Byrnesys Blabberings

I have been re-thinking my conception of mission and plan to blog a short series on Missions in the 21st Century, to put a backdrop to this series I want to try and lay some of my cards out on the table, as it where, to give some clarity on why I think the way I do regarding missions:

- Since being fairly young I have seen the need for the Gospel to be spread to other Nations where there is little Christian Witness or where the society is in need to an injection of Kingdom values and renewal,

- I have felt that I am led in that direction of ministry, and so does my fiance Rachel,

- There is nothing inherently better about doing missions outside of your own cultural context, in my mind it is a valueless distinction, whilst being an important one, such as having a Christian vocation to be in a workplace vs. a Christian vocation in offices of the Church.

- There is a personal and seemingly a more wide-spread re-evaluation of what the Church is, what the Kingdom is, what it means to be missional, what it means to be in ministry.

Studying Theology, and Re-Understanding my Faith 

Much of these wranglings have been rooted in my study of theology,  learning to not only believe, and feel my faith but to think through it as well. The intimation of that is not that I was a drone before studying, but that much of my positions on issues theological issues were based on things I had heard from people I respected.

Many of these were good things, and as someone who was growing up in life and faith these premises were helpful in constructing a firmly Christian conception of life which helped me approach theology in the first place but studying theology enabled me to re-build the premises block by block for myself, enabling me to have a fuller grasp on what it was that I believed, or gave me a better grasp of why I did not believe something.

I have certainly not lost my earlier theological convictions, which where largely evangelical, though I have thought them through in light of the contrasting views and realised that the evangelical, reformed, protestant Church has, just as other traditions, done things well over time, and other things not so well, and to conceed this is to be truthful, not to give concession.

In short, I am now much less militant evangelical in my beliefs, which I have realised was in some cases borderline gnostic, but now hold to a generous evangelical which is hopefully marked by its humility (using that [generous] word in the hope it can be considered on its own merit and not in relation to any books by Brian McLaren which I havent read!).

Hopefully that has given you some rough idea of the direction I am coming from, or an idea of the pre-suppositions I hold in coming towards this subject.

In conclusion I thought it would be good to explain the title, the reason I preceeded Missions with somewhat of a date stamp is that I believe whilst missions is act of communicating the timeless truth of the biblical story, we communicate within contexts which shape the way we approach this communication and the way it is recieved.

The inclusion of this date stamp is an attempt to acknowledge that the Go commandment in Matthew 28 is communicated to the Church throughout history, and that God is God throughout history but validates ‘our’ time in history as one where we are charged with how to ‘Go’.

What do you think is distinctive about this time in History in relation to the ‘Go’ text in Matthew 28?

I will try and tag all of the posts in this series with "21stcenturymissions" so that they can be viewed altogether if required.