Being Missional

Excerpt:

‎The earliest known usages of the term “missional” occurred in 1883 in C.E. Bournes’ The Heroes of African Discovery and Adventure and then in 1907 in W.G. Holmes’ The Age of Justinian and Theodora.

Figure of a Missional Perspective (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The meaning of the term has changed enough that neither of these occurrences embodies the way it is used today. Today, the term missional is commonly used in conversations among Christians. As it has grown in popularity, however, it raises some theological concerns, challenges, and opportunities.
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The defining missiological debate in mission history has been the relationship between “church and mission,” which has become a catalyst for three dimensions of missional: missionary, mission, and the missio Dei. …

Barry, J. D., Grigoni, M. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Mangum, D., & Whitehead, M. M. (2012). Faithlife Study Bible. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

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“The missiological consensus that Newbigin focused on our situation may be summarized with the term missio Dei, ‘mission of God.’”  

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“Is the church’s mission primarily the delivery of the message of the gospel—in which case the verbal element is all that really matters? Or does the church’s mission include the embodiment of the message in life and action? Sometimes this question is raised as the tension between proclamation and presence. Or between words and works. We will explore the integration of what the church is meant to be as well as what the church is meant to say.” (The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church's Mission, p. 30).

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  mission is not just the mother of theology. Mission is also the telos [purpose, goal, and end] of theology.
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  Good theology is born out of mission, but it also dies for mission Thus, I suggest, missio Dei might be the main purpose of theology. Of course, theology is more than just an academic discipline geared to enlighten and educate the mind. It is a spiritual exercise that enhances and serves mission. It is time for a mission-shaped theology (not just a missional theology or a theology of mission) to begin to take root.
  
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• What Does it Look Like to be Missional? (thehighcalling.org)
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  Do I see my work as a means to worship God? Am I thankful to him for the gifts, skills, and talents he has given me? Do I thank him for giving me opportunity to serve him in all that I do? Do I intentionally pray that God could use me and my work to bring him glory?

Christendom Astray The Devil Not A Personal Super-Natural Being

Christendom Astray

Lecture 7

By Robert Roberts

The Devil Not A Personal Super-Natural Being,

But The Scriptural Personification of Sin

In Its Manifestations Among Men

IN THE religion of Christendom, the devil figures almost more prominently than God. If we have found Christendom astray as to the nature of man, it will not be wonderful if we find it astray on the subject of the devil, with which, scripturally, man has so much to do.

The theology of Christendom places the devil in juxtaposition with God. As the one is presented for worship as the source and  embodiment of all good, so the other is held up for detestation and dread, as the instigator and promoter of all evil.
Practically, the one is regarded in the light of the good God, and the other as the bad god. It is the polytheism of paganism in its smallest form: and the philosophy of the ancients embodied in names and forms supplied by the Bible.

cont. > http://www.tlcecclesia.org/id92.htm

Read also > Satan or the devil

Theology without spirituality sterile academic exercise

A theology without spirituality would be a sterile academic
exercise.

      -- John Macquarrie