Missionary God and Missionary Church

On the basis of others who have been praising John Flett's The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and the Nature of Christian Community (Eerdmans, 2010), I got myself a copy. It is well worth a read, by ministers and those involved in mission agencies alike. Flett establishes why its theologically right to say the triune God is a missionary God and the church is a missionary community. The major theme running the book is mission is not a second step, whether in a doctrine of God or a doctrine of the church. The church cannot be anything other than missionary. It is not an add on or an optional extra, because mission is an integral par tof God's being, not a secondary characteristic. For British Baptists, one of its 5 Core Values is being a missionary community. Steve Holmes in an article on trinitarian missiology, which Flett cites at various points, has already demonstrated why we claim God is a missionary God, and Flett goes further in developing this. Flett, alongside Nate Kerr and others, is critical of Hauerwas and co. and their commitment to practices (especially within worship as means of learning Christian character) as being too inward-looking and 'conceiving them without reference to the missionary act' (p.280). I'll be interest to see where this conversation goes and how Hauerwas and Wells will respond. (I think Hauerwas has delivered a paper this year in response to Kerr's criticisms in Christ, History and Apocalyptic).

Comments

[m]

Do you know if anyone has put in the work of arguing that for Hauerwas (and Yoder and McCledon to some extent (although Mcclendon does have a section on Mission))witness constitues some part of the mission of God? And that central for them is the presumption that Christ founded a church for this mission so how are we going to properly understand what this means?
It also surprises me that so many of these people use a Barthians understanding of revelation which for him collaspes (or is directly found) in preaching which is explictly an act of the church and worship!
And my final non-crtical question is that do you think you could name what mission might actually look like to Flett and Kerr (liberation theology)?