Theology of Mission

Theology of Mission

Introduction

Theology and Mission have been because "the hand", to express it somehow, but not always in a conscious way, as part of theologians and missionaries. Hence, the development and the evolution of theology in its various areas, have been reflected in the way of understanding and practice mission. And this in turn has identified and characterized the theology of the church walk. I recall three examples. Against the invasion of the peoples of East and North, pagans we would say today, St. Augustine asks about the self and the work of the Church in that new situation of such importance and gives us this masterpiece of theology and history is both a theology of mission, of City of God ... When in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, Europeans came to America and reach Asia, the question arises of how urgent was to understand the "dogma" (Pius XII stated so in l949) of "nulla salus extra Ecclesiam" and the theologians began to develop different theories of implicit faith and belonging "in re" and "in voting" to the Church .

Discussion

Six Imperatives of Mission Theology

I take it to mean that "domestic mission" implies a movement of the local church toward a group or area that is of a markedly different culture than that of the congregation reaching out. This applies equally to ministry with ethnic minorities as to certain aspects of youdi work or industrial mission. I also have a conviction that certain basic principles of operating remain the same whether the missionerin-charge is of the culture of the sending or of the receiving group. Many mistakes have been made in recent years by missioners ostensibly of the tradition of the receiving group who have become so in acculturated by the sending group that they have in practice lost touch with the customs and thought of the group of which they were once a part.

The first imperative is that missioners must listen. Too much of the history of missions is a tale of "salvation models" being imported into indigenous cultures, a one-way traffic where missioners assume moral superiority and greater knowledge than those to whom they are sent. It accounts, for example, for why early European missionaries to the Americas thought that native peoples had no religion when they saw no buildings for it and discovered the very word did not exist in their vocabularies. Rather, contact must be in the nature of dialogue, in which each party listens and shares, and mutually decides what sort of communication is desirable.

This heralds the second imperative, which is that the missioners themselves must be prepared to be evangelized. Even liberal Christians tend to assume that, in the end, if this dialogue takes place, the other side will see the light and want conversion. But in tndy open conversation either side may be convinced by the other. I found that my whole prayer life was reinvigorated by learning how to pray with the native peoples who welcomed ...