World-Shaped Mission. Janice Price

Links there is experience to be shared at all levels of the Church of England on relationships across cultures. What Fresh Expressions challenges and is seeking to enable is the need to transfer this learning and experience into mission in England. However, this is an altogether more difficult process as it requires a complex process of listening and reflection to understand our presuppositions and practices within our own culture. However, listening to the voices of the global church and first generation migrant residents in England can provide valuable insights and ideas as to how we can learn in our own context. The way we think about mission is challenged and, it is hoped, expanded and extended as we listen deeply to the global church and the migrant churches in England. This involves a willingness to be open with others about our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths. However, our world church partners and those arriving in England from other parts of the world have not always found the Church of England open and willing to learn from them. Relationships across cultures can expand our imagination in the service of God’s mission in the world as the local church understands itself as part of the global church. There is a blurring of the boundaries between home and overseas mission as new ways of participating in God’s mission in the world emerge.

      The ecological and environmental crisis

1.20 The ecological and environmental crisis is shaping how we imagine mission. This crisis has caused many in the churches to re-evaluate our understanding of creation and the created order. The fifth Mark of Mission, with its language of ‘respect’, ‘sustain’ and ‘renew’ is playing an important part in this process. There has been a movement in Christian thinking away from the emphasis on ‘dominion’16 to interdependence or interconnectedness as a way of understanding the place of humanity in God’s world. While dominion is a fundamental biblical concept that expresses part of the role of humanity in looking after the earth and providing for humanity’s needs it is not the same as exploitation of the earth.

‘Misguided anthropocentrism has had unfortunate effects both on the earth and on humanity itself.’17

Interconnectedness or interdependence, however, is a characteristic of the missio dei, in that the mission of God in the world ultimately concerns the bringing together or reconciliation of all creation under the Lordship of Christ.18 This is the redemption of all creation, human and non-human. This is the ultimate end of God’s mission in creation. As the Archbishop of Canterbury says,

‘Creation is an act of communication. It is God expressing his intelligence through every existing thing.’19

      So, creation is integral to God’s mission. Through the environmental crisis and the impact of climate change we are discovering new shapes or rhythms of God’s mission.

      1.21 Mission as reconciliation

Another way of understanding mission is as reconciliation. God’s mission is to bring all things together in and under the Lordship of Christ (Ephesians 1.10) which represents a reconciliation of all things in three directions; between humanity and God, between human communities and between humanity and creation. The recent report Living Thankfully Before God: Living fairly before each other20 argues that thankfulness should form the basis of life lived in the grace of God which leads towards the flourishing of humanity within creation and that, ‘the interconnectedness of the world means that we cannot tackle these problems on our own even if we wanted to’.21 The publication Unreconciled?22 sees Jesus as the midwife of salvation where reconciliation is about the creation of that which is new, something birthed anew rather than just mended.

      1.22 There is a practical impact of climate change and environmental crisis on all church partnerships which involves the Companion Links, the Mission Agencies of the Church of England as well as the Development Agencies. The demands on our partnerships are likely to increase rather than decrease as impoverished regions are forced to deal with high food and commodity prices as well as the reduction in land for agricultural use and the corresponding detrimental effect on social and community life. Climate change, the environmental crisis and world mission are intimately connected. The Anglican Alliance for Relief, Advocacy and Development is highlighting food security as a key element in its work. Living responsibly in God’s world is becoming a strong theme in personal discipleship and church life as those in the high consumption areas of the West understand the impact of their lifestyle on the Majority World. Partnership will be increasingly expressed in terms of how personal and corporate lifestyle impacts others across cultural and political boundaries. In the West lifestyle changes become an important part of our discipleship because of their impact on Majority World partners.

      The Five Marks of Mission

1.23 The Church of England’s thinking and practice about mission has been strongly shaped by the Five Marks of Mission.23 The Five Marks have been used in many dioceses, deaneries and parishes as well as in the Anglican Communion as a significant descriptor of holistic local mission and as a flexible tool for the practice of local and global mission. The Five Marks of Mission have also been used ecumenically by local, regional and national churches. They have given churches a practical language and image of mission that can be applied locally as well as globally. The Five Marks provide a spectrum of understandings of mission that can embrace both evangelism and development and that retain integrity as marks of God’s mission in the world. The Five Marks have been used as a benchmark and a guide to being a missionary church. However, the Five Marks are not an exhaustive set of marks of mission and there are further issues to be considered. The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) is in the process of reviewing the Five Marks of Mission and the following comments from the Church of England are offered to that process.

      1.24 First, the Five Marks are ‘marks’ but it is not defined theologically what those marks express. The Five Marks of Mission are characteristics of God’s mission in the world and are signs of God’s gracious and generous presence in his world building the Kingdom of justice and peace in Christ. The roots of the Five Marks of Mission are in God’s mission as it is God who is the initiator in mission out of love for the world as an overflowing movement from the communion of the Trinity. Each of the Marks is an expression of God’s overflow of love into the world and where they are evident they are a mark or sign of God’s mission.

      1.25 A suggested change to the Five Marks concerns the primacy of the first mark of mission.

      ‘To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom.’

      It is proposed that as this first mark of mission embraces all of the other four marks it should be the key statement about everything in mission. It expresses what Jesus himself says about his nature and mission. While this is a welcome development it should not mean that the evangelistic element in this statement be lost in a more general interpretation. The proclamation of the good news of God’s Kingdom is that to which all other activities are purposed.

1.26 Worship and mission go together in an Anglican understanding of mission. The celebration in word and sacrament of God’s love and goodness is at the heart of all mission activity not as a spur to mission but as the heart of mission itself. The heart of mission is encounter with God and the expression of that encounter in the complexities of the world. This in turn leads to the church living as a mission community focused on God’s activity in the world. It is argued that this aspect of mission be included in the Five Marks.24

      1.27 A fundamental area of mission that is not currently reflected in the Five Marks is reconciliation. It has been noted earlier that reconciliation of all things in Christ is the eschatological hope that God’s entire mission in the world points to.