A Mission From God

This is an excellent article from The Scriptorium Daily on the idea of the missional nature and responsibility of the church. And who doesn't like a Blues Brother reference to make a good theological point. The first paragraph below explains the reference.



‘We’re on a mission from God.’

Matt Jenson
Theology
02.08.2010 .

In the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, Dan Akroyd deadpans: ‘We’re on a mission from God.’ He and his partner are in the process of putting their band back together and are enlisting an old bandmate, and Akroyd’s character flatly insists that the divine origin of their project is sufficient warrant for the man to rejoin the band. Missions from God worry us, of course; they remind us of loose cannons and power mongers whose purportedly divine missions always seem to reveal a more diabolical than divine origin. To speak of the missio Dei, though, is to make a small, but significant, change in the language. This is not a mission from God but the mission of God. Where the first emphasizes divine sponsorship of our program and suggests its unassailable character (who, after all, can challenge the credentials of a prophet?), the second emphasizes a divine program in which we graciously have been included.

Later in the article he writes:

The church’s mission takes its cues from and finds its place in God’s mission. Jesus commissioned his disciples to continue his work, and he explicitly connected his mission to theirs: ‘As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.’ (John 17:18) There is an analogy between the two; even more, the mission of the disciples is included in the mission of the Son.

You can read the entire post here >>

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