The Ecclesia Collective

This last Mother’s Day, I found myself thinking about the profound impact women have had on my life. My mother, my wife, my mother-in-law and my daughter are just some of those that have had the strongest female influence in my life.

While thinking about this, I began to think about something else: we often fail to look at mission from a feminine perspective… or at least the guys that dominate the missional conversation do.

The writings of theologians such as Leslie Newbigin, David Bosch and others has brought about a renewed interested in missiology. The result has brought upon the Church a fresh conviction–which is to be applauded. But one thing that continues to dominate the current imagination of missiology, and by that hampering its practical understanding for many within the Body, is its limitless attachment to masculine–even phallic–metaphors.

As a kid sitting in a pew during a Sunday evening service I remember listening to a missionary talk about the gospel “penetrating the dark heart of Africa”. Language like this has long impacted our imaginations of Church and its missional identity. In their book, Metaphors We Live By, Lakkoff and Johnson write, “[p]rimarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature.” And, “we act according to the way we conceive of things.” In regards to mission, our tendency towards what I view as “masculine” language has effected how we understand and go about the mission of the Church

When I think of mission I often begin with the Great Commission. This passage begins with the word, “Go…” This is where mission begins for most; it evokes a sense of forward motion, thrusting us into action. Much of the verbs used in regards to mission are often pro-active words such as building, going, or expanding. If using the image of a couple dancing, these types of words pose the missional church as leading the dance. But could it be that the New Testament writers intended a different kind of image? Were intended to be the partner being led? Read what George Hunsberger has to say about this in his chapter in Missional Church:

“… the grammar by which the New Testament depicts the reign of God cuts across the grain of these North American culture-bound ways of seeing things. The verbs to build and to extend are not found in the New Testament’s grammar for the reign of God. The announcement of God’s reign nowhere includes an invitation to go out and build it, nor to extend it. These are not New Testament ways of speaking about the reign of God.

The words most often used evoke quite a different spirit and therefore, a very different missional identity and engagement. The New Testament employs the words receive and enter. They come at times intertwined in the text…

The reign of God is something taken to oneself. It is a gift of God’s making, freely given. It calls for the simple, trusting act of receiving.”

For many of us, the idea of participating in the Missio Dei conjures images of leaving one place, going to another, and taking the gospel of the kingdom with us. But what this fails to recognize is that often times mission requires embracing the community we are a part of. Invitation and inclusion are radical aspects of the Gospel that are often forgotten when we continuously push forward, creating and building.

A more complete understanding of mission requires us to see that we are required to practice invitation and embrace as part of mission. When we talk about mission within a region, we cannot simply talk about going into the community and building the kingdom in the region. We need to be aware of the kingdom already at work in the city, waiting for our participation.

I have almost always seen the women in my life accomplish this kind of posture towards mission better than I. While I spend hours creating new ways to reach our neighborhood awaiting implementation, my wife, Brooke, meets people in the neighborhood, opens our home, welcomes people to our table and takes very ordinary interactions that often turn into radically redemptive stories Whenever I see this happen, I am forced to question my own intentions. Is my “building” a lack of trust in God? Sometimes, I’m certain that my wife’s trust in God and belief in the presence of the kingdom is much greater than my own. She is confident that she doesn’t need to create it, or make it happen. She knows that by simply living into the moment, God’s activity will be revealed.

Most men I know struggle with manifesting this aspect of mission. Whenever I am asked for a proposal for ministry or church planting, I wish I could simply write, “I am going to watch for the opportunities that already exist and participate in that.” I don’t think we’re ready for that yet. We need women who understand these elements more intuitively to teach us, guide us in being a missional people that know how to be missional in all ways. For the greater part of the history of the church, women have had to discover participating in God’s mission from the fringes, at home, and in the ordinary. But since we now stand at the end of Christendom and with it’s death the loss of it’s resources as well, the feminine nature of mission may have finally reached its moment.

Jason Evans is a co-founder of the Ecclesia Collective and a member of the Hawthorn House. He is married to Brooke and has two wonderful kids, Paige and Matt. He is currently a student at Fuller Seminary.