Thinking Mission Symposium

I had the privilege to be at this gathering in London on Tuesday. It had been arranged by Global Connections to discuss Mike Stroope's important book, Transcending Mission, which I reviewed last year. In God's providence the author was already planning to be in the UK so Mike was able to attend. (In what follows I beg forgiveness if I misrepresent any of the contributors and will revise it if an error is pointed out.)

Mike gave an introductory paper, telling us a little of his ministry story as well as informing us of the thesis of the book and of the reactions it has received. I was fascinated to hear that he had had a significant part to play in the SBC International Missions Board's leadership in the 1990s, a story told by Keith Eitel in Paradigm Wars. I had been in Nepal at that time and had seen some of the fruit of the machinations in the organization that Eitel documents. (I asked Mike about it at the end of the day but didn't have enough time to really interact. Suffice it to say that those events had a significant impact on the development of my missiology so I do hope I can interact further before long.)

Mike spoke graciously and humbly, admitting that he had had some pretty strong negative reactions to his argument. That is to be understood as the book really calls much of the modern missions movement into question.

David Smith's Mission after Christendom was a tremendous help to me when I arrived back in the UK after 20 years in Asia. David was asked to prepare a response to Mike, which he did ably and winsomely. Sometimes there can be a hard spirit in such gatherings, where egos seem to count more than truth and the good of the church and the glory of Christ. Not so here. David expressed his admiration for the book, situating it in a line of very significant works such as Cragg's The Secular Experience of Christ, Bosch's Transforming Mission, and the work of Andrew Walls (David's mentor), and suggesting that Stroope's book extends the long-running disputes of those authors.

He then highlighted three issues that the book throws up:

1. The relationship between mission and colonialism

The modern missions movement had an ambivalent relationship with the colonial project. There was significant overlap without a doubt, though this is often overplayed. David then argued that Mike's book misses out on the very important role that missions had in the emergence of World Christianity and even of the revitalisation of cultures in places such as Africa.

Furthermore, Protestant mission movements were not monolithic. Many early pioneers, such as William Carey (1761-1834), were dissenting Baptists. Far from being at the centre of power, they were at the margins. Carey's approach towards Hinduism was respectful: hardly a colonialist attitude and very different from the high period of colonialism of a later generation.

2. The relationship of terminology and concepts of mission and the Bible

Stroope argues that mission, missions, missional, etc have become sacred rhetoric with no biblical foundation. Smith challenges this main assertion of the book in two ways:

a) How, if we cannot employ such a concept as mission, can we explain what Paul had in mind when he instructed the Roman church to support him in his vision to go to Spain, a challenge that would have necessitated a two-step process of translation to Latin and Iberian languages (Rom 15:23-24)? Paul was a model for what might be done by other disciples of Christ. How do we talk about that? What language should we use? Furthermore, Paul, as has been pointed out before, was reaching out from one marginal position to another, not from a position of power.

b) Is the 'pilgrim witness' language that Stroope argues for, the most appropriate? And what do we mean precisely by the 'kingdom of God'? [My notes are a bit incoherent here!] David questioned whether the missions movement was really subverting the kingdom of God, as seems to be suggested. There are clearly examples of unrighteous acts done by some missionaries (and here Smith mentioned the missionaries of one particular country, who are the subject of a PhD dissertation which he recently examined). But there are very many examples of good work going on too. Moreover, we need to note the emphasis on human agency that Carey asserted in his Enquiry, in the face of a hyper-Calvinistic challenge. 

3. The use of 'transcendence' - what might it look like?

Are we now moving beyond Bosch's liminal stage? Smith here mentioned Walls' recent Crossing Cultural Frontiers and his discussion of migration. Surely both persuasion and demonstration are important in the work of witnesses. Here David also referred to an article on 'Theological Method' in the Global Dictionary of Theology and Terry Eagleton's Culture and the Death of God.

Further interaction

Two shorter presentations were also given - by Rosalee Veloso Ewell, giving a female and global South perspective, and by a Redcliffe College student, Aaron, giving a Millenial perspective. Short opportunities for interaction were given after each presentation.

Mike Stroope gave a final reaction to the day in which he informed us he was working on a follow-up book expanding on the epilogue of Transcending Mission. 

My reaction

The audience gave a sympathetic and respectful hearing to the argument and responses. I found the day very stimulating indeed. I was heartened at the spirit of interaction, especially by the two main speakers. I think the concerns with the book that I expressed in my review were shared by others. Although I think Mike's thesis is basically correct, I continue to believe he overstates his case. I find it difficult to see how vast chunks of humanity will be exposed to the glorious person of the Lord Jesus without a more intentional approach.

One concept that seemed to have achieved virtual consensus in the papers and discussion is that of World Christianity. I whole-heartedly agree that we need to be learning from each other across the cultural and continental divides. However, there seems to be little or no awareness of the fact that there is a growing body of followers of Christ who do not identify themselves as belonging to World Christianity. We may listen to Christians in their countries and still be way off really understanding our other brothers and sisters. And we will remain just as handicapped in our efforts to reach out to the vast numbers who, while open to considering the person of Christ would find World Christianity far too alien.

On a personal level this book challenges me to reflect on my words, my actions, and my character, as I continue to seek to work out how the Lord would have me continue to use my gifts, experience, and energies for his glory.

Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition, by Michael W. Stroope - a Review

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).