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Contextualized church
Community
Communion
Commission
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• Communion - relationship with Christ
• Community - relationship with others
• Commission - relationship with our world

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• Communion relationship with Christ
• Gods word
• Worship

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• Community relationship with others
• Learning
• Living

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• Commission relationship with our world
• Serving
• Sharing

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Critical contextualization

• Keep whatever is not unbiblical
• Reject what is unbecoming for Jesus followers
• Modify existing practices to give them Christian
  meaning
• Reject exist unbiblical practices
• Adopt rites from Christian heritage
• Create new symbols and rituals