Transforming Mission

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

In every age of the Church, and in every major expression of Christianity, mission has been an integral part of the activity of the Church. Yet the way mission has been conceived has been different. This is because by its very nature the Christian faith is missionary and because humans, by there very nature, filter their perceptions and actions through the worldview they possess. In fact, the major expressions of the Christian faith have arisen in and have been defined by the worldviews they expressed themselves in. In each worldview theology was distinct and therefore mission was distinct.

The Church incarnates itself within its worldview; from a theological and missionary point of view this has both negative and positive aspects. It is positive in that it allows Christianity to be understood by the worldview it finds itself in. But this is not neutral. The worldview in turn shapes Christianity and mission. Bosch takes us on a tour of how the history of changing worldviews changed Christian thought, theology and mission. He points out both the positive and negative aspects of these shifts; and projects into the future of the current shift toward postmodern thought and reflects on how the theology and praxis of missions will be shaped by this.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

It is the tendency of most Christians to be unaware of just how much their view of our faith and practice derives from the non-Christian worldview around us. In effect, each worldview limits our understanding of doctrine, practice and what our relationship with God looks like. For example, Protestantism has been strongly shaped by the Renaissance and Evangelicalism by the Enlightenment. One significant danger of this is that we assume what we are practicing is “the right way” of expressing our faith. We are therefore blind to what we are missing and the extraneous or even harmful elements we have added. This is also true of the way we view missions and the missionary mandate of the Church.

Therefore, we need to have a clear understanding of our times in order to express our faith in ways that make sense to the people around us. We also need to reflect clearly on how the worldview around us will shape and perhaps warp our missionary practice.

This is particularly true now since we are in the time of a worldview paradigm shift from the Enlightenment to the postmodern worldview. To help us in this task, we should review our two millennia of history to see what shaped Christianity in the past; not only for how that warp our faith and missionary practice, but also to help us look for elements our worldview would tend to make us overlook. Bosch is very good at finding the value in each major expression of the faith while clearly pointing out how each worldview has reduced Christianity, the gospel, and missionary practice to less than what it really is.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

There are a number of strategic issues we will need to face as we develop a missiology for the postmodern age. Postmodernism is a worldview that does not have much patience with metanarratives, intolerance, institutionalism and hierarchical power structures.

The gospel by its very nature is a metanarrative; if we present the gospel as one more metanarrative, we will fail to engage most postmoderns. Instead, we need to let them see Christianity in our lives through relationship and God’s power. This implies a New Covenant lifestyle and supernaturalism.

Bosch deals adequately with the issue of intolerance in his last section on “ecumenism” by which he means that we must find ways for all current expression of the faith to work together without fighting; otherwise we will create a significant barrier for the preaching of the gospel. In addition, he points out, we need to be able to engage and dialog with other faiths in gracious ways. Unfortunately, this was the only strategic postmodern issue Bosch dealt with.

The institutional nature of most current forms of Christianity is a significant barrier that we must deal with. Postmoderns are highly cynical of institutions and particularly institutional religion. Christianity is not by its nature institutional. This is an historical incrustation which started manifesting itself about the middle of the third century. We need to find organic or at least more organic ways of expressing our faith. As we look at the New Testament we see a powerful expression of organic Christianity.

A related issue is hierarchical power structures. Again, this is an historical incrustation, which went hand in hand with institutionalism, has damaged the Church, and which makes it less fit to engage the postmodern world. We need to ask ourselves what a non hierarchical, non clerical Church would look like. How can we express leadership in the Church in the postmodern world, have all the biblical elements, yet be non hierarchical? We have not really asked that question in the Western Church for about 1750 years. That is a question I want to grapple with in my project paper.