The Being-ness of Church

Mission belongs to God from the beginning to the end. The concept of missio Dei (the mission of God) signifies the fact that the Triune God is the initiator and finisher of this mission (Latin, sending). The church does not have mission unless she is invited by the Triune God to participate in it. The missio Dei is not just a missionary activity the church must do. Rather, the church must be understood within the trinitarian framework of the missio Dei in which the church understands her nature, which is missionary. In light of this missionary nature, the church must be missionary in action. Otherwise, it ceases to be called church. What the church does reflects what the church is. In other words, the mission of the church reflects the nature of the church that is solely derived from the Triune God who is missionary by nature.

In commenting on the American way of understanding the church in terms of function, Eugene Peterson writes: “‘Ontology’ is a word that can get us past this clutter of functionalism. Ontology has to do with being. An ontological understanding of church has to do with what it is, not what it does…The being-ness of church is what we are dealing with. Church is not something that we cobble together to do something for God.” [Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 118-119.] The ontological nature of the church is understood exclusively in terms of the missio Dei in which the church is invited to participate in the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father to the world. In this vein, the being-ness of the church is the sent-ness of the church. The church is a sent community.