Making Critically Conscious Disciples: A Zambian Pentecostal Pneumato‐Discipleship Missiology

This article calls for rethinking of discipleship within missio Spiritus for political formation necessary for the viable functioning of Zambian Pentecostalism in the neo‐colonial context. It argues that the theme for the 2018 World Mission Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship,” calls for pneumato‐discipleship in promoting human dignity. Through an empirical missiological approach, the article analyzes interviews conducted with various believers in various Pentecostal communities to demonstrate the emerging missio Spiritus praxis among Zambian Pentecostals, which seeks to promote a missional ethics of resistance to neo‐colonial political culture. Pneumato‐discipleship, as pedagogy for critically conscious disciples, is geared toward realization of human dignity. It is the instrument of hope in the search for dignity and struggle against pervasive inhumanities.     

Human Agency in the Missio Dei and the Problem of Discipleship

At the heart of this article is an inquiry into the relationship between human and divine agency in the doctrine of the missio Dei and a critique of the turn to the language of discipleship in looking to articulate this agency. Taking the World Council of Churches’ Commission of World Mission and Evangelism's two recent documents, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL) and the “Arusha Call to Discipleship,” as a case study, this article will seek to articulate an account of human participation in the missio Dei which maintains the emphasis on spirituality in TTL. Through a close reading of TTL and the Arusha Call, the article will demonstrate that the introduction of discipleship language has not solved the issue of agency but rather has changed the account of agency and, as a result, the missiology. By turning to accounts of faithful participation from qualitative research into British Methodism, to John V. Taylor's Go-between God, and to Pope Francis’ Evangelii gaudium, I will suggest that a better account of human agency in the missio Dei can be developed by emphasizing the pneumatology of TTL and by turning to language of attentiveness, accompaniment, and discernment.     

Disciples and Pilgrims,Arusha, and Karlsruhe

A striking feature of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), held at Karlsruhe in Germany in 2022, was its lack of attention to the “Arusha Call to Discipleship” issued by the WCC World Mission Conference held in Tanzania four years earlier. Further ecumenical amnesia was evident in the Assembly's neglect of the centenary of the formation of the International Missionary Council (IMC) in 1921. It is therefore timely to recall the purpose of the integration of the IMC and the WCC in 1961. This was driven, above all, by the theological imperative that mission and unity can never be separated from one another in the ecumenical movement. On the contrary, these two essential evangelical impulses must continuously inform and energize one another. It was in expectation of such synergy that the integration of the IMC and WCC was enacted. Today, a new opportunity to fulfil this ecumenical hope presents itself. Currently, the “unity strand” in the WCC has a preference for the language of pilgrimage when it comes to expressing the nature of the ecumenical journey, while the “mission strand” has opted for the language of discipleship. The opportunity missed at Karlsruhe was to draw the two into conversation with one another. Enabling the two motifs of disciple and pilgrim to inform and enrich one another could prove to be a vital source of renewal for the ecumenical movement in the next phase of its journey.     

Together toward Life

The Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) has since 2006, after the WCC Porto Alegre Assembly, been working and contributing toward the construction of the new ecumenical mission affirmation. The new statement will be presented to the WCC 10th Assembly at Busan, Korea, in 2013. Since the integration of the International Missionary Council (IMC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in New Delhi, 1961, there has been only one official WCC position statement on mission and evangelism, which was approved by the central committee in 1982, “Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation.” It is the aim of this ecumenical discernment to seek vision, concepts and directions for a renewed understanding and practise of mission and evangelism in changing landscapes. It seeks a broad appeal, even wider than WCC member churches and affiliated mission bodies, so that we can commit ourselves together to fullness of life for all, led by the God of Life!     

Learning about Spirituality Together with “Seekers”

The present era, often referred to as post‐secular, has in many places seen a resurgence in spirituality. Nevertheless, the contemporary quest for spirituality is unique in the sense that many people do not expect to have their spiritual needs fulfilled within the structures of organized religion, starting on a journey of their own explorations instead. Sociologists of religion, therefore, tend to employ the “dwellers” and “seekers” paradigm to account for this phenomenon. This paper will explore this phenomenon in the context of the Czech Republic, whose citizens are frequently characterized as distrustful toward institutional religiosity, through the lens of the recent World Council of Churches' affirmation on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL). For our purpose, the statement's emphasis on both “transformative spirituality” and “mission from the margins” will be of central importance. Using the notion of transformative spirituality as the energy engendered by the Spirit for the transformation of life and creation, it will be suggested that “seekers” can be agents in God's mission of liberation, reconciliation, and transformation, despite their inability or unwillingness to identify themselves with the church as institution. Keeping in mind ethical considerations, the paper will not seek to make a case for a forced “christening” of the seekers. Rather, it will argue that they can become partners in missio Dei, thus giving the notion of “mission from the margins” a new, contextually relevant dimension.     

Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes

The Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) has, since the WCC Porto Alegre Assembly in 2006, been working toward and contributing to the construction of a new ecumenical mission affirmation. The new statement will be presented to the WCC 10th assembly at Busan, Republic of Korea, in 2013. Since the integration of the International Missionary Council (IMC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in New Delhi in 1961, there has been only one official WCC position statement on mission and evangelism which was approved by the central committee in 1982, Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation. This new mission affirmation was unanimously approved by the WCC central committee on 5 September 2012 at its meeting on the island of Crete, Greece. It is the aim of this new ecumenical discernment to seek vision, concepts and directions for a renewed understanding and practice of mission and evangelism in changing landscapes. It seeks a broad appeal, even wider than WCC member churches and affiliated mission bodies, so that we can commit ourselves together to fullness of life for all, led by the God of Life!     

Moving in the Spirit

Together towards Life (TTL) holds together a theology of the God of life and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit with the renewal and transformation that begins with a commitment to justice and peace at the margins and anticipates the eschatological vision of the renewal of the whole creation. The theme of the forthcoming World Mission Conference in 2017 in Arusha (Tanzania), “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship,” marks the intersection between TTL and the Busan call for the pilgrimage of justice and peace. The theme invites participants to advance reflection on the life‐giving power of the Holy Spirit and the role of transformative communities moving together in hope of God's reign to come. The example of the World Council of Churches’ work on a Theology of Life shows that choosing this direction has implications for the practices of doing theology and even the organization of the forthcoming World Mission Conference. A fascinating task indeed!     

Brexit,Trump, and Christ's Call to Discipleship

In March 2018 the World Council of Churches will convene a Conference on World Mission and Evangelism at Arusha in Tanzania to address the theme “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship.” The verbs in the title give an important clue as to its meaning. It suggests an understanding of faith that is dynamic and relevant, provoking challenge and engendering change. This article seeks to sketch salient aspects of the contemporary global context that invite such transformative engagement. We are living through a time of rapid change in the “Overton window” – the acceptable range of beliefs and values in a culture at any particular time. This is illustrated by examining populist politics; fake news, post‐truth and alternative facts; the new age of xenophobia and racism; inequality and justice; and the earth at stake. Behind the forces driving the change in values are powerful vested interests that will not take kindly to being challenged. Discipleship is going to be costly. Deep personal transformation will shape agents of change who bring hope to a deeply troubled world. Disciples are called to carry their cross, yet at the same time, and no less fundamentally, they discover the source of infinite joy.     

What Is Transforming Discipleship?

In 2018, the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches took place in Arusha, Tanzania, on the theme “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship.” This article considers how this injunction corresponds to the biblical call, namely to love God more than anyone else; to deny ourselves and to take up the cross; and to abandon all that we have. How well does The Arusha Call to Discipleship describe the ambitious demand of discipleship to which the apostles were called by Jesus Christ? This article offers a critical biblical assessment of the qualities a disciple should have; who can be a disciple; the conditions and requirements of being a disciple according to the gospel; and the path of transforming discipleship in the challenging world in which we live today.     

Toward Epistemic Decolonial Turn in Missio‐Formation in African Christianity

This article is framed with the World Council of Churches' (WCC) mission statement Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, which seems to be reviving academic interests in missio‐formation as an interdisciplinary field study. The mission statement, which is framed in a postcolonial missional discourse, seems to show interest in how missio‐formation as academic discipline can expose the intersectionality of questions of power, politics, and culture in Africa. The matters of agency, subjectivity, pedagogy, and rhetoric are perceived as central to the envisaged public missio‐formation discourse. Hence, this article argues that the nature of the mission statement must also be comprehended as means for decolonizing missio‐formation paradigm in Africa within a decolonial framework which gives critical attention to how missions have functioned as a colonialist mechanism for colonializing African Christian minds and subjectivity.     

Mission Theology of the Church

This article on the mission theology of the church, a personal perspective by the vice‐moderator of CWME, draws on documentation produced by the commission and also responds to the Faith and Order document, The Nature and Mission of the Church. It is based on the trinitarian paradigm of mission referred to as missio Dei, which emphasizes the priority of God's sending activity in the world, by the Son and the Spirit, and the contingency of the church and its mission activities upon that. Therefore, it is concerned with the participation of the church in God's mission to and in the world, and from this perspective, has a particular interest with the actual, empirical church rather than the ideal church, recognizing that the church exists in many different forms in particular social, cultural, economic and political contexts. The article argues that the church is “missionary by its very nature”. Both theologically and empirically, it is impossible to separate the church from mission. Indeed mission is the very life of the church and the church is missionary by its very nature the Spirit of Christ breathed into the disciples at the same time as he sent them into the world. The mission theology of the church as it has developed in ecumenical discussion over the 20th and early 21st centuries is discussed in terms of the relationship of the church to the three persons of the Trinity: as foretaste of the kingdom of God; as the body of Christ; and as a movement of the Spirit. The article shows that being in mission is to cross the usual boundaries and bring new perspectives from outside to bear, and this is a never‐ending, enriching process.     

Reconciliation as Expression of Christ's Love

This paper discusses the theme of the upcoming World Council of Churches' assembly from the perspective of mission as reconciliation as it has been formulated in ecumenical discussions around the World Missionary Conference at Athens 2005 and since. It argues that the intersecting of reconciliation and healing disclosed theological and ethical dimensions in both concepts that have been picked up in ecumenical mission theology while they had been less prominent in earlier decades. The emphasis on the Holy Spirit as agent of mission (Athens, Arusha) is then used to interpret Christ's love as the outpouring of the inner dynamic of the Trinity into the world.     

Experience from the Mission to Cuba: Related to Together towards Life

The mission that God has given is one of proclamation, liturgy, deaconry, education, and stewardship. This is why it is necessary to develop new models for mission based on national work, where we review our biblical and theological discourse, our ecclesiology, the structures that limit our missionary activity, the models of theological education, our traditions and creation of liturgy, and our conceptual models and practice in ministry. Considering this, the World Council of Churches' document Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes offers interesting guidelines for teaching and practicing mission, which the author analyzes in the ecumenical Cuban context, and in particular in that of the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Matanzas, Cuba.     

The Church as Mission in Its Very Life

Is there a relation between Church and mission? And if there is, how are mission and Church related? Does the Church have a mission or even several missions? Or is the Church essentially mission? Is it mission in its very life? These are the core questions of the following study text 1 that constitutes the contribution of the Working Group on Mission and Ecclesiology of CWME, from which the new Mission Statement's chapter on the Church drew. To address these questions means to embark on a twofold agenda: It means to approach mission from the angle of the life of and the reflection on the Church, and it also means to tackle ecumenical ecclesiology from a mission perspective. The present text grew out of further reflections on the study paper on theme 8 of the Edinburgh 2010 study process “Towards Common Witness to Christ Today: Mission and Visible Unity of the Church” (published in IRM 99.1 [2010] 86–106). The insights gathered in the following paper are part of an ongoing process that seeks to take into account the constantly changing contexts of mission and Church. Already on the face of it, the macro‐context shows two opposing trends: on the one hand, an increasing secularization of society, and at the same time, on the other, the emerging of new and rapidly growing religious movements. The present text limits itself to stating and briefly analyzing some factors of the continuously changing ecclesial landscape that is created by these trends of the macro‐context. This approach presumes that the Church is not merely a free‐floating, ultra‐mundane entity. It is of an “incarnational” nature. It exists in the midst of differing particular contexts in this world. The methodological option of starting from the contemporary contexts and challenges to world Christianity today and of evaluating the impacts they have on contemporary mission offers a fresh view on long‐debated issues in missiology and ecclesiology. In its search for solutions to these contemporary challenges, the text argues that theologically it is impossible to separate Church and mission. The missio Dei concept, which affirms the priority of the triune God's sending activity, continues to provide the fundamental basis for both, an ecumenical missiology and an ecclesiology from a mission point of view. “The missionary intention of God is the raison d'être of the Church,” the text states in no. 32. This Church (with a capital C) is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church we confess in the creed. The Church can also be called “apostolic” in the sense that Christians are “sent”, since they are invited by God to become “part‐takers” in God's mission (nos. 24 and 26). The second chapter is therefore called “Common Witness: That the World May Believe”. It addresses the insight that a lack of unity is detrimental to the witness and mission of the Church. This insight, which is already highlighted in John 17:21, was prophetically spelled out for the modern ecumenical movement by the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. From an ecclesiological point of view, the core question is how our confessional churches embody this one Church or how they are otherwise related to it. From a mission point of view, the witness of the one Church of Jesus Christ in the world needs to be a common witness despite the divisions and fractions that split the Church and hinder mission. This common witness stipulates criteria of discernment. And a mission‐centred ecclesiology has to ask: What structures and features in our churches further our common witness to God's mission? What features and structures hinder it? When answering these questions, the role of the Holy Spirit in mediating between unity and diversity needs to be taken into account. At the same time, the goal of full visible unity is reaffirmed by asking, How does unity become visible? Is this only and exclusively possible by common structures, or can it also, and perhaps more genuinely, be achieved by common service and witness to the mission of God? The third and last chapter addresses “Visions and Hopes” in the light of God's mission of healing, reconciliation and hope. Hope pervades the new missionary spirituality. Hope also motivates conversion as turning together to God. This new concentration on the aspect of hope accounts for the fact that, in view of the constantly changing ecclesial landscape and the flowing contexts of mission, it is impossible to name just one overall solution that would last at least for some of the coming decades. But “hope” stands for the confidence that, with the help of God for the Church, there will never be a lack of ingenious solutions in the time to come and that God's vineyard will never be without workers who will happily join in the common witness to God's mission. Annemarie C. MAYER     

Pragmatism Regained

This article views the confrontation between pragmatism and Kant’s Critical undertaking as very possibly the single most consequential agon of contemporary philosophy, given the utter irreconcilability of their respective ways of addressing the concerns of First Philosophy, with regard to the enabling conditions of cognitive realism. Pragmatism favors an informal, fluxive, “instrumentalist” form of empiricism, impossible to complete, opposed to any and all the ontic and epistemic fixities of Kant’s Rationalism. Reason (Vernunft) cannot be more than a fiction. Kant has no supporting criterion of realism. The article proposes an empirical criterion of the distinctive (given) “duality” of sensory “appearings” and “appeareds” (that is, objects) as yielding a plausible “cognitive faculty” (involving “reasoning”—inference, for instance—but not Vernunft) that, in accord with the drift of evolutionism and Aristotle, readily extends to languageless animals as well as humans. It serves as the linchpin of the paper.     

The Church in the Contemporary Ecumenical‐Missional Moment: Together towards Life in Dialogue with The Cape Town Commitment and Evangelii Gaudium

The doctrine of the church has always been important to developments in mission and ecumenism – a fact that has been true since the birth of the modern ecumenical movement and is no less so today. This article compares three recent documents – the WCC's Together towards Life (2013), the Lausanne Movement's Cape Town Commitment (2011), and Pope Francis' exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2014) – in light of the rise of a prominent new way of expressing the role of the church in the mission of Christ (missio Dei). This theological development has significantly impacted mission and ecumenical thinking and practice in recent decades, requiring us to consider the church's relationship to mission in a new and important way. The article reveals various aspects of missio Dei theology at work in all three of these documents, and finally looks at the visionary leadership of Pope Francis in calling the Catholic Church to a joyful expression of the gospel of Christ through both words and deeds. EG does not so much address the doctrine of the church as it assumes it. Its concern is far more pastoral: “How do we more effectively and powerfully communicate the gospel in our time?”     

Evangelii Gaudium and the Prospects for Ecumenical Mission

Evangelii Gaudium (EG) is addressed to the “bishops, clergy, consecrated persons and the lay faithful” of the Catholic Church. It comes out of an internal discussion of “the new evangelization” and devotes considerable space to particular concerns of the Catholic Church, such as its pastoral activity, preaching ministry, and devotion to Mary. Out of 288 sections, it devotes only three near the end to “ecumenical dialogue.” So it would not seem at first sight to offer much prospect for ecumenical mission. However, this impression is deceptive. This article compares EG with the main concerns of the World Council of Churches’ statement on mission and evangelism in changing landscapes, Together towards Life (TTL), which was published earlier the same year, and finds a remarkable extent of common ground. It also finds that both documents share an inclusive and holistic understanding of mission/evangelization.     

Ecumenism in the 21st Century

This article explores the challenges facing the ecumenical movement at the beginning of the 21st century: global demographic trends and a shift in the centre of gravity of Christianity toward the global South; the need for ecumenical structures and institutions to change in response to new realities; the need to widen the ecumenical fellowship so that Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and evangelicals who have not played a part in the WCC may participate more fully; the urgency of inter‐religious dialogue; and the need to discover a “spirituality of engagement” in interaction with the world and its people.