I am deeply excited about God and what has been described as God’s mission. The life of Father, Spirit and Jesus spinning into ever-widening circles of including community energizes me. There is wildness and an untamed nature to the character of God. God cannot be tamed. Over the last few years I have become aware of the amazing adventure of the Missio Dei, or the mission of God. This has rightly spilled into maxims like, “the church doesn’t have a mission, the mission has a church”. Maxims like this attempt at moving “mission” or being “missional” away from a program of the church.  Caging the mission into the four walls of a church on a Sunday is ludicrous. Mission is our whole life, and can therefore not be squashed into a program or a building. It will always overflow these confines and sometimes even demolish the programs and buildings.

It is here where my suspicion about “missional language” arises.

It seems that missional has become another way to get people involved with the local church. “Missional language”, has in some cases, become the new tool for church growth. This usually means that people will join the Sunday worship gatherings. I think this is a detour and will dilute the Missio Dei into another campaign to bolster the egos of pastors, ministers and their members.

But what if the mission of God breaks our finely planned churches and gatherings? What if the mission scatters the church on a Sunday into real life situations during the rest of the week? What if the mission eliminates the positions of pastors and ministers making a living out of diluting the Missio Dei into a church growth program?

I think the mission Dei will radically alter the way which we be and see church. Church as manifested in Western-influenced cities will change. But it is hard for professionally paid Christians to live into this mission if it threatens the very way in which they make their money and therefore their livelihood.

The mission of God excites me, but I need a new imagination in order to live into it. I think it will be marvellously ordinary and attainable to all people.