I think it is critical that we allow the salvific work of Jesus to inform and shape our missiology. It is dangerous to allow that to be dismissed or minimized. While I am sure some of the details of our understanding of the atonement differ, that He accomplished something essential through His suffering, death and resurrection must be a significant part of our missiology.

My own experience growing up in Evangelicalism was that this emphasis was championed, almost to the exclusion of all else. While we were encouraged to live highly moral lives (with a very vague emphasis on ethical lives), we were not generally encouraged to follow the example of Jesus, except insofar as they interpreted Him proselytizing. There was great value in this emphasis, but something was missing. I was always left wondering why the creeds jumped from His birth to death.

I think many others have been frustrated by the emphasis as well, responding by placing a greater emphasis on the example of Jesus. While some shy away from the salvific work of Christ (and some even seem to be embarrassed by the theology around it), my experience has been that most still affirm the necessity of Christ's atoning work. What that means specifically will vary to who you are speaking to, no doubt.

As something of an Anabaptist by conviction, I believe the shift towards a Jesus we follow in life has been critical, a needed re-affirmation in the missional conversation. In a fear that we would embrace a works soteriology, the radical obedience Christ calls us to has too often been ignored or rationalized away. In that sense, I am not worried by the shift in perspective, insofar as it is a more holistic view of the work of Christ. Should that emphasis swing to an extreme where His salvific work is diminished or dismissed, we should make every effort to correct it.

This is why, of late, the idea of missional being understood (in part) as "Becoming and living Christ together" has been critical to me. We can only enter into the transformational work of Jesus Christ in becoming His Body through His redemptive work on the Cross and victor in His resurrection. Then, through that work we can become His incarnational presence (together) in the world to continue His mission through the uniting power of the Holy Spirit.

Just some preliminary thoughts.

Peace,
Jamie

Hey Ed! I appreciate your ministry so much.

I come at my soteriology from a reformed perspective, so therefore, salvation is the atoning work of God and God alone through the person and work of Jesus Christ in his death, burial and resurrection and by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit in an unregenerate person's life.

Missiology, therefore, is God inviting us to participate in the work that He is doing and will do - whether we get involved in it or not. I don't have to say the right words or do the right things to see people receive Christ. I just have to be faithful and get in the game.

WOW! Redevelopment at its finest. It doesn't matter why we do what we do. We do it because grandpa did it that way. Far too many believers forget that the local church (as great as it is) is a means to an end. I grow weary of that simple-minded thinking, "If someone can find salvation within the parameters that we have set, cool. If not, they may be in trouble..."

Interesting question. But where does the doctrine of ecclesiology fit? If we understand salvation as the activity of God apart from human merit (which I do...), then before we can engage in missiology I think we need to engage in eccelesiology- i.e. how do we as individuals 'fit' together in the body of Christ. I think -at least in Southern Baptist life- tried to proclaim salvation as strictly an individual issue- which it is, - but we have failed to stress the communal aspect of salvation. I guess what I'm saying is this- many of our churches are merely a collection of like minded individuals instead of a coherent body of Christ. So missiology has become divorced from an understanding of community.
Does this make sense, or is it still too early on a Monday am to think straight?

Good post, Ed. A shift from the gospel of personal conversion to the gospel that Jesus proclaimed, the gospel of the Kingdom, is needed here. Of course, personal conversion is needed. How do you enter the Kingdom unless you are born again? But, we are converted, rescued, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the Son. Jesus must be central to whatever gospel we preach, not us. If we take center stage, then it is all about how WE get to heaven and how WE get forgiven. If the gospel is primarily about Christ and His work of reconciliation, that changes things dramatically.

Wonderful comments here so far! I think this is critical and Jaime raises up what I have observed in so many. BUT as Jaime and others said, we cannot lose heart or be embarrassed of what salvation is and the exclusivity of Jesus for salvation - because of past mistakes or past ways "evangelism" happened or the focus was so unbalanced.

I am thrilled every time I read the book of Acts. Perhaps the most under-discussed book in the whole missional and even "justice" discussion, to look at where the disciples spent time, what was their passion, what were their repetitive actions and words and deeds.

I see that jesus called His disciples INTO making other disciples. His first recorded words were about that. His last recorded words in Acts 1 and Matt. 28 (pre-ascension) were also charging them to go an make disciples. So then you look at what Jesus said about what a disciple is. Amongst everything, it was to know and obey His teaching. So we must be proclaiming with words what he taught for others to obey too.

I am more convinced the church exists as worshipers to be on the mission of making new disciples. We then build community around that mission to support one another. All we do revolves around that.

I am off-topic now, but I always love these discussion and thanks Ed, for having them and can't wait to MissionShift!

Personally I think a theology of "both/and" is necessary. I can not for the life of me understand why people insist on polarizing the gospel so much.

The greatest commandment is to Love God AND love people. Jesus' work is about both. We MUST be reconciled to God AND we MUST be reconciled to one another. There is no reconciliation to God without reconciliation to humanity. If we over-emphasize the personal conversion/reconciliation to God through Jesus then we miss the second half of what Jesus was asking of us - that is to follow His example of love to humanity.

I suppose the danger is that you could follow Jesus' example in humanity without ever being saved. True. I just don't like the idea that either one can exist without the other. IMHO it must be both.

It's exciting to see this "missional synchro-blog" series hosted and commented upon from a wide range of faith traditions, rather than one particular ideology marking its theological territory. This is the kind of inclusive Jesus conversation which defines missional.

As for soteriology, I would suggest that if we limit salvation to one specific view (Arminian, Orthodox, Reformed, etc.) we risk making Jesus into a reflection of our own incomplete nature. If salvation is anything, it is a recklessly abandoned, infinitely unconditional love that surpasses our ability to define or codify. In some ways, I would define the missional conversation in much the same manner.

Ed, one more thought.. the earliest self-identified missional conversations were probably defined more by an ecclesiological shift than a missiological shift. It’s great to see the word being employed by different disciplines (evangelism, missions, etc.), but your post positions missional squarely into missions and missiology. Do you understand missional as primarily a missions-oriented concept?

Ed, I have grave concerns that people will "show people Jesus" and refuse to talk about what He actually accomplished for sinners, on the cross. This is something that not simply "missional" churches are guilty of ignoring; I can point to specific examples in non-denom Bible churches which make the very same error in their week-by-week preaching. Emphasis on the atoning work of Christ for sinners is in short supply seemingly everywhere.

I get what people are reacting against: Jesus and me, with no regard for the community with Christ is building in the Church. And I get what others are reacting against...a de-emphasis on someone actually claiming Christ as THEIR Savior, as Paul did. Without Christ as THEIR redeemer, the church invisible is lost and becomes an outwardly visible social club that lacks regeneration.

So I guess my question that I would throw out is this: what does it look like for a missional church to teach the biblical doctrine of regeneration by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ's work alone...and to proclaim repentance to all, believer and non, and to extend the forgiveness of sins that Jesus told us to proclaim as His people in Luke 24:47?

This is actually a pretty important distinction to be made. The Gospel and the Kingdom of God. Tim Keller, at the 2007 Gospel Coalition Conference, spent a bit of time towards the end showing how it seems as if the "Kingdom of God" language used these days can turn into a new form of legalism; and it is because of the misunderstanding of what the Gospel is.

He said that because we see on one side, easy-believism, aka these people who claim Christ but don't change a bit (and we are sick of that) and on the other side we have moralists aka those who are culturally withdrawn, negative and narrow (and we are sick of that); too often the solution to these two issues is to change the Gospel.

He said the following:
"We see this everywhere. The Gospel is no longer you’re saved by the blood atonement of Jesus Christ, appeasing the wrath of God; they are saying the Gospel is just the Kingdom. To them the Gospel is God renewing the world and He’s going to reweave the world in peace and justice and now you need to join this community and be agents of peace and justice; you need to change your life; you need to be a disciple; it’s both faith and obedience; that’s what connects you to God.

Now I can’t imagine, with that Gospel, anybody’s ever going to write a hymn, “My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed thee.” It’s not going to happen.

In reality, that form of [Kingdom of God] Gospel is actually another kind of legalism.

But here’s the problem: The Gospel IS individualistic. It is. It does say, “you’re an individual sinner, you’ve opposed a holy God, you’ve personally offended Him, here’s the provision for that.”

If you click on my name you can get a bit more about Keller's talk. But I agree with Keller here and he makes a very good point. We must be careful and not turn the Kingdom of God "pursuit" in mission into the legalism of the 21st century.

Now all genuine and faithful Christians have always understood the Great Commission. All true believers who understand what the New Testament teaches and what Jesus commands know what our duty is, it is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and to preach it to every creature. That is unmistakable, unambiguous. It is a clear command. It is a mandate. It is an obligation. It is a duty not without privilege, but rather with high privilege but nonetheless a duty. We know we have been told to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We also know and Christians have always known that apart from the knowledge of the true gospel and faith in the true Christ, no one can go to heaven. That is not a revolutionary statement, that is a fact laid down in Scripture and affirmed by true Christians since the New Testament. Sinners must hear the gospel. They must believe the gospel. And they must embrace the gospel. This clear command understood by all faithful biblical Christians has been maintained through the centuries by all of those who sought to obey the Lord. It is behind all the witnessing and all the evangelizing and all the missionary work that has ever gone on.

Since faith comes by hearing, and hearing only by the message of Christ, we know what we are to do. We are to preach Christ and Him crucified. Time, years, lifetimes, of millions of people have been invested in this, the highest and greatest of all duties. Money, incalculable sums of money has been spent in this effort, teaching, preaching, witnessing, training, strategizing, acquiring languages, traveling, building, establishing, printing, producing media that the gospel indeed might be taken to the ends of the earth to every creature. An unrelenting effort to use every means available and call every Christian to this duty and this privilege. And here we are at a time when we have the greatest means to do this in history, unquestionably. We have the capability virtually to reach the world. We can get there physically faster than ever. We can translate and print material faster than ever with the use of computers. We can mobilize people, train people, and dispense people faster than ever. We can use the media, it's instantaneous whether it's the Internet, or whether it's tapes, or whether it's CDs or DVDs, or videos, or you name it. Never has the church had this capability to fulfill the Great Commission, never to disseminate the gospel to the ends of the earth.

It is astounding to me that just when the church has its greatest opportunity, it has become confused about its message. This is unthinkable. This is unimaginable. Frankly, for me this is inconceivable that we would reach the point, really the ultimate point in all of the history of the church when we can go everywhere faster than ever and get the gospel in the hands of people and now we're not sure what the message is. In fact, the church is confused enough to debate what the message is, to argue what the message is, to tolerate a minimal kind of gospel. The church seems to be embarrassed by its narrowness. It seems eager to redesign it to make it more acceptable. Now that we can reach everybody, we're afraid of what they're going to say when they get the message. All those people who gave their lives for all those centuries, all those people who battled and fought in the hardest periods of the church's history to train and prepare and to learn the meaning of the Word of God without all the tools we have today, without all the endless books and commentaries and resources, all those people who traveled for months and sometimes years, all those people who made sacrifices away from their families, all those people who died from diseases and hard places, all those people who laboriously worked to create languages, the writing and translate the Scripture, all of that effort passed down to us and here we are in the high-tech world, we can expedite all of that like never before and we're not sure, one, what we want to say, and, two, whether or not we want to say it because we're a little embarrassed about the fact that it's going to condemn them.

And in fact, the latest wave is, "Ah, the whole deal might not even be necessary. It might not even be necessary." This view has risen to the forefront in evangelical theology. This idea, we have these people who aren't sure what the gospel is, we have these people who are embarrassed by the gospel and they're trying to tweak it and take out anything that's offensive. And then we have the people who aren't sure we even need to bother with the gospel. They all call themselves evangelical Christians. JM

Our visions of salvation lead to our pitfalls. If we see salvation as primarily a heavenly experience, easy-believism is our danger. If we see salvation as our security in a dynamic, but fairly north american economy we have ethical evangelicals who ignore or justify the parts of world in turmoil. Viewing salvation as overcoming our own devils and the evil of society if we our faithful, we may fall into health-n-wealthism. If we are looking for a just and equitable shalom-on-earth like in Pandora, we can short change ourselves with what has been labeled the social gospel 100 years ago or social justice now.

As pointed out previously, Acts shows a gospel where worshiping the lifted-up messiah and working with other disciples to bring others to the same life was their calling and their joy. In the process they eagerly anticipated heaven, lived ethically and responsibly, were blessed economically at times yet expected trials of all kinds, and was a community of sharing under under oppressive regimes, and eventually impacted nearly all of society.

When truth reigns, I think all our ologies (missiology, sotierology, ecclessiology) look very similar. Then our sotier/missi/ecclessi_ology means working together to bring others to worship our savior together.