The Mission of God: Definitions

I hoped to have had this post on Tuesday but I got behind on a computer project I was involved in. I do some IT consulting on the side and had a software-based phone system that was giving me fits, which I finally finished up yesterday. So I’m late on this post…Please forgive me.

Christopher Wright gives us, in the introduction, several definitions centered around the word mission so that the reader gets an idea of how he is thinking and describing his thesis.

Mission - “Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation.” He goes on to describe the word mission in a more general sense of a “long-term purpose or goal that is to be achieved through proximate objectives and planned actions. Within such a broad mission…there is room for subordinate missions, in the sense of specific tasks assigned to a person or group that are to be accomplished as steps toward the wider mission.” He also states that the Bible gives us a picture of a God who is entirely purposeful, and thus on a mission.

Missionary - This word refers to people who engage in mission, most often in a culture other than their own. They are typically sent by churches or agencies to work in mission or on missions.

Missional - This word is simply an adjective “denoting something that is relates to or characterized by mission, or has the qualities, attributes or dynamics of mission.” Wright goes on to argue that Israel had a missional reason for existence, not necessarily a missionary mandate to go to the nations.

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