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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
To answer the question of the title of this article, the words ‘community’, ‘postmodern’, ‘mission’ and ‘paradigm’ are examined in turn and defined. The central place of the ‘local church’ in contemporary missiology is discussed, and the need for a missional and communitarian ecclesiology is argued with positive but critical reference to the approach of the Gospel and Our Culture Network of North America. The article ends by suggesting that ‘community’ can indeed be seen as a mission paradigm for postmodernity, and by posing some key questions facing the local church if it is to become a missional community.
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25. L.A. Hoedemaker has raised valid questions about the usefulness of the missio Dei concept. See ‘The People of God and the Ends of the Earth’, in Verstraelen, F.J., Camps, A., Hoedemaker, L.A. and Spindler, M.R. (eds.), Missiology: An Ecumenical Introduction. Texts and Contexts of Global Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 157–71, esp. 162–66.Google Scholar Perhaps his concerns can be met if we insist on giving central place to the New Testament vision of ‘the reign of God’ in the missio Dei – a theological emphasis which has often been lost, as Hoedemaker himself notes. The NCCA definition, I believe, clearly retains this emphasis.
26. An assignment in the Diploma missiology course of the Theological Education by Extension College of Southern Africa (TEEC) during 2000 asked the question, ‘Is mission a programme of the church, or the church a programme of mission?’ As I marked the students' answers, I was dismayed, but not surprised, by the number who saw mission as a programme of the church.
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40. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, Chapter 6.Google Scholar
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42. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, Chapter 8.Google Scholar
43. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, Chapter 9.Google Scholar
44. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, pp. 183–220.Google Scholar Although the whole book is jointly owned by the team which produced it, each chapter is the work of one particular member. Chapter 7 was drafted by Alan Roxburgh, who, the year before Missional Church appeared, issued a book dealing with the missionary congregation as a liminal community, and setting out ideas about the character of its leadership (Roxburgh, A.J., The Missionary Congregation, Leadership and Liminality [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997])Google Scholar. His contribution to Missional Church, while not directly dealing with the issue of liminality, considerably develops the ecclesiological dimensions implicit in the earlier book.
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48. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, p. 206.Google Scholar
49. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, p. 208.Google Scholar
50. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, p. 212Google Scholar, see the diagram at p. 213.
51. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, p. 247.Google Scholar
52. Stephen Bevans has pointed out to me that he prefers the phrase communionin-mission. ‘The word ‘communion’ is kind of a ‘catholic’ word. The GOCN's ‘missional community’ sounds a bit ‘Protestant’ to Catholic ears!’ (e-mail note, 7 March 2001). However, the ecclesiological emphasis is very much the same.
53. Kuhn, quoted in Küng, , Theology for the Third Millennium, p. 131.Google Scholar
54. Guder, et al. , Missional Church, p. 179.Google Scholar
55. Page, , God Is with Us, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar
56. Quoted in Guder, et al. , Missional Church, p. 182.Google Scholar
57. The missional ecclesiology and the associated training material developed by the (Roman Catholic) Lumko Institute in South Africa offers creative and contextual answers to these questions. They have been taken up in a number of Anglican dioceses in Southern Africa. See Prior, L.P., Towards a Community Church: The Way Ahead for Today's Parish (Delmenville: Lumko Institute, 2nd edn, 1997)Google Scholar for a popular version of the Lumko Institute's framework. Prior, L.P., A Communion of Communities. The Mission and Growth of a Local Church as Reflected in the Lumko Institute, MTh, University of South Africa, 1993, gives a fuller scholarly account.Google Scholar