Missio Dei is a formal theological term, latin for "God’s mission". The term means just what is says: mission belongs to God. We might think of missio Dei as a wholly owned proprietary family pursuit founded, directed, and resourced by God himself. The success of this mission is wholly dependent on the founder, owner and operator. The owner defines the mission’s purposes and strategies, means and methods, timing and pacing. The mission scope is all encompassing—multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-resourced.
God is the guarantor of this mission. Like the glaciers that shaped the majestic Yosemite Valley in California, God’s purposes are unstoppable. God has promised to fulfill this mission. God is the one who will make it happen, emphasized by the “I will…” declarations, repeated some 80 times in Genesis alone.
God invites responsive men and women into missio Dei. God oversees the formation of those men and women who say yes to that invitation. God intentionally shapes and forms those willing collaborators through a series of formational experiences designed to fully develop their capacity for God's purposes. That shaping process takes a lifetime, as Bobby Clinton indicated in his Leadership Emergence Theory, popularized in his 2012 book "The Making of a Leader: Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development".
God’s purposes are unstoppable.
Forty of those “I will” repetitions in Genesis are found in the God/Abraham narrative in chapters 11:27-25:10. They include “Go, and I will show you the land…I will bless you and make you a blessing…I will give this land to your descendants…I will make your descendants uncountable…I will make nations and kings come from you…I will make my everlasting covenant with you and your offspring…I will bless Sarah and give her a son… I will not hide my plans from Abraham…I will answer your prayer for mercy…I myself will provide the sacrifice…”
The Abrahamic example
God’s “I will” intentional shaping of Abraham affords us an intimate picture of how God intentionally forms missionaries over a lifetime. That shaping began in Abraham’s childhood as his father Terah moved the family from Ur to Haran. Perhaps Terah’s travels prepared Abraham for a life as a sojourner, one who only ever owned one piece of land—his wife’s grave site. His travels with his father set the stage for Abraham to have ears to hear the Lord’s voice that invited him to leave everything and go the place the Lord would show him.
Abraham heard God’s voice, and responded positively and immediately: he went. The ability to hear God’s voice and respond positively is the first stage in missionary formation. As for Abraham, so for us: we too will be invited into the unknown where we will be moved toward trusting God. This initial “yes” was the first of Abraham’s many positive responses to the Lord’s intentional lifelong shaping processes.
My wife and I heard that voice at URBANA ’76, a large missionary conference in the USA. For us it meant a move of about 80 miles. That is less than two hours in a borrowed and overloaded Buick station wagon, but we were still moving into the unknown. The geographic journey was short, but leaving what we knew for the unknown was, for us, a big challenge. We went and were blessed with some of the most formative years of our lives, blessed with new and now lifelong friends, undiscovered gifts and abilities, and a new level of trust in God’s intentions for us.
Abraham went, but his journey was much greater than my wife and mine. Abraham's was closer to 1,000 miles, and not in an air-conditioned car on smooth highways lined with gas stations and restaurants. When he arrived, he encountered famine, marital stress, made inappropriate cultural responses, and got embroiled in cross-cultural conflict.
He weathered extended family dysfunction and, at great risk, rescued his wayward nephew in a commando raid that resulted in the defeat of the major political powers of that day. Then, rather than using his military prowess to take the promised land through his own power, he acknowledged the Lord by tithing to Melchizedek and escaped entanglement with the king of Sodom.
At just the right time, with just the right words, and with his own personal and intimate presence, the Lord took Abram from fear to faith.
Abraham’s first term on the field was tough! Yet the Lord met him at just the right time with just the right words: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great…your very own son shall be your heir…number the stars…so shall your offspring be…And he (Abram) believed the LORD, and he (the LORD) counted it to him (Abram) as righteousness.” (from Genesis 15:1-6 ESV).
At just the right time, with just the right words, and with his own personal and intimate presence, the Lord took Abram from fear to faith, a faith that counted as righteousness by the Lord’s reckoning, and a faith response that echoes through eternity to all who say "yes" to the Lord.
Some might say that this was when Abraham got "saved". But to me, this looks more like the first of a series of shaping events that the Lord used to intentionally develop Abraham’s spiritual and missiological maturity. It was one of several shaping experiences designed to develop Abraham’s capacity to fully participate in missio Dei.
It is as if Abraham could not have grasped the Lord’s reckoning of righteousness by faith until after Abraham's initial positive responsiveness was demonstrated by leaving his past and moving into the unknown and to this point unexperienced blessing of the Lord. These were unexpected obstacles to promise fulfillment, at least some of which were due to Abraham’s internal liabilities, doubts, and fears. Yet they were part of the Lord’s preparation and shaping.
At just the right times, the Lord used other shaping events to facilitate Abraham’s missionary formation. The Lord entered into a covenant with Abraham, again with the promise of blessings multiplied beyond any reasonable expectation. Again a promise requiring responsiveness in advance of fulfillment was made, just as in the initial command to "leave home and I will bless you" (see the narrative in Genesis 17). Circumcision, a painful and permanent sign of faith in action, demonstrated trust in the Lord’s promised blessings and set the stage for ongoing formation.
At just the right time, the Lord revealed to Abraham his intentions to visit, evaluate, and if necessary, bring catastrophic judgment on the peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did the Lord reveal this to Abraham? To further Abraham’s missionary formation: from this revelation, Abraham understood that, in judgment, the Lord desired active intercession for divine mercy. Abraham moved into aggressive and risky negotiations with the Lord. The Lord intentionally initiated this negotiation that developed a heart of love and mercy and active intercession by Abraham on behalf of those estranged and fatally ungodly neighbors. This is the heart of a missionary, a heart shaped by God himself. (Genesis 18:17-33; note especially verse 33.)
God’s capstone shaping event came late in Abraham’s life. God invited Abraham into extreme sacrificial love, the sacrifice of his son, his only son, the son that he loved. Abraham obeyed and proved his fear (awe, reverence, honor) for God, demonstrated his complete alignment with missio Dei, and yet another I will kind of promise: “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” (Genesis 22:14 ESV) This story pre-shadows by a couple thousand years Jesus’ command and example: you must lose your life to save it.
Learning from Abraham
I have heard it said that the church of God has a mission to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to all unreached peoples, and when we fulfill that mission, the Lord will return. It is better said that the God of mission has a Church, a people God shapes and sends in collaboration with the missio Dei purposes of God. It is God who accomplishes missionary formation through a series of shaping events that unfold over a lifetime.
It does not surprise or disappoint God when first term missionaries, facing extraordinary challenges and struggles, make some mistakes. God is not surprised or derailed when long term seasoned missionaries fall short, make mistakes, and feel fatigued. Instead, we are invited into ongoing formation, a step at a time, and at just the right times.
It looks to me that God values persistence beyond perfection, ongoing positive responsiveness beyond proficiency, developmental growth over stage-appropriate misbehaviors. Jesus’ methodology of “follow me, and I will make you become…” has the confidence of the Father. This is an important lesson for missionaries, and for those who recruit, equip, and deploy missionaries: that, rather than depend on us, missio Dei belongs to and relies upon God—Father, Son, and Spirit—to accomplish and fulfill the mission of God.
Originally published by China Source. Republished with permission.
Dr Ken Anderson is the board chair for ChinaReach, an indigenous missiological training effort intended to help China move from a mission field to a mission force. He holds DMiss and MAGL degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary. From 2011–2021 he served as an itinerant extension biblical training missionary in China and Nepal. He is currently leading missiological training in Mark’s Gospel for an indigenous church planting movement in southern Nepal and serves on boards including a Russian video seminary, a Nepali aftercare home, an indigenous ministry effort in Mexico, and as an elder in his local church.
ChinaSource is a trusted partner and platform for educating the global church on critical issues facing the church and ministries in China, and for connecting Christians inside and outside China to advance the kingdom of God globally. ChinaSource's vision is to see the church in China and the global church learning and growing together, engaging in ministry that powerfully advances the kingdom of God.
