When considering the missio Dei and local churches’ part to play in it, few things are more foundational and important than a biblical understanding of the church. At Terminus, we want a robust biblical ecclesiology not to be something we arrive at along the way or figure out pragmatically, but rather that which is foundational to all our efforts. These biblical convictions will drive us as we focus on cities, culture, and church. This short article highlights the necessary relationship between the missio Dei, God’s mission, and a biblical ecclesiology.
Missio Dei and Ecclesiology
Any biblical ecclesiology must first be grounded in the missio Dei. Scripture makes it clear that God has a mission to the world. After Adam and Eve fall into sin, God punishes this first couple and bans them from the garden, but he does not destroy them or abandon them entirely. The rest of the Bible is the story of how God chooses to redeem his image bearers and ultimately to restore order to his creation.
One aspect that is apparent in the missio Dei is that by his very nature God is a sending God. Missio Dei is typically translated as “The Mission of God”, but the Latin word missio literally means “to send.” In the Bible, we see that God raises individuals throughout the Old Testament, like Abraham, Moses, David, and ultimately Israel as a whole. At the climax of Scripture, God the Father sends his Son in the person of Jesus to be the final sacrifice for sin on our behalf. God then sends his Spirit when Jesus ascends to heaven. Jesus gathers his disciples after his resurrection and says, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). The book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament carry on the story of the sent disciples and the sent church to continue God’s mission of making disciples and planting new communities of believers to the end of the earth for the glory of God. David Bosch succinctly stated it well: “God is a missionary God.” Understanding that God is a sending God is foundational and central to developing a biblical ecclesiology.
The Ministry of Jesus and Ecclesiology
In addition to God being a sending God, Scripture also provides much more to build out a biblical understanding of the church, particularly in the ministry of Jesus. In attempts to grasp a biblical vision of ecclesiology, we will look at three things Jesus did in his earthly ministry:
- He inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth.
- He established his church.
- He promised to send his Spirit.
First, Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth. Mark writes about Jesus in his early ministry, “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:14-15). Jesus is bringing the kingdom of God, the rule and reign of God, from heaven to earth in his ministry. The kingdom is at hand. You can reach out and touch it. With Jesus, the kingdom of God is here; it’s present.
Jesus then taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:9-10). Jesus teaches his disciples to pray and expect the kingdom of heaven to come to earth as it is in heaven. As Jesus continues his ministry, he pushes back darkness wherever he goes. The sick are healed, the blind receive sight, demons are exorcised, and people repent of their sins to follow him.
Jesus’ vision of the kingdom coming to earth as it is in heaven is still in effect today. The kingdom of God will come to earth in its fullness one day when Jesus returns, but the kingdom is not only a distant, future reality. Where darkness, evil, and sin are pushed back, where lives are repenting and turning to follow Jesus, where relationships are restored, where lives are indwelt by the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God is experienced and spreads.
Second, Jesus established the church during his earthly ministry. Matthew 16:18 quotes Jesus saying, “…on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” There are certainly different interpretations of what Jesus meant by “rock” in this verse. But for our purposes, it is significant that during his earthly ministry, Jesus himself is the one who establishes his church. Thus, when Peter stands to preach on the day of Pentecost and three thousand souls repent and believe in the gospel, the planting of the church in Jerusalem was not a spontaneous happening that day. God always intended that those who repent and turn to Jesus would be gathered into local confessional communities of believers, i.e., churches. The church was never an afterthought. Through Jesus, God established the church as the visible community of his kingdom and the primary means by which his redemptive purposes would be displayed in the world.
Third, during his ministry, Jesus also promises to send his Spirit. In his address to the disciples just before his crucifixion, Jesus tells them, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17a). Jesus also says, “it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Then after his death and resurrection, just before his ascension, Jesus gathers his disciples and tells them, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Shortly after Jesus ascends, the disciples along with some other believers are gathering, and the Spirit descends on them in a way that he had not in any time previously (Acts 2:1-4). As the writer of Hebrews says, the new covenant in Jesus truly is a better covenant. The Spirit is given to all who repent of their sins and turn to follow Jesus.
Biblical Vision of the Church
Given these three things Jesus did in his earthly ministry – inaugurated the kingdom of God on earth, established his church, and promised to send the Spirit – the New Testament begins to build this vision of the church being the new dwelling place of God, the new temple. In the Old Covenant, the Spirit, or presence of God, descended on the tabernacle and then the temple. In a tense conversation with some Jews at the Jerusalem temple, Jesus states that he is replacing the Old Covenant temple in his very person: “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body.’” (John 2:19-21). The temple in Jerusalem, the place where the presence of God was meant to dwell in the Old Covenant, will soon become obsolete. Jesus is replacing the temple with his very person, as the place on earth where the Spirit of God dwells.
As Jesus ascends to heaven and sends his Spirit to indwell these new communities of believers, it becomes clear that the Church is the new dwelling place of God. Paul asks the church of Corinth a telling question, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you” (1 Cor 3:16)? It is significant that in his question, Paul uses the plural form of “you” all three times, emphasizing that the church of Corinth collectively is God’s temple and where God’s Spirit dwells. Ephesians 2:19-22 pulls a lot of this together in one passage,
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
The church is the new household of God, the new dwelling place of God, the new temple. It has its foundation in the apostles and prophets, and Jesus is the cornerstone of the whole structure. His death and resurrection, and the instituting of the New Covenant, have made all this possible. God has chosen for the church to be his dwelling place on earth until Jesus returns to bring his kingdom in its fullness.
The missio Dei is inconceivable from a biblical perspective aside from the church. As the God-ordained place where his presence now dwells, the church is essential to God’s mission of bringing the kingdom of God from heaven to earth. It is vital that we start with God’s mission and understand that the church’s mission flows out of this. Timothy Tennent explains, “Mission is first and foremost about God and His redemptive purposes and initiatives in the world, quite apart from any actions or tasks or strategies or initiatives the church may undertake.” If we start with the church’s mission, it is conceivable that the church has a mission, parachurch organizations have a mission, and perhaps even individual missionaries have a mission. If we start with God’s mission, we understand from a biblical perspective that God himself owns the mission, and the church is the main vehicle of carrying out his mission in the world. So, any understanding of mission outside the church or with a truncated vision of the church’s role in God’s mission is not a biblical understanding of ecclesiology or the missio Dei. It is not an overstatement to say that all mission efforts from a biblical perspective should be done in connection with and through the church and local churches that make it up.
The biblical vision of the missio Dei as it relates to the church thus begins to emerge. God has specially ordained the church as his dwelling place in the world. The church gathers. It gathers to worship, learn, grow, baptize, take communion, carry out the one another commands in Scripture, and be transformed. The church also scatters. The church is God’s primary vehicle for taking the gospel to every corner of the earth. Individuals and families in the church scatter to their immediate communities, living out and speaking the gospel of Jesus to those they encounter. The church also scatters more broadly as it sends its own to plant churches in areas outside of that church’s immediate context and across linguistic and cultural barriers. Churches planting churches. As these God-worshiping, Jesus-exalting, Spirit-indwelt communities of believers are planted and spread throughout the world, we start to see the end vision of the missio Dei, as it is stated in Habakkuk 2:14, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
1 See Brian A. Devries, You Will Be My Witnesses: Theology for God’s Church Serving in God’s Mission, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2024), 9-11, for a discussion on the various ways the term missio Dei has been used. This article is more in line with how Devries uses the term. He explains, “In my opinion, missio Dei is a helpful concept when used in a limited way to distinguish God’s overarching work of redemption from the church’s activity.”
2 See Genesis 3:20-24. Adam and Eve are sent into exile from the garden, but it is significant that God provides clothes for them from an animal just before this.
3 David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 390.
4 For more resources see the short discussion by Gregg Allison, What Does ‘This Rock’ Refer to in Matthew 16:18? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-does-this-rock-refer-to-matthew-1618/ . For more academic commentary, see Davies, W.D., and Dale C. Allison. Matthew. International Critical Commentary. London/New York: T&T Clark, 1988–1997 (3 vols.); Carson, D.A. “Matthew.” In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 9, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.
5 Hebrews 7:22, 8:6.
6 In addition to the tabernacle and temple, we also see God’s presence in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:8), Mount Sinai with Moses (Exod 19:3, 24:12-18, 34:29), and various individuals at different times (Num 11:25; Judg 3:10, 6:34, 14:6; 1 Sam 10:10, 16:13).
7 Timothy Tennent, Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2010), 54-55. See also Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 18, and Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 251.