Puddicombe, Mike. “Missional Theological Education and Its Impact on the Local Church.” April 30, 2019, Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto, Ontario: MPEG-3, 41:36 min. 1 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:01.880 Thank you. 2 00:00:04.840 --> 00:00:08.250 As I was getting ready for, for today, I thought, well, I'll probably have about 3 00:00:08.280 --> 00:00:10.460 four or five people and one of those would be my wife. 4 00:00:10.490 --> 00:00:12.580 So I'll have a good crowd. 5 00:00:12.610 --> 00:00:17.820 I wasn't expecting this many people, which is, which is nice, a good thing. 6 00:00:17.850 --> 00:00:23.100 And my, my actual dissertation is on work with the Salvation Army. 7 00:00:23.130 --> 00:00:27.600 For some strange reason, it's the way I am. 8 00:00:27.840 --> 00:00:31.500 But I took a lot of that stuff out because I thought there's not going to be anyone 9 00:00:31.530 --> 00:00:35.800 there from the Salvation Army other than my wife. 10 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:39.180 At the end, if you have some questions, 11 00:00:39.210 --> 00:00:44.420 maybe around the Salvation Army issue, if you're so inclined, you can ask. 12 00:00:44.450 --> 00:00:47.940 But the topic of my paper is missional 13 00:00:47.970 --> 00:00:52.340 theological education and its impact on the local church, 14 00:00:52.370 --> 00:00:56.540 which I thought was a little bit out of place at a symposium such as this. 15 00:00:56.570 --> 00:00:59.380 But as I reflected on it more, I began to 16 00:00:59.410 --> 00:01:06.050 believe that it actually fits in very well because I believe that Western theology is 17 00:01:06.080 --> 00:01:10.290 missional and that holiness is missional as well. 18 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:15.570 And although I don't get the time to elaborate on these themes today, 19 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:20.460 you do see this underlying presence within my paper. 20 00:01:20.490 --> 00:01:23.020 And at the heart of this paper really lies 21 00:01:23.050 --> 00:01:29.290 a passionate longing for the church to be the church, to truly become a community 22 00:01:29.320 --> 00:01:39.210 that mediates the liberating presence of God in the world through Jesus Christ. 23 00:01:39.240 --> 00:01:42.060 And central to it is a desire to see a 24 00:01:42.090 --> 00:01:47.700 rebirthing of the local congregation as missional congregations, 25 00:01:47.730 --> 00:01:54.620 namely the authentic signs, the foretaste and the instruments of God's kingdom. 26 00:01:54.650 --> 00:02:01.920 And theological education has a big part to play in this rebirthing. 27 00:02:04.080 --> 00:02:06.700 The logic of having missional oriented 28 00:02:06.730 --> 00:02:12.380 theological training is that such training will produce missionly minded clergy, 29 00:02:12.410 --> 00:02:17.500 which in turn will produce and lead missionally minded congregations. 30 00:02:17.530 --> 00:02:19.540 missionly minded congregations see 31 00:02:19.570 --> 00:02:25.660 themselves as a community created by the Spirit and that it has a unique nature, 32 00:02:25.690 --> 00:02:31.780 what gives it a unique identity, and that's according to Van Gelder, 33 00:02:31.810 --> 00:02:36.820 these congregations have a clear understanding of the purpose as agents of 34 00:02:36.850 --> 00:02:40.820 God's mission, the Missy O Day in this world. 35 00:02:40.850 --> 00:02:43.760 And as such, they are intentional in the 36 00:02:43.790 --> 00:02:48.660 witnessing task of the church and the activity involved in the community. 37 00:02:48.690 --> 00:02:51.820 The church is located. 38 00:02:51.850 --> 00:02:53.980 The reason why I chose this area of study 39 00:02:54.010 --> 00:03:01.340 really was because I see a lot of churches within my own tribe and within others that 40 00:03:01.370 --> 00:03:03.980 just do not have this sort of missional mindset. 41 00:03:04.010 --> 00:03:09.860 And this is an area of concern for a lot of churches, a lot of denominations, where 42 00:03:09.890 --> 00:03:13.610 they can see, well, how is the church actually reaching outside of their 43 00:03:13.640 --> 00:03:17.860 building and into their community and how are they doing that effectively? 44 00:03:17.890 --> 00:03:25.980 And in my experience has been that we have a lot of churches that are very insular. 45 00:03:26.010 --> 00:03:27.540 They look only to themselves. 46 00:03:27.570 --> 00:03:31.380 They see that, okay, how can we meet the needs of us? 47 00:03:31.410 --> 00:03:33.420 And they get into these holy Huddles and 48 00:03:33.450 --> 00:03:38.600 us foreign no more and they just sort of get stuck there. 49 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:40.780 How do we get out of that? 50 00:03:40.810 --> 00:03:48.860 Stuckness is really what I was attempting to find out as I was going through this. 51 00:03:48.890 --> 00:03:56.260 It was part of the solution to the problem was really how do 52 00:03:56.290 --> 00:04:02.180 we get our leaders to engage the people in their congregations and mission? 53 00:04:02.210 --> 00:04:04.920 And what I was finding out is that a lot 54 00:04:04.950 --> 00:04:10.260 of leaders are coming out of seminaries without an idea of what mission is 55 00:04:10.290 --> 00:04:14.740 and so it's very hard for them to teach something that they don't know. 56 00:04:14.770 --> 00:04:20.580 So that being said, that's sort of the the premise behind what I'm doing. 57 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:26.660 The situation that we're in today is that church service attendance and 58 00:04:26.690 --> 00:04:31.200 personal religious commitment has steadily declined since the 1940s. 59 00:04:31.220 --> 00:04:39.020 In Canada, the steepest declines occurred in the 1980s and 1990s followed with 60 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:41.820 modest declines during the early two thousand s. 61 00:04:41.840 --> 00:04:47.700 And that's according to data from the Canadian General Social Surveys. 62 00:04:47.720 --> 00:04:53.140 What is often at the heart of many church sustainability issues is an inaccurate 63 00:04:53.160 --> 00:04:59.980 perception of the current cultural landscape among the church area. 64 00:05:00.010 --> 00:05:06.180 And that misunderstanding is within the church's leadership and sometimes not only 65 00:05:06.210 --> 00:05:10.260 with the leadership, but also within the congregants as well. 66 00:05:10.280 --> 00:05:16.160 The understanding that the church occupied an official place in society and that the 67 00:05:16.190 --> 00:05:22.300 church had the primary responsibility for guiding the social order remains central 68 00:05:22.330 --> 00:05:26.940 to the Canadian understanding of the church up to the 1960s. 69 00:05:26.970 --> 00:05:29.580 The reality that church leaders do not or 70 00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:34.300 cannot perceive is based on the fact that the culture and society in which we live 71 00:05:34.330 --> 00:05:40.420 today is not the same as the culture of the 1940s when the church pews were full 72 00:05:40.450 --> 00:05:43.620 and the church was the center of the community. 73 00:05:43.650 --> 00:05:48.500 By living in yesterday's reality, church leaders look for ways to engage their 74 00:05:48.530 --> 00:05:54.500 current reality with programs and systems that are from a bygone era and then 75 00:05:54.530 --> 00:05:59.620 discover that they have little success engaging their current context. 76 00:05:59.650 --> 00:06:02.020 This false reality also assures them that 77 00:06:02.040 --> 00:06:06.380 the church still has a prominent place within the community 78 00:06:06.410 --> 00:06:11.820 and has an influence on the culture of that community, when in fact it does not. 79 00:06:11.850 --> 00:06:16.480 When confronted with what is really happening in their neighborhood, the 80 00:06:16.510 --> 00:06:20.980 church must make a decision on how to proceed by either continuing on the path 81 00:06:21.010 --> 00:06:25.980 they have set for themselves or by trying to change. 82 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:27.820 And then there's that old joke that goes 83 00:06:27.850 --> 00:06:31.700 the only thing that likes change is a baby when it's diapers wet. 84 00:06:31.730 --> 00:06:34.500 And we all have seen that when we try to 85 00:06:34.530 --> 00:06:38.980 introduce some sort of change into a congregation. 86 00:06:39.010 --> 00:06:44.100 The era when the church and society share the same values has come to an end. 87 00:06:44.130 --> 00:06:46.660 While the church may hope and pray for 88 00:06:46.690 --> 00:06:52.420 return of the ideals of Christendom, it is not going to happen. 89 00:06:52.450 --> 00:06:57.340 Frost explains Christendom as the name given to the religious culture that has 90 00:06:57.360 --> 00:07:00.620 dominated western society since the fourth century. 91 00:07:00.650 --> 00:07:05.420 It started when Christianity moved from being an underground movement to becoming 92 00:07:05.450 --> 00:07:09.340 the state religion under Emperor Emperor Constantine. 93 00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:14.620 And over time, Christendom became the meta narrative for all of society as 94 00:07:14.650 --> 00:07:18.820 Christianity became an official part of the established culture. 95 00:07:18.850 --> 00:07:23.500 And the net effect over the entire Christendom epoch was that Christianity 96 00:07:23.530 --> 00:07:29.220 moved from being a dynamic, revolutionary, social and spiritual movement to that of 97 00:07:29.250 --> 00:07:34.420 being static religious institution with its 98 00:07:34.450 --> 00:07:39.700 attendant structures, priesthood and sacraments. 99 00:07:39.730 --> 00:07:43.220 This change did not go unnoticed by the Church. 100 00:07:43.250 --> 00:07:46.460 And Tim Keel says that we know, and I 101 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:51.500 believe we have known for quite some time, that the world has changed. 102 00:07:51.530 --> 00:07:53.660 Before we ever became aware of the notion 103 00:07:53.690 --> 00:07:59.260 of post modernity or globalization, post colonialism and a hundred other posts. 104 00:07:59.290 --> 00:08:05.980 We knew something was changing, the Church just ignored it. 105 00:08:06.010 --> 00:08:11.000 With the fall of Christendom has come a new era, a post Christendom era where the 106 00:08:11.030 --> 00:08:15.940 meta narrative, Christianity's effect on culture is no longer viable. 107 00:08:15.970 --> 00:08:21.260 Unfortunately, in the Church, many of its systems and structures are ill equipped to 108 00:08:21.290 --> 00:08:25.540 deal with the new environment and the challenges it presents. 109 00:08:25.570 --> 00:08:30.340 Church leaders now find themselves in a culture where the Church no longer is as 110 00:08:30.360 --> 00:08:37.820 influential as it once was, and it is increasingly antagonistic towards them. 111 00:08:37.850 --> 00:08:42.560 Society believes, according to Eddie Gibbs, that there is no meta narrative to 112 00:08:42.580 --> 00:08:47.660 inspire people, no explanation of everything, no meaning or purpose to life 113 00:08:47.690 --> 00:08:54.400 awaiting discovery at either the cosmic or the personal level. 114 00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:03.220 This is not saying that there is no room for the Church in the world today, 115 00:09:03.250 --> 00:09:08.440 but only that the Church's participation in our current society must be done on 116 00:09:08.470 --> 00:09:12.820 society's terms and not on the Church's terms. 117 00:09:12.850 --> 00:09:15.420 As James Smith comments, the exclusion of 118 00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:19.820 faith from the public square is a modern agenda. 119 00:09:19.850 --> 00:09:23.100 Postmodernity should signal new openings 120 00:09:23.130 --> 00:09:29.020 and opportunities for Christian witness in the broad marketplace of ideas. 121 00:09:29.050 --> 00:09:34.740 Smith also issues a warning to the Church, and he says we must be careful, however, 122 00:09:34.770 --> 00:09:39.660 not to continue to propagate the witness in modernist ways 123 00:09:39.690 --> 00:09:44.100 by attempting our own rationalist demonstrations of the truth of the 124 00:09:44.130 --> 00:09:50.820 Christian faith and then imposing such on a pluralistic culture. 125 00:09:50.850 --> 00:09:54.580 So what can the Church do? 126 00:09:54.610 --> 00:10:00.260 Craig Carter suggests that the Church of Jesus Christ must renounce Christidom and 127 00:10:00.290 --> 00:10:06.020 to seek to live as a pilgrim people bearing witness to the kingdom of God and 128 00:10:06.050 --> 00:10:09.940 proclaiming the resurrection hope of the Gospel. 129 00:10:09.970 --> 00:10:15.380 We are at a place in its history where the cultural changes in society and a new 130 00:10:15.410 --> 00:10:19.260 season in the life of the Church are colliding. 131 00:10:19.290 --> 00:10:22.160 In what Phyllis Tickle describes as a 132 00:10:22.190 --> 00:10:26.120 great emergence, she defines the great emergence as a 133 00:10:26.150 --> 00:10:29.180 phenomenon that affects every part of our life. 134 00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:31.260 And she says, in its 135 00:10:31.290 --> 00:10:38.180 totality, it interfaces with and is the context for everything we do socially, 136 00:10:38.200 --> 00:10:44.120 culturally, intellectually, politically and economically. 137 00:10:45.080 --> 00:10:50.120 She believes that the Church is at a time of great emergence and is also in a period 138 00:10:50.150 --> 00:10:54.420 of drastic change, which she seems to liken to a rummage sale. 139 00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:56.480 She explains what is happening to the 140 00:10:56.510 --> 00:11:01.100 Church in this way she says to understand what is currently happening to us in the 141 00:11:01.130 --> 00:11:06.780 21st century North America is to understand that about every 500 years a 142 00:11:06.810 --> 00:11:11.420 church feels compelled to hold a giant rubmage sale. 143 00:11:11.450 --> 00:11:15.980 About every 500 years, the empowered structures of institutionalized 144 00:11:16.010 --> 00:11:22.780 Christianity, whatever they may be at the time, become an intolerable carpus that 145 00:11:22.810 --> 00:11:28.940 must be shattered in order to that renewal and growth may occur. 146 00:11:28.970 --> 00:11:34.180 From its beginning to today, the Church's 500 year rummage sale looks like this 147 00:11:34.210 --> 00:11:37.380 the first church yearly church of first century. 148 00:11:37.410 --> 00:11:41.780 About 500 years later, we have monasticism pop up. 149 00:11:41.810 --> 00:11:49.460 About 500 years later from that, the schism for east and west comes into the 150 00:11:49.490 --> 00:11:54.140 forefront, followed by the Reformation 500 years after that. 151 00:11:54.170 --> 00:11:59.840 And now we're entering into what she calls the emergence. 152 00:12:01.680 --> 00:12:03.820 She says there are consistently three 153 00:12:03.850 --> 00:12:06.540 results that come from these rummage sales. 154 00:12:06.570 --> 00:12:13.580 First is that a new and more vital form of Christianity does in fact emerge. 155 00:12:13.610 --> 00:12:18.840 Second, in the course of birthing, a new expression of faith in practice, there is 156 00:12:18.870 --> 00:12:24.740 a refurbishment of the previous expression of organized religion. 157 00:12:24.770 --> 00:12:27.880 Third, there is a period of growth and the 158 00:12:27.910 --> 00:12:33.940 spread of the faith into new geographic and demographic areas. 159 00:12:33.970 --> 00:12:38.460 And Tickle uses this example of one such Roman sale when she speaks about the 160 00:12:38.490 --> 00:12:42.260 Reformation, and she explains these three results as such. 161 00:12:42.290 --> 00:12:50.000 She says the birth of Protestantism 162 00:12:50.560 --> 00:12:53.620 not only established a new, more powerful 163 00:12:53.650 --> 00:12:59.380 way of being Christian, but it also forced Roman Catholicism to 164 00:12:59.410 --> 00:13:03.180 make changes in its own structure and practice. 165 00:13:03.210 --> 00:13:09.080 As a result of both those changes, christianity has spread over far more of 166 00:13:09.110 --> 00:13:14.040 the earth's territories than it ever had in the past. 167 00:13:15.640 --> 00:13:23.620 Talking about theological education, what makes a theological school theological? 168 00:13:23.650 --> 00:13:27.180 That is a question posed by David Kelsey, and he answers it this way. 169 00:13:27.210 --> 00:13:30.540 He says Ultimately, it is not the subject matters. 170 00:13:30.570 --> 00:13:36.620 It is not the courses nor scholarly disciplines it employs, but rather, it is 171 00:13:36.650 --> 00:13:44.400 in the overarching goal to understand God more fully. 172 00:13:46.880 --> 00:13:49.820 The Cape Town commitment, which really got 173 00:13:49.850 --> 00:13:55.180 me thinking about this whole study that I have done, 174 00:13:55.210 --> 00:14:00.500 states that it is the mission of the church to do the mission of God and that 175 00:14:00.530 --> 00:14:04.500 the purpose of theological education is twofold. 176 00:14:04.530 --> 00:14:07.720 First, it is to train men and women to 177 00:14:07.750 --> 00:14:12.820 lead the church as pastor teachers so that they may be competent in teaching the Word 178 00:14:12.850 --> 00:14:17.060 of God with faithfulness, clarity and relevancy. 179 00:14:17.080 --> 00:14:22.740 Second, it equips clergy for the missional task of being able to understand cultural 180 00:14:22.770 --> 00:14:31.020 context and to effectively communicate God's truth within those contexts. 181 00:14:31.050 --> 00:14:35.760 If missional curriculum in theological schools will help produce missionally 182 00:14:35.790 --> 00:14:40.660 minded clergy that will ultimately influence and build congregations that are 183 00:14:40.690 --> 00:14:46.620 missional, then it can be assumed if the theological schools curriculum and 184 00:14:46.650 --> 00:14:52.760 pedagogy trains clergy to be insular, then the congregations those clergy are 185 00:14:52.790 --> 00:14:58.900 responsible for will also be directed inwards and eventually languish. 186 00:14:58.930 --> 00:15:02.220 Therefore, theological education is not an 187 00:15:02.250 --> 00:15:08.520 end to itself, but it is to serve the mission of the church in the world. 188 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:12.060 One cannot automatically assume that the 189 00:15:12.080 --> 00:15:17.260 existing training model is the best way to develop leaders for the church. 190 00:15:17.290 --> 00:15:21.500 It is only by maintaining its close links with mission 191 00:15:21.530 --> 00:15:28.220 that the theological education will remain relevant to changing circumstances and 192 00:15:28.250 --> 00:15:33.880 hold the true missionary impulse that gave rise to the church. 193 00:15:33.920 --> 00:15:40.740 But theological education is torn between the academic norms of excellence where 194 00:15:40.770 --> 00:15:45.980 they have to consider the historical disciplines of Bible and systematic 195 00:15:46.010 --> 00:15:51.340 theology and church history and practical theology and the professional norms of 196 00:15:51.370 --> 00:15:57.180 excellence in modern disciplines required to lead a church in the 21st century. 197 00:15:57.210 --> 00:16:02.020 And because of this conflict and the strain and the stress, 198 00:16:02.050 --> 00:16:08.940 theological schools do not succeed at accomplishing either very well. 199 00:16:08.970 --> 00:16:11.940 So is there a way that the theological 200 00:16:11.970 --> 00:16:17.220 institution can successfully integrate historical disciplines to produce men and 201 00:16:17.250 --> 00:16:22.100 women who are biblically and theologically literate and able to disseminate the 202 00:16:22.130 --> 00:16:27.460 knowledge in a way that is culturally relevant in today's society? 203 00:16:27.490 --> 00:16:30.300 According to Van Gelder, the answer is yes. 204 00:16:30.330 --> 00:16:35.700 And in fact, we have been accomplishing this feat since theological institutions 205 00:16:35.730 --> 00:16:40.280 first came into existence in North America. 206 00:16:40.920 --> 00:16:43.020 Van Gelder has identified seven 207 00:16:43.050 --> 00:16:47.740 congregational leadership styles that have been taught to the church, to church 208 00:16:47.770 --> 00:16:50.820 leaders since colonial times in the United States. 209 00:16:50.850 --> 00:16:58.320 So in the colonial times, pastors were trained to be resident theologians. 210 00:16:58.480 --> 00:17:03.340 In the early 18 hundreds, they were the gentleman pastor. 211 00:17:03.370 --> 00:17:08.530 In the late 18 hundreds to mid 19 hundreds, they were the churchly pastor. 212 00:17:08.560 --> 00:17:13.460 Post World War II, they became the pastoral director of a congregation. 213 00:17:13.490 --> 00:17:21.290 And they were trained as such in the they were trained to be therapeutic pastors. 214 00:17:21.320 --> 00:17:29.140 In the 1980s to the 2000s, entrepreneurial leadership was the key fact. 215 00:17:29.170 --> 00:17:34.980 And I was trained in that period and I can attest to that fact. 216 00:17:35.010 --> 00:17:40.330 And from 2000 to present is the missional leader. 217 00:17:40.360 --> 00:17:43.500 I'm sure you can find where you are 218 00:17:43.530 --> 00:17:50.860 on that scale and say, yeah, that was true of me or not true of me. 219 00:17:50.890 --> 00:17:54.220 It is apparent from Van Gelder's research 220 00:17:54.250 --> 00:17:59.530 that there has been a change in the way church leaders are taught and that change 221 00:17:59.560 --> 00:18:05.810 has been a reflection of the norms of society in any given era. 222 00:18:05.840 --> 00:18:13.140 It is also apparent that the change was slow at the beginning, like years slow. 223 00:18:13.170 --> 00:18:15.720 But as we get closer to today, they are 224 00:18:15.750 --> 00:18:20.920 happening increasingly in a quicker manner. 225 00:18:21.240 --> 00:18:27.380 So what exactly is involved in training missional leaders? 226 00:18:27.410 --> 00:18:29.330 Well, first I think we have to gain an 227 00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:35.980 understanding of what mission is because some of us may have different ideas of 228 00:18:36.010 --> 00:18:40.400 mission and I don't have time to go into all of 229 00:18:40.430 --> 00:18:44.290 it, but we'll just sort of hit the high points. 230 00:18:44.320 --> 00:18:47.660 The Trinity as a community of divine 231 00:18:47.690 --> 00:18:54.420 sending has created a space for the church to take part in God's mission to be sent, 232 00:18:54.450 --> 00:19:01.770 empowered and accompanied by grace into the end to the ends of the earth. 233 00:19:01.800 --> 00:19:04.530 The sending of the church is intimately 234 00:19:04.560 --> 00:19:08.330 linked to the sending activity of the trinity. 235 00:19:08.360 --> 00:19:11.220 It is not by human authority, but through 236 00:19:11.250 --> 00:19:18.180 the authority of the triumphant God who as Father sends as Son, redeems and a spirit 237 00:19:18.210 --> 00:19:26.380 empowers receiving the church with all its human frailty into a divine missional. 238 00:19:26.410 --> 00:19:33.180 Communion shows the depth of God's love and motivated by God's love, the church 239 00:19:33.210 --> 00:19:39.900 should not seek to exercise dominance or impose its rights upon other people or 240 00:19:39.930 --> 00:19:48.160 organizations to the detriment of others or of the mission of God. 241 00:19:48.760 --> 00:19:54.010 So God, in his mercy and his grace, has 242 00:19:54.040 --> 00:19:59.290 chosen and equipped the church to participate in the mission day, a mission 243 00:19:59.320 --> 00:20:05.460 that will reveal the one who loves and is actively involved in the world. 244 00:20:05.490 --> 00:20:11.770 This mission cannot be thought of as one aspect of the Church's existence. 245 00:20:11.800 --> 00:20:18.530 Rather, it must be thought of as the essence of the church's life. 246 00:20:18.560 --> 00:20:21.090 If the very ethos of the church is 247 00:20:21.120 --> 00:20:25.620 missionary in nature, then the church that ceases to engage in 248 00:20:25.650 --> 00:20:30.940 mission is not just failing to accomplish one of its mandates. 249 00:20:30.970 --> 00:20:35.980 It has ceased to be what it is called to be. 250 00:20:36.010 --> 00:20:38.500 The church is a product of God's mission 251 00:20:38.530 --> 00:20:42.500 to bring together people from all nations, tribes and languages. 252 00:20:42.530 --> 00:20:48.740 At the same time, the church is a people of mission sent out into the world to 253 00:20:48.770 --> 00:20:53.380 manifest and proclaim the saving grace of God. 254 00:20:53.410 --> 00:20:55.810 The church and mission refers to the local 255 00:20:55.840 --> 00:21:01.140 assembly of believers participating in the miss yode. 256 00:21:01.170 --> 00:21:03.900 The church opens itself to include 257 00:21:03.930 --> 00:21:09.740 different levels of fellowship, communion and expressions, and it also extends in 258 00:21:09.770 --> 00:21:19.010 time to include preceding and succeeding generations. 259 00:21:19.040 --> 00:21:23.420 Hunsburger Emphatically states most simply 260 00:21:23.450 --> 00:21:29.290 and directly put it is the church's mission to represent the reign of God. 261 00:21:29.320 --> 00:21:31.770 And Frost agrees when he says we have 262 00:21:31.800 --> 00:21:40.740 known for a long time that the resounder of the church is mission. 263 00:21:40.770 --> 00:21:45.320 The church's participation in God's mission, therefore, is a gift of God's 264 00:21:45.350 --> 00:21:51.380 grace, a gift grounded in and flowing from the inbreaking reign of God in Christ, 265 00:21:51.410 --> 00:21:55.570 created out of grace to be part of the divine communion. 266 00:21:55.600 --> 00:22:01.900 The church does not live for itself, but for God and for the world. 267 00:22:01.930 --> 00:22:04.810 Daniel Migliori in an essay on the work of 268 00:22:04.840 --> 00:22:09.570 Jurgen Moltman, he said this he said For Moltman, the goal of mission, rightly 269 00:22:09.600 --> 00:22:15.290 understood, is not the reinstatement of Christianity as the imperial religion, not 270 00:22:15.320 --> 00:22:21.050 the universal rule of the church, and not the saving of souls from God's judgment. 271 00:22:21.080 --> 00:22:29.050 Rather, mission is the invitation to life, the invitation to the future of God. 272 00:22:29.080 --> 00:22:33.780 The church that participates in the fulfillment of God's mission is at that 273 00:22:33.810 --> 00:22:39.220 very same moment a clear and visible sign of God's presence in that place. 274 00:22:39.250 --> 00:22:43.660 It is for this reason that congregations cannot abandon their obligation to 275 00:22:43.690 --> 00:22:47.980 participate in God's mission in the world or deemphasize. 276 00:22:48.010 --> 00:22:50.780 The theology of Mission 277 00:22:50.810 --> 00:22:55.500 the ethos of the church and its missional calling are entwined with the Church's 278 00:22:55.530 --> 00:22:59.330 relationship with God and its role in the miscellaneous. 279 00:22:59.360 --> 00:23:08.040 And this has a bearing on theology of the theology espoused by the Church. 280 00:23:08.080 --> 00:23:12.620 The church is a community which comes into being in response to the kingdom of God 281 00:23:12.650 --> 00:23:17.620 through faith in Jesus Christ as the one in whom the kingdom is realized. 282 00:23:17.650 --> 00:23:23.460 The church exists primarily for the sake of its mission in the world. 283 00:23:23.490 --> 00:23:25.860 The church, when it's true to its real 284 00:23:25.890 --> 00:23:31.020 calling, according to Hirsch, the church, when true to its whole 285 00:23:31.050 --> 00:23:37.140 calling, when it's on about what God is on about is by far and away the most potent 286 00:23:37.170 --> 00:23:42.940 force for transformational change the world has ever seen. 287 00:23:42.970 --> 00:23:47.740 This purpose is carried out not by aligning with the present world order, but 288 00:23:47.770 --> 00:23:52.620 by proclaiming and demonstrating the life of the kingdom that is in Jesus and by 289 00:23:52.650 --> 00:23:58.000 calling the world to this radical new order. 290 00:23:59.320 --> 00:24:05.640 However, the church cannot understand its relationship with the world if it fails to 291 00:24:05.670 --> 00:24:10.420 understand its relationship with God and his mission. 292 00:24:10.450 --> 00:24:13.020 The early church understood that personal 293 00:24:13.050 --> 00:24:18.660 conversion implied the embracing of the Messiah Day, the redempted mission of God 294 00:24:18.690 --> 00:24:21.860 to the whole world through the work of the Messiah. 295 00:24:21.890 --> 00:24:24.380 Since participating in mission is not an 296 00:24:24.410 --> 00:24:28.960 option for the is not optional for the church, what does it mean for the 297 00:24:28.990 --> 00:24:32.540 congregations that are not engaged in mission? 298 00:24:32.570 --> 00:24:35.180 Are they really the church? 299 00:24:35.210 --> 00:24:37.660 It has been sade stated 300 00:24:37.690 --> 00:24:43.660 there is no mission apart from God and there is no church without mission. 301 00:24:43.690 --> 00:24:50.180 This sentiment is carried on by Vistam when he writes if the church disassociates 302 00:24:50.210 --> 00:24:55.960 herself from this concern of God, that being mission, she becomes disobedient and 303 00:24:55.990 --> 00:25:00.090 can no longer be the church in the divine sense. 304 00:25:00.120 --> 00:25:03.260 OTT, Strauss and Tennant claim the church 305 00:25:03.290 --> 00:25:07.090 is not to be understood as an organization with the mission. 306 00:25:07.120 --> 00:25:12.020 Rather, the church's very identity is mission. 307 00:25:12.050 --> 00:25:16.460 Mission and the church are merged into one. 308 00:25:16.490 --> 00:25:20.740 Mission is not one function among various functions of the church. 309 00:25:20.770 --> 00:25:22.840 In fact, mission is not a function of the 310 00:25:22.870 --> 00:25:28.380 church at all, but rather the church is a function in God's mission, 311 00:25:28.410 --> 00:25:37.320 god's constant outgoing and self giving love manifested in Christ Jesus. 312 00:25:37.360 --> 00:25:42.620 It is not that the church has a mission, but the very reverse. 313 00:25:42.650 --> 00:25:48.500 The mission of Christ has a church and it creates its own church. 314 00:25:48.530 --> 00:25:52.220 Mission does not come from the church, it is from mission. 315 00:25:52.250 --> 00:25:58.400 And in the light of mission that the church has to be understood. 316 00:25:58.440 --> 00:26:00.570 Perhaps claiming that churches who are not 317 00:26:00.600 --> 00:26:05.980 involved in mission are not really churches is a bit harsh. 318 00:26:06.010 --> 00:26:10.460 I would lean to that conclusion myself 319 00:26:10.490 --> 00:26:14.290 because it is possible that those congregations that have lost their 320 00:26:14.320 --> 00:26:20.700 missional focus have not really lost their focus on mission, but rather for them. 321 00:26:20.730 --> 00:26:25.660 Mission work was always performed by professional missionaries and was not seen 322 00:26:25.690 --> 00:26:29.540 as a responsibility of the local congregation. 323 00:26:29.570 --> 00:26:33.380 In the Western world, mission has been perceived as something which is done 324 00:26:33.410 --> 00:26:39.860 overseas in places where the gospel is yet to be heard or still in its infancy. 325 00:26:39.880 --> 00:26:41.570 The role of the church in the Western 326 00:26:41.600 --> 00:26:47.780 world was to send missionaries and or resources to accomplish missions abroad. 327 00:26:47.810 --> 00:26:52.570 If this is the case, the words of Lord Mead ring true when he states this. 328 00:26:52.600 --> 00:26:57.460 He says the structures designed for one mission do not work in the new mission. 329 00:26:57.490 --> 00:27:01.570 The church upside down, has not changed, has not changed its heart. 330 00:27:01.600 --> 00:27:06.380 Its focus is still mission, but the mission location has changed. 331 00:27:06.410 --> 00:27:08.540 And he goes on to claim that is not only 332 00:27:08.570 --> 00:27:13.740 the local congregation that has been slow to recognize how mission has changed, but 333 00:27:13.770 --> 00:27:21.120 local judiciaries and denominations have also failed to recognize the change. 334 00:27:22.440 --> 00:27:26.780 While it is true that especially in the west, mission activity has been identified 335 00:27:26.810 --> 00:27:32.120 as a task to be handled by the clergy or mission specialist, there has been a 336 00:27:32.150 --> 00:27:36.660 movement to rediscover a missional call to all believers. 337 00:27:36.690 --> 00:27:42.020 The clergy are no longer seen as the ones to solely do the work of mission, but 338 00:27:42.050 --> 00:27:47.360 rather it is their responsibility to equip the lady and empower them to use their 339 00:27:47.390 --> 00:27:51.740 Godgiving gifts in the service of mission in their community. 340 00:27:51.770 --> 00:27:56.420 Frost and Hearst expand on this premise and they add that the fivefold pattern of 341 00:27:56.450 --> 00:28:02.570 ministry as described in Ephesians, that of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor 342 00:28:02.600 --> 00:28:11.040 and teacher is a responsibility of the whole church and not just the leadership. 343 00:28:13.640 --> 00:28:17.520 My wife told me not to use this, 344 00:28:29.240 --> 00:28:32.600 not just the leadership. 345 00:28:43.960 --> 00:28:46.980 Hershey and Frost believe 346 00:28:47.010 --> 00:28:52.860 that all these working together result in the equipping of the saints to do the work 347 00:28:52.890 --> 00:28:56.330 of the ministry and the maturity of the body. 348 00:28:56.360 --> 00:28:59.660 It's not just up to the individual pastor, 349 00:28:59.690 --> 00:29:05.090 but it is the work of the entire church to bring 350 00:29:05.120 --> 00:29:10.380 above us about David Bosch also reminds us that mission does not proceed from the 351 00:29:10.410 --> 00:29:16.480 Pope, nor from a missionary order, society or synod, but from a community gathered 352 00:29:16.510 --> 00:29:20.980 around the word in the sacraments and sent out into the world. 353 00:29:21.010 --> 00:29:26.220 The mission calling a vocation of the believer is to create a nurturing and self 354 00:29:26.250 --> 00:29:30.090 sustaining missional culture within the church. 355 00:29:30.120 --> 00:29:34.900 The task of the Church is not to create mission programs to attract new members. 356 00:29:34.930 --> 00:29:39.940 It is the task of the Church to be a people who carry the reality of the gospel 357 00:29:39.970 --> 00:29:46.860 within themselves and then communicating that gospel through being and action. 358 00:29:46.890 --> 00:29:52.080 The primary identity of the early Christians was that they were witnesses to 359 00:29:52.110 --> 00:29:58.140 the risen Lord and that they were sent even as Jesus was sent out by God. 360 00:29:58.170 --> 00:30:02.980 Recovering the primacy of the sentness or the missionary nature of the church is a 361 00:30:03.010 --> 00:30:08.140 main concern for many contemporary ecclesiologies. 362 00:30:08.170 --> 00:30:11.780 If this is so, there are 363 00:30:11.810 --> 00:30:17.600 some very serious implications for the teaching of theology and the 364 00:30:17.630 --> 00:30:22.260 training of men and women in the mission of the Church. 365 00:30:22.290 --> 00:30:29.220 For one thing, the primary concern for us cannot be ministerial education as such, 366 00:30:29.250 --> 00:30:35.330 but rather the equipping of people in local congregations for mission. 367 00:30:35.360 --> 00:30:38.330 The proper question for us concerns rather 368 00:30:38.360 --> 00:30:43.680 the sort of theological education that will adequately form animators in such an 369 00:30:43.710 --> 00:30:48.860 equipping process of local communities of faith and mission. 370 00:30:48.890 --> 00:30:51.420 So what sort of theological education will 371 00:30:51.450 --> 00:30:57.500 prepare men and women who will help the whole people of God in given context to 372 00:30:57.530 --> 00:31:03.570 manifest credibly the liberating presence of God in that context? 373 00:31:03.600 --> 00:31:10.260 While a mission model stresses an attitude of passion for the world as God has shown 374 00:31:10.290 --> 00:31:15.050 it, in Christ, mission has to have reference to all 375 00:31:15.080 --> 00:31:20.740 dimensions of life the family, work, friendships and community. 376 00:31:20.770 --> 00:31:22.860 One of the main goals of theological 377 00:31:22.890 --> 00:31:28.240 education is prepare women and men as ministers to equip the whole people of 378 00:31:28.270 --> 00:31:35.420 God, to develop leaders for mission, and to help the Church articulate its faith. 379 00:31:35.450 --> 00:31:40.000 Banks contends that the theological institution fulfills this educational 380 00:31:40.030 --> 00:31:47.020 service by forming character, abilities and thought, informing mind practice and 381 00:31:47.050 --> 00:31:53.760 contemplation and transforming values, peoples and communities. 382 00:31:56.040 --> 00:32:01.290 Theological education is a dimension of mission and it has a 383 00:32:01.320 --> 00:32:06.810 vital missional content, since it is an aspect of the teaching 384 00:32:06.840 --> 00:32:13.380 ministry of the Church involving specialized testimony of the kingdom. 385 00:32:13.410 --> 00:32:18.020 It is only by maintaining as close link with mission that the theological 386 00:32:18.050 --> 00:32:23.680 institution will remain relevant to the changing circumstances and hold true to 387 00:32:23.710 --> 00:32:29.420 the missionary impulse that gave rise to the Church and theology. 388 00:32:29.450 --> 00:32:35.420 Bosch is quick to remind us that theology, biblical understood, has no reason to 389 00:32:35.450 --> 00:32:41.180 exist other than to critically accompany the Church in its mission to the world. 390 00:32:41.210 --> 00:32:43.660 The central place for teaching Missiology 391 00:32:43.690 --> 00:32:49.600 in seminaries must be reserved for the concept of the Missio day because it 392 00:32:49.630 --> 00:32:55.050 understands the Church to be missionary in every facet of its being. 393 00:32:55.080 --> 00:33:00.330 This does not mean that a mythology course is added to the syllabus, but that mission 394 00:33:00.360 --> 00:33:05.290 becomes a catalyst that is at the heart of all curriculum. 395 00:33:05.320 --> 00:33:07.280 The importance of this lies in the 396 00:33:07.310 --> 00:33:12.810 realization that mission is not understood and not considered a duty of the Church, 397 00:33:12.840 --> 00:33:18.380 but rather that it is an integral part of the ethos of the Church. 398 00:33:18.410 --> 00:33:22.380 The Cape Town Commitment states theological education 399 00:33:22.410 --> 00:33:27.980 should be intrinsically missional since its place within the academy is not an end 400 00:33:28.010 --> 00:33:33.050 unto itself, but it has served the mission of the Church in the world. 401 00:33:33.080 --> 00:33:38.920 This declaration leads them to encourage all theological institutions to conduct a 402 00:33:38.950 --> 00:33:43.900 missional audit of their curricula, structures and ethos to ensure that they 403 00:33:43.930 --> 00:33:49.860 meet the needs and the opportunities facing the Church in their cultures. 404 00:33:49.890 --> 00:33:52.900 This needs to be done to reinforce that 405 00:33:52.930 --> 00:33:57.980 the mission of the Church on earth is to serve the mission of God and the mission 406 00:33:58.010 --> 00:34:04.940 of theological education is to strengthen and accompany the mission of the Church. 407 00:34:04.970 --> 00:34:10.080 Alan Neely argues that if the global awareness of the seminarian is determined 408 00:34:10.110 --> 00:34:14.420 from their seminary experience, then it is a responsibility the 409 00:34:14.450 --> 00:34:19.100 institution to provide as a fundamental part of their curriculum, 410 00:34:19.130 --> 00:34:25.210 an academic as well as practical preparation for cross cultural mission. 411 00:34:25.240 --> 00:34:30.820 And it can be said now that doing cross cultural mission is no longer 412 00:34:30.850 --> 00:34:35.940 going across the seas, it's just walking across the street. 413 00:34:35.970 --> 00:34:42.420 Globalization is widening our horizons through cross cultural experiences, a 414 00:34:42.450 --> 00:34:48.210 process of multiculturalization anely concludes by saying this curriculum 415 00:34:48.240 --> 00:34:53.600 will need to be global, evangelical, contextual and ecumenical if the 416 00:34:53.630 --> 00:34:59.980 seminarian is to live as a Christian missionary in a contemporary world. 417 00:35:00.010 --> 00:35:04.340 The world the church is called to minister in today requires that leaders develop a 418 00:35:04.370 --> 00:35:09.500 new set of leadership competencies and capacities that will help them cultivate 419 00:35:09.530 --> 00:35:13.860 an environment within their congregations for emissional transformation. 420 00:35:13.890 --> 00:35:19.500 David Bosch asserts that the clergy of the church are not prior to or independent of 421 00:35:19.530 --> 00:35:23.170 or over against the church, rather with the rest of God's people. 422 00:35:23.200 --> 00:35:26.500 They are the church sent into the world. 423 00:35:26.530 --> 00:35:30.860 And he continues to explain that the church in mission is today facing a world 424 00:35:30.890 --> 00:35:35.580 fundamentally different from anything it has faced before. 425 00:35:35.610 --> 00:35:41.580 Roxburg and Romanok argued that the church leaders have been trained in the past. 426 00:35:41.610 --> 00:35:46.300 The way that church leaders have been trained in the past isn't wrong, but their 427 00:35:46.330 --> 00:35:51.020 training has rendered their leaders to be ineffective in today's world. 428 00:35:51.050 --> 00:35:53.960 They illustrate it in this way it's if we 429 00:35:53.990 --> 00:35:58.160 are preparing to play baseball and suddenly discover that everyone else is 430 00:35:58.190 --> 00:36:03.860 playing basketball, the game has changed and the rules are different. 431 00:36:03.890 --> 00:36:06.650 As a church participates in God's mission, 432 00:36:06.680 --> 00:36:11.210 empowered by the Word and led by the Spirit and the Way of Christ, it engages 433 00:36:11.240 --> 00:36:17.300 faithfully and purposefully with the challenging context of the 21st century. 434 00:36:17.330 --> 00:36:21.580 Engaging prayerfully with the challenges of its context. 435 00:36:21.610 --> 00:36:26.780 The church needs to deepen continuously its theological reflection on the 436 00:36:26.810 --> 00:36:30.860 different aspects and dimensions of mission. 437 00:36:30.890 --> 00:36:36.460 A continued theological reflection on the practice of mission and on overarching 438 00:36:36.490 --> 00:36:42.130 mythological themes strengthens the church in carrying out its contextual. 439 00:36:42.160 --> 00:36:47.100 Mission if lasting change within the congregations 440 00:36:47.130 --> 00:36:52.340 take place, it must begin with the leadership of the church, because much of 441 00:36:52.370 --> 00:36:58.820 what will or will not happen within the church will stem from the leader. 442 00:36:58.850 --> 00:37:02.060 Pollster George Barnes stated for any 443 00:37:02.090 --> 00:37:07.340 movement to have a lasting impact, a strong, visionary leader must be in place. 444 00:37:07.370 --> 00:37:10.340 And Harvard professor John Carter says this. 445 00:37:10.370 --> 00:37:13.500 He says successful transformation is 70% 446 00:37:13.530 --> 00:37:18.690 to 90% leadership and only 10% to 30% management. 447 00:37:18.720 --> 00:37:23.360 Yet many organizations say don't have much leadership, and almost everyone thinks 448 00:37:23.390 --> 00:37:28.300 that this problem is one of managing change. 449 00:37:28.330 --> 00:37:30.400 Eddie Gibbs reminds us that yesterday's 450 00:37:30.430 --> 00:37:34.900 styles of unit leadership will not be adequate for the opening decades of the 451 00:37:34.930 --> 00:37:40.500 21st century because the future is too unpredictable for the 452 00:37:40.530 --> 00:37:44.940 predetermined parameters inherent in long term planning. 453 00:37:44.970 --> 00:37:48.100 How many of us here have 510 year plans? 454 00:37:48.130 --> 00:37:50.620 That's what he's talking about. 455 00:37:50.650 --> 00:37:56.690 He goes on to say Yesterday's solutions and procedures may not provide an adequate 456 00:37:56.720 --> 00:38:00.650 or appropriate response to the present challenges. 457 00:38:00.680 --> 00:38:06.650 The problem that longtime leaders face is not learning new insights and skills, 458 00:38:06.680 --> 00:38:12.580 but in unlearning what they consider to be tried and true. 459 00:38:12.610 --> 00:38:19.020 The problem new leaders face is that they have oftentimes only been taught the tried 460 00:38:19.050 --> 00:38:24.300 and trued methods of the past during their time in seminary. 461 00:38:24.330 --> 00:38:29.740 Gibbs offers this advice to the leaders in order to lead in today's fast changing. 462 00:38:29.770 --> 00:38:35.940 World leaders must not project an aloof, know it all image. 463 00:38:35.970 --> 00:38:40.500 Leaders need to know that they don't really know, 464 00:38:40.530 --> 00:38:44.580 and they have to admit that the things that they don't really know and readily 465 00:38:44.610 --> 00:38:49.400 acknowledge that they don't know it, but they need to learn what they don't 466 00:38:49.430 --> 00:38:54.420 know if they will increase their ministry effectiveness. 467 00:38:54.450 --> 00:38:56.690 Missional leadership refers to a kind of 468 00:38:56.720 --> 00:39:01.780 church leadership that trains and leads a congregation to participate in the missio 469 00:39:01.810 --> 00:39:08.540 day by joining the Holy Spirit to discern what God is doing in their context. 470 00:39:08.570 --> 00:39:13.080 Discernment involves the art of reading the times and the signs, and it is one of 471 00:39:13.110 --> 00:39:19.130 the biggest challenges facing spiritual leaders in a world of changing context. 472 00:39:19.160 --> 00:39:23.860 Because unless the Church is educated so that it can fully comprehend the reality 473 00:39:23.890 --> 00:39:30.260 of the situation, people will not sense the urgency of change. 474 00:39:30.290 --> 00:39:35.500 The skill of discerning is the door to transformation, to renewal of personal 475 00:39:35.530 --> 00:39:41.380 lives and the beginning of the renewal of faith, communities and the world. 476 00:39:41.410 --> 00:39:45.210 To discern what God is doing in the community is to be aware that the Holy 477 00:39:45.240 --> 00:39:51.580 Spirit may work in strange and unexpected ways. 478 00:39:51.610 --> 00:39:53.300 Missional leadership is all about 479 00:39:53.330 --> 00:39:58.160 transformation, the transformation of people and institutions by means of 480 00:39:58.190 --> 00:40:03.100 meaningful relations to participate in God's mission. 481 00:40:03.130 --> 00:40:05.860 This transformation shows the people that 482 00:40:05.890 --> 00:40:12.690 they are called sent, healed and empowered to do the work of God. 483 00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:17.650 It is a missional leader who is involved in creating the conditions necessary where 484 00:40:17.680 --> 00:40:23.500 this is possible and eliminating the impediments which impose constraints on 485 00:40:23.530 --> 00:40:29.600 the community, preventing them from experiencing life in its fullness. 486 00:40:29.640 --> 00:40:35.480 All right, okay, I'll finish off with this thing here. 487 00:40:38.800 --> 00:40:43.580 The Church follows the lead of the seminary. 488 00:40:43.610 --> 00:40:47.940 If the seminary focuses on the maintenance of current structures and practices 489 00:40:47.970 --> 00:40:53.260 through its curriculum, then the leaders of the institution produces will be 490 00:40:53.290 --> 00:40:58.060 satisfied to simply maintain the Church in its current condition. 491 00:40:58.090 --> 00:41:00.210 One of the consequences of missionless 492 00:41:00.240 --> 00:41:05.940 theology is a production of clergy who have an inadequate ecclesiology and 493 00:41:05.970 --> 00:41:10.900 largely abandon the apostolic nature of the Church. 494 00:41:10.930 --> 00:41:13.060 If the Church is to awaken its missional 495 00:41:13.090 --> 00:41:18.260 nature, there needs to be an appraisal of the theology taught in seminaries. 496 00:41:18.290 --> 00:41:23.300 The seminary needs to nurture an ethos for mission that prepares individuals during 497 00:41:23.330 --> 00:41:28.940 their school years for a lifetime of teaching others that same ethos. 498 00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:29.760 Thank you very much.