2.1 The theological context from which Missio Dei emerged

To understand the development of missio Dei, it is beneficial to look at the theological context from which it arose. This context is substantially associated with what Kenneth Scott Latourette referred to as the ‘Great Century’, a period of significant expansion in the Western missionary enterprise, under the influence of the Enlightenment optimism, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Stephen B. Bevans and Roger Schroeder (2004: 209–221) suggest that at the heart of this modern Western missionary movement was the emphasis on individual conversion and church planting. Initially, this missionary movement was developed and driven by missionary societies which were dedicated to overseas mission with a focus on the salvation of individual souls. The names of William Carey, Hudson Taylor, and Dwight Moody are particularly associated with this missionary focus (Bevans and Schroeder 2004: 210, 216–217). In its subsequent phase, this missionary movement was substantially influenced by the theology of mission, which was developed by Henry Venn (see Shenk 1994: 541–547) and Rufus Anderson (see Beaver 1994: 548–553). They emphasized the importance of Indigenous people taking responsibility for evangelizing local areas. Accordingly, mission was suggested as the establishment of Indigenous churches that were to evangelize the locals by their own leadership, autonomy, and funding (Bevans and Schroeder 2004: 213). Gradually, church development became a key measure of evangelism and thus one of the prevailing concepts of mission in the modern missionary movement (Ahn 2011: 82; Guder 2015: 22).

This understanding of mission, however, also promoted an ecclesiastical conviction termed missio ecclesiae. Literally indicating ‘the mission of the church’, missio ecclesiae suggests that mission is a function of the church while presupposing the church as the initiator, author, and subject of mission (Chia 2022: 211; Bevans 2022: 112; see also Flett 2010: 61–65). Missio ecclesiae thus represents a church-centric view of mission as anchoring mission in the context of ecclesiology.

A consequence of this church-centric view of mission was significant: mission was conceived as the expansion of the church that carried out missionary works (see McClymond 2010: 348–349). The Enlightenment’s optimism, a key characteristic of the dominant worldview at those times, further fuelled this understanding of mission to the point of promoting the belief that, through the work of the church, ‘the entire world would soon be converted to the Christian faith’ (Bosch 1991: 271).

Surprisingly, this church-centric understanding and practice of mission began to collapse as the world was undergoing major cultural upheavals during the first half of the twentieth century, including the two World Wars, the rise of communism, and the Cold War. At the heart of this collapse was the expulsion of Western missionaries from China, which developed a sharp critique of modern Western missions. Preceding this critique was also the publication of Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry after One Hundred Years (1932), also known as The Hocking Report, which sparked a contentious debate on the nature and purpose of such Western missions, particularly concerning their emphasis on church expansion and conversion.

These critiques inevitably involved an assessment of the Western authority, critically reflecting on the relationship between Western missionary endeavours and ‘the imposition of western values and practices onto other cultures’ (Dawn 2020: 173). Such postcolonial reflection on mission thus continued to threaten the idea of mission itself, to the point of ‘a loss of certainty about the whole missionary enterprise, a loss of any sense of direction, a loss of confidence in the whole method of Mission’ (Flett 2010: 136). With the optimism of the twentieth century being increasingly dissolved in the face of major upheavals during those times, not least the First World War, Western churches were further confronted with their inability to do mission on their own strength (see Yeh 2016: 112). Furthermore, the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression in the 1930s had a serious impact on the funding for their overseas missions and thus acted as ‘the solvent for the missionary movement’ (Walls 1982: 159).

It is against this backdrop that missio Dei emerged, as a theological response to an existential crisis of mission in the mid-twentieth century. Because this crisis involved both unlimited beliefs in humanity and Western superiority, missio Dei surfaced as an attempt to extricate mission from both anthropocentrism and colonialism and ground it in an appropriate theological fashion (Sarisky 2014: 259).

At the heart of this attempt was the idea of grounding mission in the nature and act of God. The intellectual origins of this development are attributed to Karl Barth’s lecture at the Brandenburg Missionary Conference in 1932. In this lecture, Barth ‘initiated the connection between missions and the doctrine of the Trinity’, proposing a theocentric understanding of mission (Flett 2010: 12). Soon, other theologians, including Hendrik Kraemer, joined the development of this approach to mission (Bosch 1991: 390). Among them was Karl Hartenstein, who first used the term missio Dei to articulate this ongoing development. In fact, the origin of the term can be traced as far back as St. Augustine in the fourth century when he denoted the inner-trinitarian process of God’s sending in dogmatics, and subsequently St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century when he described the eternal procession of the Son and the Spirit from God (Schirrmacher 2017: 9–10). However, a missiological use of the term in relation to the emerging Barthian reflection on mission first appeared in Hartenstein’s essay in 1934 (Flett 2010: 131). This missiological reflection then began to gain wider acceptance through the International Missionary Council (IMC) at Willingen in 1952, although no explicit use of the term was found during the conference (Flett 2010: 11; see also Engelsviken 2003: 482). It was since Georg F. Vicedom’s book in 1958, entitled Missio Dei: Einführung in eine Theologie der Mission, that the phrase missio Dei became popularized in missiology (see McIntosh 2000: 631).

2.2 Biblical foundations for missio Dei

Theologians find the biblical ground for missio Dei from a range of passages, centring around its key theme of ‘sending’ (missio) in reference to the missionary nature and act of the triune God. As Schirrmacher (2017: 20–34) highlights, this trinitarian pattern of missio includes the sending of Jesus by the Father (e.g. Matt 10:40; Mark 9:37; Luke 4:18; John 3:17; Acts 3:20), the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Father and Jesus (e.g. John 14:26; Luke 24:29; 1 Pet 1:12; Rev 5:6), the sending of the disciples by Jesus (e.g. Matt 10:5; Mark 6:7, John 4:38; Acts 9:17) and the sending of people by the church and by apostles (e.g. Acts 8:14; Rom 10:15; 2 Cor 9:3; Eph 6:22; Phil 2:19).

Francis M. DuBose (1983: 41–66) points out that the New Testament presentation of sending is also inherent in the Old Testament, as exemplified, for instance, in God’s sending of Abraham (Gen 12:1–3), Joseph (Gen 50:15–21), Moses (Exod 3:9–14), Isaiah (Isa 6:1–13), and Jeremiah (Jer 1:4–10).

Underlying the recognition of these various passages that contribute to the grounding of missio Dei is an attempt to explore the whole of the Bible as a grand narrative of the triune God’s creation, redemption, and sanctification in the world (Sunquist 2013: 177–197). Christopher Wright, an advocate of this hermeneutical approach, proposes that the triune God’s missionary nature and act serves as the framework through which the entire Biblical narrative should be read (Wright 2006: 38, 104). This approach goes beyond merely tying missio Dei to specific passages related to mission for its biblical justification. Instead, it establishes a paradigmatic biblical foundation for missio Dei. Essentially, this approach seeks to discern both explicit and implicit biblical narratives of missio Dei manifesting across the various biblical contexts (Pikkert 2017: 21–22). In other words, this hermeneutical approach suggests that missio Dei represents the latest paradigm of God’s contemporary mission that is deeply rooted in the variety of biblical revelations.

As early as 1958, in the German discussion, Vicedom (1965: 4) recognized the necessity of reflecting on the concept of missio Dei drawing upon such a hermeneutical approach. Tracing the various paradigms of missions within the New Testament, David J. Bosch (1993) proposed the idea of ‘missional hermeneutics’ in 1993 and suggested that all of scripture should be interpreted in the light of the missionary nature and act of the triune God. Bosch’s proposal evolved into several variations of missional hermeneutics, including those developed by Arthur Glasser (2003), Richard Bauckham (2003), N. T. Wright (2006), Christopher J. H. Wright (2006), and Michael W. Goheen (2016). While these missional hermeneutics vary with different focus on the triune God’s nature and act, they all seek to unveil an underlying narrative of missio Dei in the entirety of the Bible (Anderson 2017: 415). Moreover, they adopt missio Dei as a tool to revisit various biblical passages and uncover their full significance. ‘In so doing, missional hermeneutics seeks to ascertain what God meant by a specific revelation, how that revelation was understood by the original author and audience, and finally what that revelation means for contemporary recipients’ (Sanou 2018: 310). In essence, biblical scholars continue to develop missional hermeneutics and establish the inherent relationship between the concept of missio Dei and the Bible.

3.1 The International Missionary Council (IMC) at Willingen in 1952

The watershed event in the development of missio Dei as a missiological concept was the International Missionary Council (IMC) at Willingen in 1952, through which the Barthian reflection on mission became widely incorporated into mainstream discourse (Flett 2010: 11). The IMC succeeded to the World Mission Conference (WMC) which had started from Edinburgh in 1910, primarily to solve some problems in the area of mission and to foster ecumenical unity for mission. The IMC began from a conference in London in 1921, passing through several conferences in Jerusalem in 1928, Tambaram in 1938, Whitby in 1947, Willingen in 1952, Achimota in 1957–1958, and New Delhi in 1961, where it was finally merged with the World Council of Churches (WCC) to form the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME).

In 1952, the IMC conference at Willingen highlighted two key aspects of missio Dei. The first is that mission stems from the triune God. More precisely, mission is deeply rooted in the three persons of Father, Son, and Spirit (Goodall 1953: 188–192). As Bosch points out, this way of looking at mission is an important attempt to conceive mission ‘in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or soteriology’ (Bosch 1991: 390). The key understanding of this trinitarian basis for mission is that the triune God is both the sender and the sent in mission (Engelsviken 2003: 483). Referring to the triune God as the sender indicates that mission is rooted in God’s ‘sending’ nature: the Father sends the Son and the Spirit for his work towards the world (Goodall 1953: 189; Flett 2010: 36–47; Yoder 2014: 129–132). This idea emphasizes that mission originates exclusively from the triune God. Meanwhile, the triune God being regarded as the sent indicates that ‘God makes Himself […] the content of the sending’ (Vicedom 1965: 8). This idea implies that the triune God should be the sole source and content of any missionary activities (Andersen 1955: 47).

Such a trinitarian ground of mission led to the second aspect of missio Dei at Willingen 1952, that is, that mission is participation in the work of the triune God. As Goheen (2000: 117) points out, this aspect of missio Dei had a great impact on the understanding of the relationship between mission and the church. More precisely, the emergence of missio Dei challenged missio ecclesiae, the dominant understanding of mission during former decades. As aforementioned, missio ecclesiae represents a missionary conviction that the church is the author of mission (Bevans and Schroeder 2004: 290–291). Missio Dei as understood at Willingen 1952 challenged such a conviction and made it clear that the church is a participant in the mission of God (Bosch 1991: 390–391; Kim 2001: 103; Sarisky 2014: 259). In short, missio Dei puts forward that church is not the initiator, centre, or subject of mission, but the means of what God is doing. In this sense, missio Dei is regarded to be differentiated from, or even sharply contrasted to, missio ecclesiae.

Consequently, Willingen’s development of missio Dei had a profound impact on the identity and mission of the church, promoting a reimagination of missio ecclesiae largely in the following three ways, as Goodall highlights:

i. The Church is sent to every inhabited area of the world. No place is too far or too near. […] ii. The Church is sent to every social, political and religious community of mankind, both to those near at hand and to those far off. […] iii. The Church is sent to proclaim Christ’s reign in every moment and every situation. This means that the mission of the Church forbids it to drift or to flee before the events of our time. (Goodall 1953: 189)

These highlights challenge missio ecclesiae in two significant ways. Firstly, they emphasize that the church acts as an agent for God and thus refute any claim to missio ecclesiae’s ownership over mission. Secondly, they affirm that ‘the Church is in the world’ and thus ‘the Church is required to identify itself with the world’, in contrast to missio ecclesiae’s notion that ‘the Church stands over against the world’ (Goodall 1953: 190–192).

It is, however, noteworthy that Willingen approached missio Dei mainly in reaction to missio ecclesiae right from the start. Still giving a statement centring around church but not around God, Willingen’s proposal of missio Dei is a substantially ecclesiological. This is one of the main reasons why it does not address much about God or the triune God, except saying that God the Father sends the Son and works through the Spirit as follows:

The missionary movement of which we are a part has its source in the Triune God Himself. Out of the depths of His love for us, the Father has sent forth His own beloved Son to reconcile all things to Himself, that we and all men might, through the Spirit, be made one in Him with the Father in that perfect love which is the very nature of God. (Goodall 1953: 189)

In this statement, there is no further mention of God or the triune God. Instead, the immediate following statement talks about church, especially ‘the nature of the duty and authority which are given to the Church to be His witness to all men everywhere’. According to God’s love, ‘God has sent forth the one Saviour, one Shepherd, […] one Redeemer’, and ‘God has sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus’ (Goodall 1953: 189–192). But even these statements are primarily ecclesiological in the sense that they converge on forming and sending church or Christians for the world. Not surprisingly, the theme of the Willingen conference was ‘the missionary obligation of the Church’.

Furthermore, Willingen’s ecclesiological assertions are fundamentally christological in the sense that they address the missionary nature and act of the triune God ultimately through the lens of Christ as follows:

God has sent forth one Saviour, […] one Redeemer who […] has broken down the barrier between man and God, […] and created in Himself one new humanity, the Body of which Christ is the exalted and regnant Head. […] God has sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, to gather us together in one Body in Him […] to empower us for the continuance of His mission as His witnesses and ambassadors […] By the Spirit we are enabled both to press forward as ambassadors of Christ. (Goodall 1953: 189–190)

Therefore, ‘[t]here is no participation in Christ without participation in His [Christ’s] mission to the world’ (Goodall 1953: 190).

In brief, Willingen’s proposal of missio Dei is basically ecclesiological and fundamentally christological. This is why the final report was published with the title of Mission under the Cross, indicating that it is not so much trinitarian, though it has often been wrongly interpreted to be fully trinitarian.

3.2 The North American Report

While limited, Willigen’s proposal of the trinitarian basis for missio Dei was a significant theological move. Underlying this development was the North American Report, which was written from a series of consultations held in the United States and Canada in the years leading up to the Willingen conference.

The second chapter of the report is titled as ‘The Christian Mission and the Triune God’. It discusses missionary obligation in terms of the triune God as follows:

Missionary theology, centered upon the reconciling action of the triune God, […] Missional obligation, grounded in the reconciling action of the triune God, is not the duty to save souls (after all, only God does that), but the sensitive and total response of the Church to what the triune God has done and is doing in the world. (Lehmann 1952: 22)

Moreover, the fifth chapter begins with the following statement: ‘the dynamic activity of the triune God in the Gospel and in the present situation calls for a dynamic and total response’ (Lehmann 1952: 35).

However, the focus of the second and fifth chapters is not the triune God but the trinitarian ground of mission and its implications on mission. As seen in the passage quoted above, a trinitarian mission does not merely focus on saving souls but on responding ‘to what the triune God has done and is doing in the world’. In this sense, the North American report says, ‘the Trinitarian basis of missionary obligation restores the saving of souls to its authentic role in missionary endeavor’ (Lehmann 1952: 23). This is one of the reasons why the North American report itself does not go further to say more about the Trinity, though it agrees with H. Richard Niebuhr and even quotes his statement as follows:

The doctrine of the Trinity has […] great importance for an ecumenical theology as a formulation of the Church’s whole faith in God in distinction from partial faiths and partial formulations of parts of the Church and of individuals in the Church. (Lehmann 1952: 24)

Nonetheless, the North American report proposes a profound reflection on mission grounded in the triune God: it is not merely to save souls, but to respond to the works of the triune God in the world sensitively and totally. Notably, this proposal for a missiological shift from soul- saving to an engagement with the triune God’s work in the world incorporates into missio Dei the insights sparked by the Hocking Report (1932: 68–70) for its reflection on the wider scope of God’s mission beyond evangelism and proselytization. The North American report highlights that mission is not about ‘the territorial and financial expansion’ but about ‘a creative enterprise of word and deed in the formation and the transformation of individual lives and of cultural and social patterns’ (Lehmann 1952: 22). What is striking here is that mission has a direct implication on not only ‘individual lives’ but also ‘cultural and social patterns’, thereby noting the issue of culture in a broad sense (1952: 22).

In this way, culture comes to be an important element in the concept of missio Dei of the Willingen conference. This point is well reflected in the North American report’s distinction between ‘modernity’ and ‘contemporaneity’, with an obvious affirmation of the latter. While the former refers to ‘the adaptation of the Gospel to the present situation’, the latter refers to ‘the adaptation of the present situation to the Gospel’, which is based on ‘the ongoing contemporaneity of Jesus Christ’ and ‘the sensitivity to historical and social changes as the bearer of God’s pressing home his plans for the fulfillment of his purposes’ (Lehmann 1952: 30–31). Such contemporaneity has two implications for culture, both in a positive and critical way. Critically, we have to ‘accept the judgement of God’s word on its [the church’s] relation to Western culture’, thereby not confusing culture and the Gospel (1952: 34). Positively, we have to acknowledge that ‘we cannot abstract ourselves from our culture’, and that ‘[o]ther cultures also have their gifts to offer’ (1952: 34).

3.3 The World Council of Churches’ world-centric approach to missio Dei

The trinitarian ground of mission presented in the North American Report led to a further development of missio Dei in reference to the recognition of – and attempt to embody – the mission of the triune God in the sphere of the ‘world’ beyond the boundary of the church. This is clearly reflected in the work of Vicedom who made the term missio Dei popular through his book The Mission of God: An Introduction to a Theology of Mission, which was originally published in German in 1958. Affirming mission as being grounded in the sending of the triune God, Vicedom also firmly stresses ‘His [God’s] relationship to the world’ (Vicedom 1965: 9), by stating as follows: ‘Accordingly through His sending He sustains the world and guides mankind. He exemplifies Himself as a God who has not excluded His creation from His care’ (Vicedom 1965: 10). And:

God is always present in this sending. Sending is therefore an expression of His presence at work in judgment and grace. Thus the missio becomes a testimony to His duty. God would not be the God of mankind if He were not near the world and active in a way relevant to it. (Vicedom 1965: 10)

Here the world, or the relation between God and the world, comes to stand out in God’s sending, that is, God’s mission. Such a relation is expressed by Vicedom as ‘God’s vis-a-vis’ (Vicedom 1965: 15), by which he refers to the world as God’s own creation, and such a relation implies the universality of salvation ‘for all people’ and ‘for all nations’ (Vicedom 1965: 37). Vicedom summarizes these points through his insightful statement as follows: ‘God Himself in His missio confronts the world and yet through His sending establishes His relationship to the world’ (Vicedom 1965: 88). Only in this regard, ‘through the missio’ church is supposed to be ‘placed completely on the side of God’, and ‘she [church] is fully directed to the world’ (Vicedom 1965: 89). Thus ‘[t]he church is placed into the world and sent by her Lord into the world’ (Vicedom 1965: 97).

This emphasis on the world in the concept of missio Dei is clearly apparent in the two groups of the department on studies in evangelism within the WCC, which had an in-depth study on Missionary Structure of the Congregation in the 1960s: the Western European Working Group and the North American Working Group. The report of the former was published with the title of The Church for Others, and that of the latter was titled as The Church for the World (1967). Though having a different approach and study method, respectively, both groups exchanged discussion and thinking with each other, thereby having some characteristics in common, especially with regards to the world (1967: 57–58). Firstly, both share the strongly intimate relationship between God and the world, by stating ‘God is constantly active in the world’ (1967: 15), and ‘God’s object of concern is the world’ (1967: 69). Secondly, both propose an alternatively reversed relation structure of ‘God – world – Church’ together, while opposing the previous traditional relation structure of ‘God – Church – world’ (1967: 16–17, 69–70). Finally, as God’s mission has it as a purpose for the world to establish the kingdom of God or shalom, both affirm together that our mission as participation in God’s mission should be ‘humanization’ or ‘the fullness of humanity’, which may include ‘the emancipation of colored races [sic], the concern for the humanization of industrial relations, various attempts at rural development, the quest for business and professional ethics, the concern for intellectual honesty and integrity’ (1967: 15, 77–78).

Furthermore, this emphasis on the world is more strongly stressed by Johannes C. Hoekendijk in his ecclesiological book The Church Inside Out, which was originally published in Dutch in 1964. Being very closely related to both of those working groups, he also emphasizes the world in the book by discussing both ‘The Church as Function of the Apostolate’ in Part I and ‘the Encounter of Church and World’ in Part II (Hoekendijk 1966: 9). While confirming shalom as the main theme of evangelism, which is not identical with ‘churchification’, and which has its three aspects: ‘kerygma, koinonia, and diakonia’, he emphatically stresses ‘the Kingdom for the world’. Thus he advocates ‘the context Kingdom – apostolate-oikoumene’, the last of which refers to the world, and he states as follows:

When one desires to speak about God’s dealings with the world, the church can be mentioned only in passing and without strong emphasis. Ecclesiology cannot be more than a single paragraph from Christology (the Messianic dealings with the world) and a few sentences from eschatology (the Messianic dealings with the World). The church is only the church to the extent that she lets herself be used as a part of God’s dealings with the oikoumene. For this reason she can only be ecumenical, i.e., oriented toward the oikoumene – the whole world. (Hoekendijk 1966: 25–40, original emphasis)

All these above-mentioned factors converge on the Fourth General Assembly of the WCC which took place in Uppsala in 1968, which had a theme, ‘Behold, I Make All Things New’. Thus the Uppsala General Assembly puts an emphasis on the need ‘to carry on God’s mission in the world today’ (1968: 21). In this regard, Bosch rightly evaluates the concept of missio Dei after Willingen as follows:

In the period after Willingen, the concept missio Dei gradually changed its meaning. It came to signify God’s hidden activities in the world, independently of the Church, and our responsibility to discover and participate in these activities. This view was already discernible in embryo at Willingen, notably in the North American report. In the nineteen-sixties it would be commonly accepted in ecumenical theology of mission. (Bosch 1980: 179–180)

3.4 An evangelical expression of missio Dei – the Lausanne Movement

In response to the radical understanding of missio Dei as the humanization and shalom within the WCC – streams such as the general assembly in Uppsala in 1968 and the world conference on salvation today in Bangkok in 1972–1973 – an evangelical expression of missio Dei began to surface since the 1970s. This emergence occurred within and following the Lausanne Movement under the leadership of Billy Graham and John Stott. The first international congress on world evangelism was held in Lausanne in 1974 with the production of the Lausanne Covenant. The second international congress was held in Manila in 1989, resulting in the Manila Manifesto. The third international congress was held in Cape Town in 2010, ending with the formulation of the Cape Town Commitment.

John Stott noted the importance of missio Dei by saying,

mission arises primarily out of the nature not of the church but of God himself. The living God of the Bible is the sending God. […] The primal mission is God’s, for it is God who sent his prophets, his Son, his Spirit. (Stott Stott and Wright 2015: 20–21; see also Stott 1975: 66)

As a successor to Stott, Wright expanded what Stott stated further to assert that this mission of God touches not only on people’s spiritual lives but also on their political, economic, and social ones (2006: 268–271). Consequently, these expressions of missio Dei challenged the traditional evangelical view of mission as evangelism (Bassham 1979: 231), promoting a more holistic understanding of the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility in which both are considered as ‘necessary expressions’ for the triune God’s missionary nature and act (Stott 2009: 45; see also Pikkert 2017: 19–22).

However, despite such an evangelical development of missio Dei, a firm commitment to prioritizing evangelism over social action remains within the wider circle of evangelicals. This is evident in the persistent debates over the interrelatedness between evangelism and social action in the Lausanne Movement (see Lausanne Movement 1980; Stott 2009: 51; Third Lausanne Congress 2010: 47).

This continued emphasis on evangelism implies that the evangelical expression of missio Dei is predominantly christocentric, interpreting the triune God’s mission primarily through the lens of Christ’s redemptive work (Sunquist 2013: 186). Such a christocentric view of missio Dei in turn highlights its ecclesiocentric character of mission that the church regains a special place in its participation in the mission of God (see Pikkert 2017: 27).

3.5 A Pentecostal development of missio Dei

Pentecostal churches’ engagement with missio Dei is related to their close attention to the role of the Holy Spirit in the mission of God. In fact, there have been a variety of approaches, exploring the Spirit’s ministry in such work of God across Christian traditions (Kärkkäinen 2002: 67–104). However, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (2014: 30–31) suggests that some unique pneumatological reflections on missio Dei began to be offered by a younger generation of Pentecostal academics, including Amos Yong, a Malaysian-American theologian, in his two books, Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions (2000) and its sequel Beyond the Impasse: Towards a Pneumatological Theology of Religion (2003).

In his more recent book, Mission after Pentecost (2019a), Yong has further reflected on the Pentecostal approach to missio Dei through the discussion of what he calls ‘missio spiritus’ (2019a: 14). Missio spiritus represents a theological exploration of God’s missionary nature and act through the lens of the Spirit (see also Yong 2015: 19–33). This exploration draws upon a pneumatological reading of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, tracing ‘the missionary God expressed in and through the work of the divine wind’ (Yong 2019a: 14). Yong highlights that such a pneumatological exploration is inevitably trinitarian:

the divine wind calls attention not to itself but to the person of Jesus and the God he worshiped. From that perspective, any pneumatological interpretation of scripture cannot be for its own sake but must be for the sake of understanding the God of Israel, manifest in Jesus. (Yong 2019a: 14)

Furthermore, this pneumatological exploration is intentionally a missiological attempt to invite churches and Christians to explore how the Spirit might lead their participation in the triune God’s mission (Yong 2019a: 276–280). In short, missio spiritus presents a unique Pentecostal expression of missio Dei.

On the one hand, this Pentecostal expression is deeply christocentric-trinitarian and ecclesiological. Grounded upon Pentecostal spirituality and theology, with Christology at its core (Kärkkäinen 2018: 19–21), missio spiritus interprets the Spirit’s work as continuing and ‘bringing into full culmination’ the triune God’s redemptive work inaugurated by Christ (Yong 2019b: 163; see also Yong 2019a: 275). At the same time, missio spiritus undeniably proposes ecclesiological insights to ‘strengthen and empower the church’s participation in the missio Dei’ (Yong 2019b: 152).

On the other hand, missio spiritus also embraces the WCC’s world-centric character of missio Dei when it comes to the breadth which the Spirit witnesses to in the mission of God beyond the existing boundaries of the church. As Yong highlights, missio spiritus invites the church to bear witness ‘not just to […] but in […] society’ and thus encourages Christians to be open to the Spirit’s interaction ‘at and beyond the so-called borders of the believing community’ (2019a: 287; see also Yong 2018: 227–228; Kärkkäinen 2022: ch. 12). In other words, the Pentecostal approach to missio Dei challenges the church to explore the Spirit’s ministry outside its traditional and institutional boundaries (Kärkkäinen 2014: 31).

3.6 The Second Vatican Council

The development of missio Dei within the Catholic church is also evident in the Second Vatican Council. The Council was held from 1962 to 1965, making an epoch in Roman Catholic theology through the production of many constitutions, decrees, and declarations. One of them is Ad Gentes Divinitus (AG), that is, ‘Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity’, which places the church and its missions within the context of the mission of the triune God.

According to Ad Gentes, the church is sent by God to preach the gospel to all, and this sentness is grounded in the mission of the Trinity: God the Father sent God the Son through incarnation; Jesus Christ sent the Holy Spirit from God the Father on the day of Pentecost; and Jesus Christ sent his own disciples and apostles to found church. Consequently, church is by its very nature missionary and is sent into the midst of the world to preach the gospel and plant churches. Through many undertakings, that is, missions, church aims to open up for all people a free and assured way of participating in the mystery of Christ (AG 1–9).

Necessarily, this decree fleshes out key aspects of missio Dei, that mission originates from the triune God and so does church along with its missions (Bevans 2022: 112). It therefore redefines the definition and nature of church while surfacing a trinitarian, christological, and pneumatological character of missio Dei within Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchical and institutional ecclesiology (Bosch 1991: 391).

3.7 The Eastern Orthodox Church’s reception of missio Dei

The reception of missio Dei within the Eastern Orthodox church is substantially informed by their traditional theology of mission. More precisely, Cristian Sonea (2017: 77) suggests that this reception is deeply rooted in a christocentric and eschatological understanding of the church and its mission. According to this understanding, Christ’s salvific work is presented in the church and thus ‘life and the history of mankind is oriented towards the Kingdom of God’ through the church (Sonea 2017: 80). In other words, the church is a sacred event where God’s kingdom was inaugurated and is fully anticipated upon Christ’s second coming. As such, the Orthodox mission suggests that ‘[t]he whole creation is called to become a Church’ to be part of this kingdom of God (Sonea 2017: 81; see also Petraru 2016: 141; Rommen 2016: ch. 4).

In this ecclesiological context, Eastern Orthodox theology emphasizes that the church is a leading means by which the triune God continues and completes the redemptive work offered in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit (Bria 2000: 53–54; Bevans and Schroeder 2004: 288–289; Petraru 2016: 140). Accordingly, Eastern Orthodox churches focus on the mission of God through the church, rather than outside its boundaries, while not denying other ways God might use it for such a redemptive work (Sonea 2017: 78–79; Himcinschi 2016: 19).

And yet, their ecclesiological emphasis in missio Dei involves a serious reflection on the breadth of God’s mission through the church. At the heart of this reflection is Eastern Orthodox churches’ attempt to expand their church traditional boundaries to what Sonea (2017: 84) calls ‘a liturgy of the peers’, which indicates Christians’ follow-on in the world as they ‘go forth in peace’ after receiving the holy sacrament in their place of worship (see also Bria 1996; Vassiliadis 2013: 176). It is also through this liturgy of the peers that Eastern Orthodox churches continuously renew themselves to be the prophetic signs of God’s kingdom in the context of secular struggles for justice and human dignity wherever it is required (Vassiliadis 2016: 342–352; Bargár 2017: 396; see also Bria 2000: 54). To this end, they make attempts to understand ‘the socio-political reality from the perspective of the church’s faith as well as from other ordinary perspectives (social, cultural, economic, political, etc.)’ (Himcinschi 2016: 19). In short, Orthodox missiology develops a unique expression of missio Dei in the liturgical life of the church.

4.1 Spectrum of missio Dei

As briefly explored in the previous section, missio Dei was not developed into a single concept within and after Willingen 1952. The overview shows that while trinitarianism has been the key theme of the concept, churches, missionaries, and theologians who engage with missio Dei have taken various approaches to this trinitarian ground for mission. In this sense, one might ask whether this concept of mission would need a more sufficient or consistent development As such, the key controversy surrounding this further discussion lies in the interpretation of the relationship between the missionary nature and act of the triune God (Flett 2009: 6–7; see also Goodall 1953: 244). More importantly, there remains a considerable disagreement among the proponents of missio Dei as to how to address ‘specific reference to the trinitarian persons and the form of their acting’ (Flett 2010: 148). This disagreement raises a further question about the relationship between God’s mission in the world through the church and God’s mission in the world above and beyond the church (Pachuau 2000: 543–544).

A range of approaches to missio Dei surrounding such controversy suggests that the current development of this missiological concept reflects a spectrum of understanding the triune God’s mission, with two opposing approaches to the concept at each end. Missiologists have used various terms to describe these opposing poles. For example, Jacques Matthey (2001: 429–430) refers to those two streams as the ‘classical’ and the ‘ecumenical’ positions, while T. V. Philip (1999: 98) terms them as the ‘church-centric’ and ‘world-centric’ views. This article adopts the terms used by Goheen (2000: 117), who labels them as ‘Christocentric-Trinitarian’ and ‘Cosmocentric-Trinitarian’ approaches to missio Dei.

The advocates of the christocentric-trinitarian stance understand missio Dei christologically, centring around the redemptive work of the Son, and consider the church as the indispensable vehicle for such work (Kim 2001: 110-116; Engelsviken 2003: 482–483). This view is in line with the intentions of Barth and Hartenstein (Bosch 1991: 392), and also reflects the dominant view of missio Dei in Willingen 1952 (Pachuau 2000: 544).

By contrast, the proponents of the cosmocentric-trinitarian stance understand missio Dei more pneumatologically, focusing on the work of the Father through the Spirit in secular culture and human history over and above the missionary activities of the church (Kim 2001: 124–126; Engelsviken 2003: 483–484). While some proponents of this stance continue to reflect on how the church might discern and join such a broader aspect of God’s work in the world (Matthey 2001: 429–430), some others tend to radicalize the stance, even to the point of suggesting that the church is not necessary for this work of God (see Pachuau 2000: 544). Paul Gerhard Aring and Johannes Hoekendijk were influential in the development of this Cosmocentric-Trinitarian stance (Bosch 1991: 392).

As reviewed previously, it is important to acknowledge here that the Majority World churches’ engagement with missio Dei, including that from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, introduces different dynamics that help scholars to explore a middle ground between those two polarized approaches. Nonetheless, it is appropriate to suggest that this polarization is still ongoing and so is the spectrum of the concept (see Richebächer 2003a: 593–594; Arthur 2010: 53; Pikkert 2017: 7; Whitworth 2019: ch. 1).

On the one hand, this spectrum indicates that the idea of missio Dei is significant to many mission theologians and practitioners who adopt it despite their theological differences. On the other hand, however, it implies that missio Dei accommodates a wide range of views, to the point of justifying mutually exclusive missiological positions (Bosch 1991: 392; Richebächer 2003b: 465). This character of missio Dei thus increases rather than reduces the vagueness in specifying the missionary nature and act of the triune God and thus our participation. For this reason, there has been some serious critique of the concept: it ‘needs either to be more precisely defined or dropped altogether’ (Günther 1998: 56, quoted in Flett 2010: 6).

4.2 Theological conflict in the spectrum of missio Dei

The spectrum of missio Dei suggests that this concept has accrued various trinitarian grounds for mission. John G. Flett (2010) offers a crucial insight for the investigation of such a trinitarian spectrum, particularly regarding the two poles at either end. According to him, underlying the concept of missio Dei are three theologically-constitutive elements (2010: 35–77). They are: (a) the trinitarian basis for mission, (b) the orientation to the kingdom of God and (c) the missionary nature of the church. Flett (2010: 35–36) points out that there has been a lack of theological connection between these three elements since the inception of missio Dei. On the one hand, he explains, all three of them serve a critical function for missio Dei, namely, to distance mission from any colonialist association and to locate it in the framework of the triune God (2010: 36–37, 51–53, 61–65; see also 2009: 5). On the other hand, however, only the first element is developed in reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, while the second and third elements are developed independently of that doctrine.

As a result, missio Dei has become a trinitarian framework for mission in which two of its constitutive elements are insufficiently linked to the doctrine of the Trinity. In Flett’s words, ‘while the doctrine of the Trinity is counted as the Copernican heart of missio Dei theology, in actuality it holds no constructive place in that theology’ (2010: 77; see also 2014: 70). This trinitarian deficiency has invited a range of theological affirmations to be consolidated under the name of missio Dei, ‘which, when placed alongside each other, exist in irreconcilable tension’ (2010: 36).

This irreconcilable tension is substantially attributed to the theological differences between the two major approaches to the concept of the kingdom of God, which is the second constitutive element of missio Dei. Since missio Dei conceives mission as the work of God, it is virtually impossible to speak of mission without considering God’s work in the establishment of the kingdom in the world. In so doing, the existing debates on the kingdom of God profoundly inform the interpretation of the mission of the triune God in the world. This influence, however, also means the incorporation into missio Dei of the ongoing theological division as to what the kingdom of God is and how God establishes it in the world (Flett 2010: 53–61; see also Engelsviken 2003: 483–490). Consequently, the differences in this division correspond with the differences in the two contrasting approaches to missio Dei located at each end of the spectrum, as follows.

The view of the kingdom of God underlying the christocentric-trinitarian stance maintains that God’s kingdom indicates the reign of God over the creation through the salvation offered in Christ. In other words, the kingdom of God refers to ‘the “realm” where salvation is found, through the faith in Christ’ (Engelsviken 2003: 483). Accordingly, this view affirms that God establishes this kingdom through the redemptive work of the Son while highlighting the church as the crucial instrument for the realization of God’s kingdom in the world (see also Goheen 2000: 115–116; Flett 2010: 59).

By contrast, the view of the kingdom of God underpinning the cosmocentric-trinitarian stance asserts that God’s kingdom is understood as the reign of God ‘over the whole of creation’ (Engelsviken 2003: 483). From this view, the realm of God’s kingdom indicates the influence of God’s renewal, liberation and transformation of the world. Accordingly, this stance affirms that God advances the kingdom through God’s direct intervention in the whole creation in the range of political and social movements (Flett 2010: 54). In this sense, the church ‘may be a witness to or a participant in the realization of the kingdom, but it is not the primary or sole actor’ (Engelsviken 2003: 483).

The theological conflict between these two views further resonates with a disagreement already existing within the third constitutive element of missio Dei, which concerns the nature of the church’s involvement with the mission of God. Flett (2010: 61–73) highlights that at least two approaches to the missionary nature of the church inform missio Dei, both of which are developed independently of the trinitarian doctrine. It is also these approaches that are reflected in the two opposing views of missio Dei found at each end of the spectrum.

The first approach began to arise as Western missionary societies were becoming separate institutions within or outside their churches at the turn of the twentieth century. Flett (2010: 63–64) depicts how this separation reduced mission to a tool for replicating particular ecclesiastical forms while distracting the church from proclaiming the gospel and thus disorientating its purpose. In an attempt to address such distortion, theologians and mission practitioners emphasized the need to integrate church and mission, reimagining the church as a missionary community. However, as Flett (2010: 67; see also 2014: 69–70) indicates, this view may involve a church-centric integration in which the coordination between mission and church is primarily considered within the established ecclesial practices. Intentionally or not, such coordination tends to stress the significance of the church for mission. This way of characterizing the church’s missionary nature aligns with the stance of God’s kingdom, which affirms the church’s indispensability for the establishment of the kingdom. At the same time, this indispensability risks implying a dependency on the church for the mission of God and thereby invokes an understanding of missio ecclesiae within the christocentric-trinitarian approach to missio Dei (see Richebächer 2003a: 593).

As a reaction to this fashion of coordination between mission and church, another view surfaced, informing the nature of the church’s place within missio Dei. This view also emphasized the importance of integrating church and mission and thus affirming the missionary nature of the church (Irvin 2020: 24–25). However, this view proposed a ‘mission-centric’ integration to a degree that any existing structures or historical boundaries of the church should be dispensable if and when necessary, in order to ensure its engagement with ‘the dynamics of the coming kingdom’ in the world (Flett 2010: 70; see also Irvin 2020: 26–27). Some proponents of this view went even further, to suggest that the church may be dispensable if ir was in the way of God’s mission (see Scherer 1993: 86). Nonetheless, they do not dismiss the idea that the church is called to ‘discern the signs of the times and join God (or Christ) where God is active to transform the world towards shalom’ (Matthey 2001: 429). However, this assertion lays no stress on the church as the essential instrument in the establishment of God’s kingdom either. This view reflects the stance of the kingdom that suggests God’s advancement of the kingdom regardless of the church’s participation (Aring 1971: 88 quoted in Bosch 1991: 392; see also Flett 2010: 60). Consequently, this view also informs the cosmocentric-trinitarian understanding of the church’s missionary nature while opening to the possibility of its dispensability in missio Dei.

Having highlighted the theological tension between the two poles on the spectrum of missio Dei, it is equally important to pay attention to other trinitarian reflections which explore a more middle ground of the spectrum. It is particularly worth highlighting here those arising outside the Western Protestant discussions and thus the theological dynamics they bring to the table, since Flett’s critique of the trinitarian deficiency in the two polarized views of missio Dei is predominantly in reference to the Western Protestant traditions and their mission history.

A good example is found in the Eastern Orthodox approach to missio Dei, particularly regarding its orientation to God’s kingdom and the missionary nature of the church. Eastern Orthodox churches develop their understanding of these elements within the framework of ‘the communion of the Holy Trinity’ (see Sonea 2017: 79–81). At the heart of this communion is what the Orthodox theology calls ‘the journey of theosis’, by which individuals actively maintain a personal relationship with the inter-trinitarian life of God, which was made available to them in Christ and is continually mediated by the Holy Spirit (Rommen 2016: ch. 4). More importantly, people are called to take part in this journey through the sacraments in the context of the church and, as such, it is through this journey that the kingdom of God is revealed in the world, albeit not in its fullness until Christ’s second coming (Sonea 2017: 80; Rommen 2016: ch. 4). In other words, the church is understood as a crucial means of establishing the kingdom of God through its life.

On the one hand, this Orthodox understanding shares the major ingredients of the christocentric-trinitarian stance for its theological affirmation about God’s kingdom defined by Christ’s salvific work and the church’s indispensability for the establishment of such kingdom. On the other hand, the Orthodox understanding also makes a move towards the cosmocentric-trinitarian stance on the spectrum by emphasizing the extension of the church’s boundaries beyond its historical and institutional structures to be the prophetic signs of God’s kingdom on earth. As highlighted above, this extension is realized in their unique ecclesiological concept of a liturgy of peers (Sonea 2017: 84: see also Bria 1996).

4.3 Missio and processio

The theological spectrum within the concept of missio Dei showcases a rich theological engagement in its development. Initially arising from the Western Protestant churches’ theological reflection on their ecclesiocentric view of mission, this development has since included the theological insights from the Majority World and various Christian traditions. While this variety is a positive, enriching the theological landscape of missio Dei, a question regarding its theological consistency as a concept may still remain. As Flett’s critique highlighted in the previous section, this concept could greatly benefit from a further exploration of trinitarian interrelationships between its three constituent elements, particularly taking into consideration more global theological voices for such connection.

In addressing this task, Chung-Hyun Baik, a South Korean systematic theologian, proposes that one potential starting point could be to approach missio Dei in relation to processio Dei, that is, the procession of the triune God (Baik 2021: 339–340; see also Baik 2011; see also Protestant Theology in Korea). More specifically, Baik suggests that there are some insights to gain from the way church theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas approached missio Dei. For both, missio and processio are intimately related to each other in a reciprocal way.

Augustine begins with missio and then deals with processio. The former refers to the movement of the triune God towards the world, while the latter refers to the movement of the triune God within Godself. Augustine’s notion of missio centres around the Son’s purpose which is the soteriological mediation between God and human being. He started from missio as merely being sent, and proceeded through missio as being visibly manifested in time, and came to missio as being sent with reference to the Son’s purpose, and finally ended with missio as revealing procession (Baik 2011: 50–54). Augustine’s understanding indicates that a fuller trinitarian approach to missio cannot be achieved without considering processio, and vice versa.

On the other hand, Aquinas starts from processio and then deals with missio. There are two processions within one God, which are the procession of the Word and the procession of the will. The former is called generation of the Son and the latter is called spiration of the Holy Spirit. There are also two missions, that is, the mission of the Son and the mission of the Spirit. The Son was sent by the Father into the world to be in the world in a visible way through incarnation, and the Holy Spirit was sent and given visibly through Pentecost. The mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit are rooted in the Son’s eternal procession of generation and the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession of spiration (Baik 2011: 54–61).

Both Augustine and Aquinas’ understandings show a profound connection between missio and processio. This correlation offers valuable insights into how a trinitarian ground for missio Dei might be considered. In this regard, further exploration of the specific implications of processio might be necessary also within missiology, as in relation to the broader scope of theology. These future studies may provide crucial insights that will contribute to the concept of missio Dei in reference to the movement of the triune God within Godself.

5.1 Implications for ecclesiology

The concept of missio Dei bears implications for practical theology, particularly in relation to its theological reflection on the life of the church and its interaction with the world (Swinton and Mowatt 2016: 24–26). As explored earlier, missio Dei challenges the previously-prevailing ecclesiological framework of missio ecclesiae, leading to a critical assessment of the nature of the church in the light of the triune God’s missionary nature and act in the world. Consequently, missio Dei encourages practical theologians to delve into the ways the church can faithfully participate in God’s mission across diverse cultures and societal contexts. In essence, missio Dei invites the church to attend to all aspects of human life by affirming that it is sent into the world, thereby being in the midst of the world, not standing over against it.

In this sense, missio Dei promotes a shift from the traditional church-centric ecclesiology to one that prioritizes the church’s participation in the triune God’s mission. This ecclesiological shift is notably echoed in the ongoing discussion of what is called ‘missional ecclesiology’. Central to this ecclesiology is the notion that the church’s identity and purpose are intricately interwoven with the role it plays within God’s mission (Guder et al. 1998: 11–12; Marsh and Currin 2013: 4–7). A number of terms and concepts have been fleshed out for the discussions of missional ecclesiology, including ‘fresh expressions of church’ or ‘mission-shaped church’ (Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs Council 2004), ‘missional church’ (Jørgensen 2004: 553–566), and ‘emerging church’ (Gay 2011). Despite their distinct nuances, they collectively seek to develop the innovative adaptation of the church within contemporary society, enabling it to become a vital instrument for missio Dei (Doornenbal 2012: 48–49, 339–340).

The polarity inherent in the understanding of missio Dei as examined previously, however, gives rise to at least two competing fashions of missional ecclesiology. They mirror the two major approaches to missio Dei, particularly regarding their interpretation of God’s relation to the church.

The missional ecclesiology, which follows the christocentric-trinitarian view of missio Dei, finds the key characterization of the church in the development of the missionary congregation (Goheen 2010: 71). Under this approach, the missionary congregation is understood as being called by the triune God to extend the redemptive work of the Son. Lesslie Newbigin (Newbigin 1953: 147), a formative advocate of this approach, emphasizes that the church can only be an indispensable instrument of God if its life is also a provisional embodiment of what God is establishing through such work of Christ. In other words, the church becomes a gathering that both bears witness to and actively partakes in God’s mission, thereby intertwining the church’s mission with its ecclesial nature. Accordingly, this approach focuses on developing the missional nature of the congregation by rethinking ‘leadership, church structure, the role of a pastor, […] how evangelism is done, how we express our worship, etc.’ (Kimball 2007: 86).

Such a congregational emphasis in this missional ecclesiology manifests in one of two centripetal forms: either a) altering the traditional congregation to become more engaged with the local context (Sumpter 2015: 3) or b) creating more flexible and relational gatherings that attempt to go beyond the confines of traditional churches (Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs Council 2004: 16–27; Doornenbal 2012: 42–44). The development of such missionary congregations, however, as pointed out by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch (Frost and Hirsch 2003: 41–43), still shares the character of a ‘gathered’, ‘introverted’ or ‘attractional’ form of the church: while effectively seeking to engage with God’s mission within its reach, its centripetal character may limit its capacity to address the broader mission of God beyond its congregational radius.

In contrast, the missional ecclesiology, which follows the cosmocentric-trinitarian approach to missio Dei, leads its proponents to reimagine the church far wider and broader than the missionary congregation. Their theological reflection on the church is considerably diverse and radical in the exploration of its participation in God’s mission even to the point of abandoning traditional doctrinal commitments when necessary (Liederbach and Reid 2009: 191). They also see the laity as taking on a critical role in God’s mission within political, social, and economic contexts where the triune God is believed to be active (Goheen 2010: 71).

Necessarily, the proponents of this missional ecclesiology emphasize the centrifugal fashions of the church and thus let it manifest in a ‘strongly experimental, socially activist, inclusive, pluralist, pilgrim-on-the-way, this-world affirming community’ (Bolt 2006: 218). An obvious consequence of this centrifugal emphasis is that the church, in its participation in God’s missionary work, is limited in addressing its ecclesiological identity regarding what God is doing among those who gather together to worship him and enrich their life in Christ (Flett 2010: 72–76). In other words, this missional ecclesiology takes the risk of undermining any existing theological priorities for the church at the expense of the attempt to shape the church to engage with God’s mission in the world (Ward 2002: 65–66; Gay 2011: 103).

5.2 Implications for Christian identity

Missio Dei also has a profound impact on individual Christian believers, highlighting that Christians are being sent by God into the world. More precisely, it provides a sense of purpose for individual believers as agents of God’s mission in various contexts and spheres of society. In other words, missio Dei emphasizes the inseparability of Christian identity from participation in God’s mission (Chia 2022: 210; see also Bevans 2022: 120). Just as missio Dei informs the church to rediscover itself as the ‘missional church’ and the Bible to disclose its ‘missional narrative’, this inseparability suggests an addition of a ‘missional identity’ to what it means to be Christian. Drawing upon the spectrum of approaches to missio Dei as highlighted previously, this missional identity informs individual Christians in at least two directions.

In alignment with the christocentric-trinitarian view of missio Dei, a missional identity prompts Christians to reflect that being a Christian is to engage with the expansion of God’s kingdom through the redemptive work of Christ. This reflection invites Christians to locate their call to evangelism in the redemptive nature and act of the triune God, rather than in the context of church growth itself. Consequently, Christians come to see their church engagement as neither the end goal nor the measure of being a Christian. Instead, they are encouraged to understand their church commitment as an instrument for what the triune God is establishing through the work of Christ.

On the other hand, following the cosmocentric-trinitarian view of missio Dei, a missional identity leads Christians to engage with God who is not just the redeemer but also the governor, reconciler, and transformer of human culture, history, and society (Flett 2010: 142). This view calls Christians to let the light of the gospel illuminate historical and social changes, inspiring them to address social and ethical issues. In other words, this line of missional identity informs Christians to engage with a more holistic understanding of participation in God’s mission with both evangelism and social responsibility as part of their Christian duty (see Kim 2011: 353–354; Pikkert 2017: 20).

Moreover, the cosmocentric-trinitarian oriented missional identity compels Christians to recognize God as the creator, sustainer, and carer of the world (Kaoma 2014: 116–117). This stance encourages them to challenge an instrumental view of the natural world, but prompts them to engage with the natural world as God’s own creation and to ‘join the Creator in loving the creation […] in which all life exists’ (Kaoma 2022: 710; see also Kim 2011: 354). Necessarily, this missional identity invites Christians to address environmental concerns including ‘population growth, pollution, species extinction, climate change and human responsibility towards future generations’ as part of their Christian responsibility (Kaoma 2011: 298).

Despite the differences, both perspectives on missional identity converge in making a crucial distinction between a ‘missional’ and ‘missionary’ identity: both stances of missional identity inform the term ‘missional’ to specifically reflect missio Dei’s original theological intention, i.e. to extricate Christian mission from the historical baggage of ‘missionary’ endeavours based upon Western superiority claims and their cultural assumptions. In other words, employing a missional identity invites individual Christians to engage with the postcolonial component of missio Dei, exercising a more horizontal interaction with people around them (Bevans 2022: 116).

5.3 Implications for global society

There are no limitations in drawing implications from the concept of missio Dei within the global society. In his proposal of ‘missio Dei Trinitatis’, Youn (2018) stresses that both the mission of God and the church’s participation in it take place in the midst of the world. From the perspective of public theology, he suggests, this characteristic of missio Dei resonates with ‘the public mission’ that seeks to embody the reign of God in the world’s public realms. In other words, missio Dei promotes the social relevance of missiology in reference to the mission of the triune God.

Necessarily, the understanding and implications of such a missiological social relevance vary depending on cultural and geographical contexts. They affect how we understand the triune God’s intervention within a given society and thus our participation in such intervention.

Some cultures address Christian engagement with social justice as a primary expression of missio Dei in reference to their socio-political history or context. For example, P. Guillermo Oviedo (2022) addresses the implication of missio Dei in the context of Latin America’s struggles with its social issues, including structural components of violence, exploitation, and colonial legacies (see Theology in Latin America). He sees that missio Dei compels churches in Latin America to consider liberation theology as a critical way of reflecting on and participating in God’s intervention in their social struggles (Oviedo 2022: 232–233). More importantly, Oviedo shows that this understanding of missio Dei promotes their collaboration with other Christian churches, as well as different faiths, movements, and social organizations, forming a key aspect of Latin American interpretation of missio Dei: ‘Christian and human unity for the mission of God’ (2022: 233).

Similarly, Cho (2022) highlights how missio Dei has been interpreted within the framework of Minjung theology in Korea. This Korean form of liberation theology addresses a Christian response to socio-political injustice in Korean society. Cho suggests that missio Dei is understood as a theological justification for Minjung theology as it seeks to discern and participate in God’s intervention in ‘politics, society, ecumenism, and human rights movements’ within Korea (Cho 2022: 32; see also Chae 2002: 247–248).

Meanwhile, J. Jayakiran Sebastian (2022) shows a South Asian engagement with missio Dei from a postcolonial perspective. He specifically critiques a christocentric-trinitarian view of missio Dei, surfacing its potential risk of aligning God’s mission too closely with the institutionalized activities of the church. He highlights the risks of such alignment in a pluralistic context like India, where violence and alienation are increasingly experienced among those who are ‘least and the last’ and thus their Indigenous worldviews are silenced (Sebastian 2022: 354). Drawing on postcolonial studies, Sebastian proposes an approach to missio Dei that is ‘open and ready to receive accounts and explanations regarding why others believe in their particularities and the ways in which their foundational truths are expressed’ (Sebastian 2015: 145–146). This approach reimagines people of their own worldviews or faiths not as those whom Christians ought to convert but as those with whom the triune God engages.

5.4 Implications for world mission

Missio Dei has an impact on the world of contemporary Christian missionary movements. As addressed throughout the article, at the very of heart of missio Dei lies an understanding that mission is derived from God’s missionary nature and act. In the context of Christian mission, this understanding suggests a crucial distinction between ‘mission’ as God’s mission and ‘missions’ as the church’s missionary endeavours (Bosch 1991: 391). As Lalsankgima Pachuau (2000: 543) highlights, this distinction significantly implies that ‘mission cannot be claimed by any one particular church or region’. In other words, missio Dei negates any institutional or regional ownership of mission.

This character of missio Dei challenges the traditional understanding and practice of world mission in which a unilateral missionary flow from the West to the non-Western worlds was taken for granted (Marsh 2003: 370–371). More precisely, this character critiques the Christendom model of world mission, which was deeply rooted in an outdated dichotomy between the Christian territory ‘here’ in the West and the non-Christian worlds ‘there’ outside the West (see Smith 2003: 1–7). With this approach, world mission was shaped and run by Western churches and thus was exclusively embedded in the missionary flow ‘from the West to the Rest’ (Kim 2011: 353).

The implication of missio Dei’s challenge to this old paradigm of mission is evident in the development of various global missionary discourses beyond such a particular flow. Firstly, the discussion of ‘mission in six continents’ surfaced at the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) in Mexico City in 1963. This discussion suggests that every part of the world is the sphere of God’s mission with which churches and Christians are invited to engage wherever they are (Kim 2001: 2000; see also Flett 2010: 65). This suggestion challenges the tradition concept of ‘mission fields’ which was built upon the paternalistic geographical distinction between Christian and non-Christian worlds (Smith 2000: 640–641). Consequently, the discussion of mission in six continents highlights that the whole world, including the West, is God’s mission field, and thus that the unilateral idea of world mission from West to non-West is increasingly undermined (Pachuau 2000: 543).

This impact of missio Dei is further extended in discussions such as ‘mission from everywhere to everywhere’ (Nazir-Ali 1990; see also Kim and Anderson 2011: 2), ‘mission from everywhere to everyone’ (Escobar 2003), and ‘mission from everyone to everywhere’ (Yeh 2016). While these phases may be based on different origins or developed independently, they contribute to shaping a single understanding of world mission: churches and Christians in the world together participate in the mission of God as equal partners in a ‘polycentric and polydirectional’ fashion (Yeh 2016: 216; see also Marsh 2003: 371).

This polycentric and polydirectional mission involves a relatively recent discussion of ‘reverse mission’. This discussion arises from ‘the shift of the centre of gravity’ in the Christian world (Yung 2022: 77–78; see also Walls 2004; Jenkins 2011). This shift highlights that the majority of Christian populations now live outside the West owing to the growth of Christianity in the global South (and East) and its decline in the global North (and West). It is in this context that a wide variety of missionary endeavours are described as reverse mission, including the sending of missionaries from Africa, Asia, or Latin America to Europe (Ojo 2007: 380), and Christian migrants’ witness to secular Europeans in their host society either privately or through their migrant churches (Jongeneel 2003: 32). It is undeniable that the terminology of ‘reverse mission’ is in controversy, given the wide variety of subject matters, motivations, and nuances it involves (see Freston 2010: 154–157; Morier-Genoud 2018: 170–175). Nonetheless, these various debates about reverse mission highlight in common a particular stream of world mission that is currently taking place from the traditional mission fields to the former Christian heartlands (Balia and Kim 2010: 134; Kim 2015: 4) or from ‘the Rest to the West’ (Catto 2016: 93–101; see also Kim 2011: 355). More importantly, they represent the Southern and Eastern Christians and their churches’ attempt to participate in the mission of God in the North and West (see Kim 2019: 218–248; Remigio 2020: 36–39). In short, reverse mission points to ‘one of the facets of missio Dei’ in the landscape of world mission (Oliveira 2021: 2).