I — WHAT IS IT?
I — WHAT IS THE MISSIO DEI?
From the outset, mission must be distinguished from missions. Mission refers to the mission of God (the Missio Dei), the sending of God, His sending nature and function to rescue the lost world. By contrast, missions refers to places, scope, activities, endeavors, needs, forms, or practices. Mission has historically been confused with foreign or domestic missions, which can encompass a subsidized congregation, a field or geographical area, a budget, an agency, physical buildings and even church planting.
Foreign missions and missionaries have been wrongly used as the “bullet” for giving, meeting a “mission budget” or motive for stewardship and confusing missions with mission. While missions may help facilitate the Mission of God, they are not in and of themselves the Mission of God.
Out of God’s love for the fallen world and by His gracious initiative, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to save the lost world that was incapable of saving itself. This is the Missio Dei, the mission rescue act of God. The Missio Dei centers on the sending of Jesus, who in turn sends believers into the world and who, together with the Father, sent the Holy Spirit to empower God’s people to receive and proclaim the Gospel and participate in God’s mission to save the lost.
The Gospel of Christ is centered in the sending of God (Missio Dei) for our salvation.
(To learn more about the Missio Dei, refer to the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s A Theological Statement of Mission, published by the Commission on Theology and Church Relations in 1991.)
The Missio Dei is GOD’S [GREAT] SENDING!
1. John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
2. John 4:34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”
3. John 17:1-3 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
4. John 17:18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.
5. John 20:21-23 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
6. Luke 24:45-49 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
