June is just around the corner and I am looking forward to exploring with you this summer what I am describing as a Confessional Missiology. My plan is to leave my options open and provide some Snippets, Sentences, and maybe even some Stories throughout the summer months.
Over the past year, I have been studying and researching the Doctrine of Creation, particularly as it relates to gospel conversations and the profound ethical and moral questions being raised in today’s secularized culture. I have found that as I engage in gospel conversations with people these days, I tend to focus on God the Creator first, in part to affirm that there actually is a God, a personal God, who created humankind in His image.
Our identity, worth, and dignity as human beings, comes from God who creates us, male and female, and breathes life into our lungs. How we relate to and treat each other is deeply connected to our understanding of the Triune God and the Doctrine of Creation.
In May, I joined a panel of scholars for an event titled, LAUSANNE 50TH ANNIVERSARY: A CATALYST FOR EVANGELICAL UNITY? My short presentation, Evangelism and Socio-political Involvement: A Comparison with David Bosch’s Dimensions of Mission, touched on Confessional Missiology and the Doctrine of Creation. David Bosch (1929–1992) was a South African missiologist whose significant contribution to missiology, includes a robust missional theology, “Mission is more than and different from recruitment to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the universal rule and reign of God” [David Bosch, Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press, 1995), 33].
Consider the power of this claim on our own lives. In fact, I surmise that before we can alert people to the universal rule and reign of God, we first must wrestle with the implications of this claim ourselves. In my PhD research, after reading and re-reading the Bible through several times, I was confronted with and humbled by the significance of God’s authority over all things—including me and my life. I noticed, over and over again, how often God actively interacts and intervenes in Creation and then reminds us through historians, chroniclers, psalmists, and prophets that he is God and there is no other.
How might a fresh realization of the Triune God as Creator inform our lives everyday and our interactions with people who are different from us? Many conversations today have to do with weighty ethnical and moral issues—mental health, human and civil rights, human life and death, prejudice and racism, Artificial Intelligence, and so on. I am proposing that a Confessional Missiology declares that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, invites us to look to Wisdom as we consider these questions, and confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord.
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col 1:15–17)
We believe in, listen for, and yield to the Holy Spirit who empowers us to be God’s witnesses. The Spirit also reveals these truths to us time and again, often in every day ways. I am convinced that recovering the Doctrine of Creation and the universal reign of God will infuse us with vibrant faith in turbulent times.
Are you ready to explore?
