Dream Awakener

David Bosch in his book Transforming Mission talks about how before the modern missionary era, the prevailing view was that “mission” in the sense of communicating the gospel to those without Christ was God’s work.  Then William Carey in 1793 emphasized the idea of partnering with God to accomplish his work, but in time, the human initiative in missions grew in importance to the point that many Christians no longer thought of God as being active in mission, they only thought about human resources, human strategies and human efforts.

So Karl Barth and some of those influenced by him re-introduced the classic doctrine of missio Dei, which is Latin for “Mission of God”.  We find this idea in scripture where you have God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit, and then the Father, Son and Spirit sending the church into the world.” 

In other words, mission is not primarily an activity in the church, but it is derived from the very nature of God.  Jurgen Moltmann puts it this way, “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.”

In fact, Karl Barth said, “A church which is not on mission is either not yet or no longer the church, or only a dead church – itself in need of renewal.”