mission, integral mission, holistic mission, frontier mission, reconciliation, liberation and justice, the Five Marks of Mission, to name only a few, are all helpful descriptions of mission and all attempt to gather what often seems like a varied and disparate set of activities. There are many different ways to think about God’s mission in the world. God’s mission is practical, earthed in the local and about real needs and lives. Throughout Christian history as the church has reflected upon God’s mission and been creatively led by the Holy Spirit in imagining new ways of expressing God’s mission it has come to understand mission differently according to local context. Whatever these different descriptions give us they, like jazz, explore the new. So mission today uncovers new questions about God’s work in the world. However,
‘this jazz is not just an experiment or whim, but emerges from a thoroughgoing knowledge of the tradition’.3
One definition of mission which acts as an umbrella for many others understands God’s mission as the overflow of the love and life of the Trinity into the world.
1.2 Today, as the Church of England considers the different patterns and shapes of world mission over history so now is a time for stretching the mission imagination and seeing the emergence of new patterns and creative shapes. It is about being in tune with God’s imagination as the Spirit moves in the world. This involves taking the past seriously and learning for the future. With the vast changes in world relationships the church worldwide faces a particular opportunity for new shapes of relationships to emerge. Such a moment is called a kairos moment. One way of expressing this is through the term ‘Ephesian Moment’,4 which refers to the time when the Jewish and Gentile ways of expressing Christian faith became one and where there was a realization that each needed the other to be the Body of Christ. Today, Walls states, there are many more than these two understandings of how to live the Christian life. However, the principle holds in that all expressions of Trinitarian faith are ‘equally necessary to realize the fullness of Christ’.5
1.3 Jesus Christ – the heart of mission
The church today explores God’s mission in new contexts but what is the tradition from which we come? The heart of mission and the tradition which Anglicans inherit and inhabit is an understanding of mission based on the presence and proclamation of Jesus Christ in the world as the full and complete expression of God’s mission and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the world. As stated earlier, God’s mission is the overflow of love of the life of the Trinity into the world. The love of God has its complete expression or outpouring in the Incarnation.
‘In the Incarnation, God’s own mission and ministry become one, for God does not simply cause or intervene in human affairs, but becomes fully human interacting with the human condition at every level.’6
The foundation of all Christian mission is the mission of God fully expressed in Christ’s coming to earth. Christ’s coming was a threefold movement or action of the Trinity which also involved human partners and has done in every age. Christ’s being on earth had three inter-related elements, as explained below, which are at the heart of how we understand mission today.
1.4 The first aspect of Jesus’ mission is presence. Christ’s presence on earth was the birthing of a new order. His was a presence that brought both transformation and disruption to the lives of many of those on the margins of society and to the lives of the powerful including those of the religious leaders of the day. Today, Jesus Christ’s presence is also one of suffering or identification with the world in its brokenness as well as the means of salvation through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is through Jesus Christ that the world is connected with the reign or the Kingdom of God. The second element is proclamation where the presence of Christ proclaims the new order which is the Kingdom of God through word and deed. This is the rule or reign of God in the world with which Christian mission today is primarily concerned. The third element is prophecy. Christ’s presence and proclamation points to a new way of living and being and as such is prophetic. It envisages new ways of being and living in the Kingdom of God in accordance with God’s nature and supremacy. This is the reign of God which points to a future beyond the dichotomies, injustices, glimpses and tastes of the Kingdom in this world. The end of all things and the fulfilment of Christian mission will be the point when all things will be brought together in Christ (Ephesians 1.10). So God in Christ is both the author and fulfilment of all Christian mission and is the embodiment of God’s mission here on earth. Today through his resurrection life and by the presence of the Spirit in this age, as the director of mission, the Kingdom of God will be ushered in which will see the fulfilment of God’s loving purposes for all creation. Returning to the image of mission as jazz, this is the ultimate theme on which all the variations and improvisations of God’s mission on earth is based.
Imagining mission and differing narratives
1.5 How does the Church of England imagine God’s mission in the world? How does the church think of mission in our current age and context? For Anglicans who regularly worship in parish churches what comes to mind when they hear the word ‘mission’? What possibilities does that word hold or what negative images does the word ‘mission’ evoke? Contexts differ and change. The dominant image of world mission for some in the Church of England would be mission in places other than England. However, that image is being seen increasingly as a thing of the past. Through Fresh Expressions and other initiatives, the Church of England’s mission imagination has been stretched to see England as a place where God’s mission is happening as well as in other parts of the world. How we imagine mission, however, emerges from our experience of our discipleship. We respond to God’s generosity to us in Christ and how that is expressed in the service of God’s mission in the world.
1.6 Jesus expressed the way he imagined God’s reign largely through the parables. The parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22), for example, gives a glimpse of the invitation to God’s Kingdom extended to those outside Israel. This was far beyond the world view of those listening to Jesus at the time and it proved hard for them to grasp. Equally, the parables of the Lost Sheep, Coin and Son (Luke 15) told in the presence of ‘tax collectors and sinners’ along with the complaining and antagonistic voices of the Pharisees reveal the extent of the grace and salvation of God. For those who had ears to hear this was Jesus telling stories in order to revolutionize the common conceptions of what God’s Kingdom was thought to be.
1.7 Imagination can exert negative images or influence as well as positive. How we imagine mission is closely connected with the outworking of mission. It is shaped in the practical realities of what is possible in particular contexts. Another way of thinking about the mission imagination is to use the word ‘vision’. How we envision mission can either limit what we engage in practically or it can expand the possibilities we perceive. These can be described as different narratives of mission. In the post-colonial era (post 1950s) Christian world mission in some places became a negative word conjuring up images of proselytism and exploitation while mission in England was not considered to be mission at all. It was thought that as a Christian country England didn’t need mission as English culture had been influenced by Christianity over many centuries and the majority of the population saw themselves as ‘Church of England’. Much has changed. The Church of England has been re-imagining mission at many levels for some years as the place of the Church of England in English society has changed. We now live in a culture or cultures where Christian faith is not the only language for religion or spirituality. These dilemmas are faced by Christians of every denomination and all churches can learn from each other.
1.8 To see the nature of how the mission imagination or narrative has changed, it is necessary to look briefly at history. For the nineteenth-century Victorian church its mission imagination was about sending missionaries to countries that did not know Christian civilization. It
