Transcending
Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition, by Michael W. Stroope (London:
Apollos, 2017, £24.99, 457 pages).
This is a book about language, specifically about how particular
words can be used in such a way that an idea can have the appearance of being biblically
and historically sound, while being neither. The key word under spotlight is ‘mission’
but its cognates, ‘missionary’, ‘missions’, even ‘missional’ are also
thoroughly implicated.
mission is rhetoric
In his Introduction, Stroope, who teaches at Truett
Seminary, Baylor University (USA) and has been a missionary in Sri Lanka,
England, Germany and Hong Kong, describes how the word mission is used chiefly
as a noun and adjective and only occasionally as a verb, with a host of
meanings. The oldest and most common use of ‘mission’ is as a political or
diplomatic term (2). As we all know, mission has become ubiquitous in
contemporary life, with companies, clubs, and military units employing the term
to describe their purpose and activities. In the sense in which the term has
been employed among Christians, however, it has generally had a narrower set of
meanings connoting specialization, utility, and viewpoint: thus, “mission is rhetoric that describes
specific Christian ideals and actions unique to its encounter with the world”
(4).
However, much ink has been shed in recent years over what
exactly mission means. Stroope engages with all the key writers on this theme:
David Bosch, Andreas Köstenberger, Chris Wright, Lesslie Newbigin, Kevin
DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, and others. The key point that Stroope is making,
however, is not that the word has such a range of meanings but that the word itself is the problem: “Words,” he
writes, echoing other scholarship, “more than represent reality; words…form reality” (10). The way we use
words, then, creates conceptual frameworks for the reality they are being used
to describe. Differentiating ‘mission’ and ‘missions’ doesn’t help either
because the distinction is blurred and indistinct (15).
Stroope’s thesis is that mission,
birthed and developed in the modern age, is itself inadequate language for the church in the current age. Rather than rehabilitating or redeeming mission, we have to move beyond its rhetoric, its practise, and its view of the world. The task is one of transcending mission. (26, original emphasis)
In part one, Justifying Mission, the author critiques the
ways that Partisans and Apologists, as he calls them, have sought to defend the
use of the term. This has usually been attempted by means of biblical and
historical scholarship. Defenders of the term mission as an interpretive category
of Scripture argue their case by way of three methods: creating a biblical
foundation, e.g. J. H. Bavinck, Peters; reading the Bible through a missional hermeneutic,
e.g. Wright, Bauckham; and the identification of missionary themes, e.g. Kaiser,
Köstenberger and O’Brien. Alongside these methods a lexical trail, e.g. J. H.
Bavinck, or semantic field, e.g. Köstenberger, may be constructed to
demonstrate the appropriate use of the language of mission. But mission in all
these approaches is not just seen as a means to an end (104): “means become an
end” (104-105) and in so becoming mission becomes sacred language. But mission “fills
the whole horizon”, eclipsing more “theologically rich and biblical concepts
such as covenant, reconciliation, witness, and love”.
The problem with all these methods is that mission is a priori
In historical studies, likewise, early and medieval
examples of ministry are labelled as mission, even though the term is never
used in contemporary writing. The problem with all these methods is that
mission is a priori: that is, mission is assumed as a category and examples are
then sought in the data (biblical or historical). But mission is a category
that has a particular meaning that is rooted in the modern era. So, it is anachronistic
to read the Bible and Christian history though this lens.
In part two, Innovating Mission, Stroope examines the
origin of mission terminology. Exile, sojourner, and pilgrim were common terms
used to describe the expansion of Christianity during the Middle Ages. Pilgrim
language was then co-opted by Christendom powers for political ends and
territorial expansion, most starkly in the crusades and in the founding of
colonies in the Levant.
In the modern period pilgrim terminology became mission terminology
as Ignatius Loyola and his band of Jesuits made a vow to go anywhere the Pope
would send them to do his bidding. Mission became what they are to do and the structure to carry that out. It is only with the passage of some
time that Franciscans and Dominicans, then others in the Roman Catholic church,
and finally Protestants adopt the word and, with it, the conceptual framework.
In part three, Revising Mission, Stroope argues that
during the nineteenth century there developed the “rhetoric of a modern tradition”
(289). The author engages with the debate over whether the Reformers had an
interest in mission. Apologists for mission argue that they did, based on their
evangelistic zeal and the odd foray outside of Christendom. It has been argued
that the massive work of reforming the church, the political troubles that
dogged their efforts, the lack of missionary structures (in contrast to the Roman
Catholic orders), and the late involvement of Protestant powers in the colonial
project delayed full-blown Protestant entry into mission. But Stroope points
out that mission language is absent
among Protestants during the early years of the Reformation: “Mission and missionary were not adopted until the early eighteenth century and
did not become stablished, common rhetoric until the nineteenth century” (294,
original emphasis). Though Calvin did indeed have a desire that the gospel
might be preached to Turks, Jews and ‘heathen’ and had a part in commissioning two
pastors to travel with the dozen Huguenots to establish a colony in Brazil in
1557 it is not clear whether they went to evangelize the South American Indians
or to pastor of the Huguenots or both (295). These facts “do not represent a
programmatic commitment to a mission or mission strategy” (296). The Reformers’
lack of mission rhetoric “has more to do with the absence of the conceptual
framework of ’mission’ at their time than their understanding of the gospel as
universal in scope” (ibid.). One reason for this was that the term was used by
the Jesuits in their programme
against the Reformers. So, in fact, the Reformers actively opposed ‘mission’.
The high point, as others have also noted, was the
Edinburgh Mission Conference of 1910. “The
modern mission movement…represents a set of historical occurrences imbued with
religious, social, national, and emotional connotations” (318). The phrase “functions
as rhetorical device…of a tradition…. In this way, the modern mission movement structures
reality…” (318-19). The tradition gave validity and significance to mission.
Missionary language at Edinburgh was militaristic and reminiscent of the distant
memory of the Medieval Crusades. There was a language of conquest and occupation
and Christianization “akin to the Latinization of the Levant following the
First Crusade and the subjugation of peoples in Spanish and Portuguese
colonizing efforts” (336).
After Edinburgh, however, attitudes toward mission began
to change rapidly. From the International Missionary Council meeting in 1928, and
especially with the publication of the Layman’s Enquiry (Re-thinking Mission) (the full version of which was published in 1933)
attempts were made to revise mission. Now, argues Stroope, we live in a “post-foreign
mission situation” and that requires us to reconceive the church and world
encounter, not redefine or reform mission” (352-53). That, the author attempts
to do in the Epilogue.
Central in the Bible’s storyline, says the author, echoing
other writers, is the kingdom of God. This brings Stroope to his central proposal:
Embracing the kingdom of God does not remove us from the world but transforms our encounters within the world. Orientation to and formation in the kingdom of God readies us for engagement with the world by transforming us into witnesses to the kingdom and pilgrims of the kingdom. As pilgrim witnesses we participate in the coming reign of God. (370, emphasis in the original)
this is a brilliant book
I think this is a brilliant book. It is meticulously
researched, cogently argued, and utterly convincing. It should become a
standard textbook in mission courses, though those courses will probably now need
be called something different! It must surely take its place as one of the
seminal arguments in the rehabilitation of a truer form of gospel living as the
church emerges out of modernity.
Without wanting to sound too critical, however, I think in
places the author overstates his case. In writing of Paul, for instance, Stroope
argues that the apostle supported himself as a leatherworker and “thus did not
become a full-time religious professional of any kind” (95). This is surely going
too far. He certainly worked with his hands to support himself. But it is also
clear that he was not averse to asking those he had brought to Christ to help
him out so that he might be freed from having to do so (2 Cor 11: 8-9; Phil
4:14-18). Some pilgrim witnesses in the NT were clearly reliant on
contributions of the Lord’s people. Absolutizing tentmaking, which Stroope
apparently is keen to do, does not do the whole text justice.
Furthermore, one is left wondering what part, if any, organizational
structures might have in the pursuance of pilgrim witness. Clearly, if people
who are beyond reach of pilgrim witnesses at present, because the latter do not
naturally wander into their neighbourhood –as is probably the case for three billion
of the world’s population – some urgent thought is called for. Urgent thought
will surely result in intentionality, which then asks questions about
stewardship and, yes, even strategy. I share with the author his apparent
allergy to a reliance on management in gospel witness. But, ultimately, some
level of organization is called for to enable disciples of Christ to carry out
their pilgrimage in the company of people who are presently outside its scope.
It must surely take its place as one of the seminal arguments in the rehabilitation of a truer form of gospel living as the church emerges out of modernity
The following are minor errors that should have been eliminated
by the proof reader: ‘illusions’ should be allusions (110); ‘affect’ should be
effect (311 & 369); ‘work’ should be world (351); there is an extraneous ‘can’
(372) and ‘that’ (385). There also seems to be a problem with the arithmetic in
the account of the Portuguese ambassador requesting Ignatius for ten men to be
allocated for their interests in the East. From Ignatius’ reply it seems only
six were requested (283). Finally, there are a few typos: insisit (158); pereginantes (171); is is (175); ecclesical
(296).
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