The mission of God

About this book

The context for The Mission of God is the discussion that continued from the International Missionary Council conference in Willingen, Germany, 1952. This book is one of the foundational works that brings into clearer focus the "missio Dei" or mission of God, as the defining core concept of a biblical ecclesiology. At this time the church was wrestling with the transition from viewing mission as a church-centered task to understanding mission as primarily the work of God, a work in the world to which the church is called, gathered, equipped and sent. "Only when we have grasped the fact that the whole purpose of the Bible is the rescue of mankind and therefore mission work, only then do theological thought and every type of church work receive their proper direction," writes Vicedom. This is a call to the church to respond to the content of Scripture with a missionary dynamic. "The mission, and with it the church, is God's very own work. We cannot speak of 'the mission of the church,' even less of 'our mission.' Both the church and the mission have their source in the loving will of God. Therefore we can speak of church and mission always only with the understanding that they are not independent entities." We must never consider the church and mission as separate, but we must instead understand the missio Dei as central to the church's identity. One can see here in Vicedom some of the key thoughts that appear in Lesslie Newbigin and in what we have come to call missional theology.