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?”