By Molly T. Marshall
Thomas Friedman’s provocative book, The World is Flat, offers a glimpse of the rampant globalization taking place as world market forces shape widely disparate lands and people. Historical and geographical divisions matter less all the while, as the primary “flattener” of technology becomes more accessible across the world.
The Christian understanding of mission is also necessarily flattening, but in a distinctive way. Technology is a big part of this. Missionaries have been early adopters of Internet communication. Yet mission is also becoming more collaborative and interdependent. The “sending” body is no longer thought to steward all the resources, and especially all the truth.
As “foreign” mission launched from the United States in the early 19th century, missionaries understood that they were taking the gospel to “heathen” lands, and evangelization was the goal of their witness.
The work of the Judsons in Burma was not considered successful until the first convert had been won to Christ, six years after their arrival. The labor-intensive work of language study, translation and cultural engagement was simply prelude to the real mission: conversion.
Mission looks much different in Myanmar (Burma) today. For one thing, no missionaries have been officially in the country since 1966. As one distinguished Baptist leader told me: “We are no longer a mission field. We are global mission partners.”
This kind of flattening shows great promise as the old colonial perspectives are receding. No longer is culture exported along with gospel. Rather, the good news of Jesus takes root in context with less Western filters to discard.
The flattening of mission also means that a different theological anthropology is at work. Whereas missionary forebears may have approached those in their field as “ungraced,” possessing general revelation sufficient only to condemn, the growing disposition today is to believe that the Holy Spirit has already been moving among these people, awakening them to the ways of God. The missionary encounters humanity whose longing for God is already demonstrated culturally.
This view of mission arises out of the evocative reflection on the Missio Dei that has been transpiring over the past several decades. In a paper read at the Brandenburg Missionary Conference in 1932, Karl Barth became one of the first theologians to speak about God’s mission preceding any mission of the church.
Mission was anchored in the Trinitarian life of God, who continually pours life into the world as Son and Spirit. Thus mission is a participation in the sending and receiving of God.
It is a larger mission than evangelism, although that aspect surely remains important in the larger project of salvation. God’s triune life is marked by generativity, diversity and hospitality, all of which create space for non-hierarchical forms of mission.
Because we no longer live in the context of Christendom, as Philip Jenkins has observed, definitions of salvation are more contested today. The redemption of souls in the hereafter is of little interest to those victimized by poverty, social chaos and natural disasters that breed pandemics.
In his fine text The Common Task, Thomas Thangaraj of Candler Divinity School speaks of the missio humanitatis (mission of humanity) that precedes the missio ecclesiae (mission of the church). Responsibility, solidarity and mutuality characterize authentic mission, and missional people demonstrate their concern for justice and the well-being of others, accompanied by their witness to the story of Jesus.
From the partnering work our school is pursuing in Myanmar we are learning that “flattening” mission invites holistic transformation as together we send and receive. Joining with God who is ever on mission grants deep joy and purpose.