An INFEMIT community conversation
As we prepare for our next Stott-Bediako Forum on Transformation Revisited: Mission and Gospel Imagination, we are holding conversations with members of the INFEMIT Community to explore some of the related themes. In this podcast, we talk with Al Tizon about Mission as Transformation, its core tenets and relevance for today. Al starts off with a short presentation to frame the conversation, which you can watch here.
Listen to the conversation with Al, or read the excerpt below.
Click to listen or find the episode on your preferred podcast platform here.
Conversation Excerpt
Teofil: How do you relate Mission as Transformation to ecclesiology or, maybe even more precise, how Mission as Transformation informs the ecclesiology(ies) and also the individual members of the Church?
Al: I suppose one of the other features that could have been added to the list is “ecclesiological,” because the church – speaking of inseparability – church and mission are inseparable as well. Mission, at least biblically defined, cannot be separated from the community called the “Church,” and the Church is not fully the Church unless it’s engaged in mission. And so, when we talk about Mission as Transformation, we have to always have in the background a picture or something similar to this picture of this mission flowing out of a community that confesses Jesus as Lord and working out its salvation, even within the community.
Now that all sounds good theologically, but I’m also a pastor here in San Francisco, and I know the practical challenge of that, because the internal life of church can consume the entire life of church. I mean, we can just get so inward, because there are plenty of needs in the church that we don’t do what we exist for, which is to “exist for others,” in the words of Bonhoeffer. We exist for others. We – the Church is here for others. And insofar as we can live into that, into our missional character, the healthier we will be as a church. I often talk to my congregation about, “Hey, it’s not about becoming healthy so that we can do mission. We do mission as part of our health! When we don’t do mission, we get sick!”
And so that’s how important it is to think about the Church when we are talking about all these mission approaches.
The views and opinions expressed in these interviews are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect an official position of INFEMIT. We seek to foster reflection through conversation, and we ask you to be respectful and constructive in your comments.
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