The Symphony of Mission
DESCRIPTION
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This book argues that God's mission is broad and that all of us can live with missional intentionality by understanding the many facets of missions and focusing on a particular calling. Just like different instruments of a symphony harmonize together, each aspect of human participation in mission--evangelism, justice initiatives, poverty alleviation, faithful work in the marketplace, art--helps us play our part in God's work in the world. Combining expertise from a mission scholar and a working pastor, the book includes practical examples and tools to help readers imagine their part in God’s mission.
PREFACE
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“Another book about mission?” you might be thinking. “Surely we don’t need another. We just need to put into practice what we already know!”
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We certainly sympathize with these thoughts. And in fact, this book is designed precisely to move God’s people from theological reflection to faithful practice, from wrestling with the idea of mission to participating—faithfully and obediently—in what God is doing in mission. Harvie Conn, who has shaped both of us, says it well when he pleads at the beginning of his book on evangelism and justice, “And now to the streets and not, pray God, to the study.” [1]
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This book is a joint project between Mike Goheen and Jim Mullins. Mike is leading a creative experiment in missional theological education called the Missional Training Center (MTC), among the Phoenix area churches. [2] He works with many pastors in this role, and Jim is one of them. Jim is the pastor of theological and vocational formation at Redemption Church, Tempe. He is on the board of MTC and plays a key role among the Phoenix area churches to catalyze and unify congregations in mission. He also helps lead the Surge School, a widely ecumenical endeavor that disciples hundreds of people annually in vocational mission. While both of us are deeply engaged both in the mission of the church and in thinking about it in light of Scripture, it is especially Mike’s theological reflection and Jim’s imaginative implementation that come together in this book.
The book itself arises out of three things: our personal stories, how our stories intersect, and the need we discovered in our Surge School for a certain kind of book about mission. So we’ll begin with our stories, each told in our own words.
Mike’s Story
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When (in the late 1970s) I committed myself to follow Christ, it was in a church that stood squarely within the revivalist tradition of the early twentieth century. My assumptions about the nature of mission and what it meant to participate in that mission sprouted from that soil. For me, mission was about evangelism, sharing a certain message that would enable people to go to heaven. In those days the animosity between the evangelical and ecumenical traditions was so bitter you almost had to experience it to believe it. Word and deed were seen to be in tension, and the church I was part of was firmly and unapologetically committed to word over deed.
And so I became a zealous evangelist. I took a personal evangelism course in a local Bible college and memorized many formulas, including the Four Spiritual Laws and the Romans Road. I became involved in the Evangelism Explosion ministry in our church, diligently mastering all the techniques and becoming a trainer. I went into the homes of folks who had visited our church, urging them to believe in Jesus. I took every opportunity to share the gospel—or at least a narrow version of the gospel—with anyone who would listen, and often with those who wouldn’t. In short, I embodied what one book of that time referred to as a “witless witness.” [3] On the front of that book is a picture of an angry-looking man standing on the chest of another man who is pinned on the ground. The man who is standing has a large Bible raised high in one hand, while with the other hand he is aggressively pulling his helpless victim’s tie. Now you might dismiss this picture as a mere caricature designed to get a laugh and catch the buyer’s eye in a Christian bookstore, but it’s more than that to me. You see, I remember a time on the streets of Miami when I came close to being that bully with the Bible as I badgered a young man with the “gospel” until he finally prayed the sinner’s prayer. He said the words of the prayer, but he did so—I am sure—just to get rid of me. I’m not proud of that memory. But it is a reminder for me of a time when I was genuinely (though ignorantly) wrestling with the nature of mission, how I was to participate in it, and what it should look like in my daily life.
But then another event occurred in my life a short while later that gradually worked loose some of my most deeply held assumptions about mission. A Haitian man appeared on the front steps of my church’s conference center, his feet bleeding from a long walk. He was hungry. He had nowhere to live and no job. I brought him into the foyer of the conference center and seated him there while I set about figuring out what I could do to help. But before I came up with a real plan, I was summoned to the office of the senior pastor, where the whole pastoral staff had assembled to demand I remove this man from the premises. As a relatively new Christian, I was confused because these leaders whom I respected were apparently acting without mercy. “There are government agencies for this kind of thing,” and “You can’t help everyone, Mike,” were some of the words I remember. I stubbornly refused to follow their direction, and a long drama ensued that eventually led me to find lodging and a job for the man on my own. But the whole incident shook me deeply. At that point, I didn’t yet understand the twentieth-century theological history that had produced such a passionate division between word and deed. But I knew something was very wrong with a church that placed such a high priority on evangelism and yet had so little sense of justice and mercy. My views on mission were being challenged and broadened.
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The tradition in which I grew up was also committed to cross-cultural missions. Accordingly, I decided that if my life was to count for anything, I needed to become a foreign missionary. With that in mind I decided to head to Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, to get the biblical training I would need for the task. I have no doubt that many ideas and convictions shifted during my three years there, but two such shifts in particular would play a huge role in my later life. First, I learned in the tradition of Herman Ridderbos and Geerhardus Vos to read the Bible as one story. Second, I was exposed to Harvie Conn’s classes on mission. His views of holistic mission, his redemptive-historical approach to every issue, and his urging to read and absorb J. H. Bavinck’s work combined to shape my views on mission profoundly.
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When it came time to graduate, I was met by a group from eastern Ontario who challenged my commitment to go overseas. They argued that Canada was a far more needy mission field than any of the African countries I was considering. And, of course, they were right. I ended up church planting and then pastoring on the edge of Toronto. I’m afraid I did many—perhaps most—things wrong. Yet I learned a lot and continued to wrestle with the nature of mission, especially in relation to the church. My views of mission had been highly individualistic; now I had to find the right connections between my missional and pastoral activities. What, I began to ask, does the church have to do with mission?
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A number of events in my life at that time were working together to reshape my understanding. First, I was invited to teach an introductory course on mission at the university level. [4] I didn’t know where to begin, so I turned to Bavinck’s The Science of Missions (since that is where Harvie Conn had told me to go). After reading that book again, I became convinced that one must begin by reading the Bible as one story in order to understand mission. [5] I also began to read David Bosch and especially Lesslie Newbigin. Newbigin offered a way of viewing mission that helped resolve a number of tensions I had experienced in my theology and ministry, especially the tensions between church and mission and between word and deed. Moreover, Newbigin challenged me to understand mission in terms of the church’s role in the biblical story, and this resonated with what I had already learned from reading Bavinck.
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This experience in the late 1980s led me to do a doctorate on the missionary ecclesiology of Lesslie Newbigin and eventually to move from the pastorate into the academic life. I developed and taught mission courses in a number of universities, wrestling with the nature and practice of mission with hundreds of students. But I also taught worldview; I had come to see the worldview emphasis that flowed from Kuyper, Bavinck, and others in the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition as very helpful in my attempts to understand mission as holistic, including not only word and deed but also vocation and witness in the public square. This understanding was reinforced by my ongoing study of Newbigin. My classes in worldview were attempts to help my students take up their vocations, first as students and then as future professionals, as part of God’s mission.
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During this time I did not forget the church. Too much teaching about mission, including some versions of “vocation in the public square” in the Reformed tradition, neglects the local congregation. My continuing studies in Newbigin would not allow me to do that. I worked in two congregations as a preaching pastor with other pastors and leaders, and we did our best to enable the church to be missional. Questions about the fundamental nature of mission, about how the various members of the church should find their place in God’s mission, and about what mission should look like as it is worked out in their lives continued to press on me.
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One observation that troubled me at that point in my life and work was that most pastors had been theologically trained in institutions where mission was not a central concern. When they graduated and took up their pastoral roles, they were not prepared to preach and teach, or exercise pastoral care and discipleship, for the purpose of leading and forming missional congregations. And then the opportunity to do something to change this picture came my way unexpectedly. I was invited by some leaders in Phoenix to come and carry out some new experiments in theological education, and for the past eight years I have had the privilege of working in theological education with pastors and leaders from many confessional traditions by wrestling with the questions I have been asking all along: What is mission? How do we find our place—and how do we help people under our pastoral care find their place—in God’s mission? What does “finding our place” look like in daily life?
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One of the exceptionally gifted pastors I met in Phoenix was Jim Mullins. Jim had been grappling with these same questions for some time, and he had found the theological traditions that had nurtured me, and their expression in my writings, helpful. Jim was bursting with creativity, imagination, and energy and had been given a platform to do something with these gifts. He began to put into practice much of what we were discussing. He had stories to tell and concrete illustrations to stimulate the imagination. He was developing metaphors and exercises to help people take up their place in God’s mission. So when the occasion arose to write a book with him that would enable us to express together what mission might look like when put into action, I was delighted to take the opportunity.
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But before we speak more about the book, we need to hear Jim’s story.
Jim’s Story
What is God’s mission?
What is my role within God’s mission?
What does mission look like in daily life?
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I have been wrestling with these questions for over fifteen years, but one day in particular stands out in my memory as a time when it seemed more important than ever to find the answers. I wish I could say that it was a day when my answers to those questions led me to glorify God and love my neighbor. It wasn’t. In fact, it marked the beginning of what was to be my biggest failure in attempting to participate in God’s work. The day was September 11, 2001.
I had been a follower of Christ for about two years and a college student for two weeks. With crusty eyes and disheveled hair, I stumbled half asleep into my Sociology 101 class at Mesa Community College. There was a commotion in the hallway—it sounded like someone was crying—and we trailed out after our professor to see what all the noise was about. A mix of students and faculty huddled around an old portable television on wheels that had been pushed into the hallway. They were watching the towers fall. Half of us stared at the television in shock; half of us scrambled to find an available telephone. We knew the shrapnel from this one day would affect the rest of our lives.
With each passing week after September 11, I became more of a disciple of television and talk radio. As I was exposed to images of angry Muslims with guns, my heart began to simmer with anger. That simmer became a boiling rage as I began to equate all Muslims with terrorists. Even though I had never met a Muslim in person, I said some of the most slanderous and ethnocentric things about Muslims that you could imagine.
Eventually I was called out by a few Christian friends who gave me a choice: I needed either to repent of my idolatrous and unloving heart or to disassociate from Jesus altogether, because I was running his name through the mud. I took several days to pray and reflect on Scripture, which led to a season of God exposing my sinful motives and leading me into repentance. The Spirit began to renew my mind and give me a different understanding of mission as I began to see God’s heart for all nations. As I read the Gospels, I was gripped by Jesus’s call to love our neighbors and enemies alike. He didn’t just talk about peace and loving enemies but actually modeled it when he died for his enemies, including a vengeful sinner like me, on the cross.
My season of repentance led to the conviction that I should make a few Muslim friends. Eventually I moved into a predominantly international neighborhood near Arizona State University to extend hospitality and friendship to international students. This was an important time for me of reimagining the nature of God’s mission. After living there for several months, I began to imagine what it would look like for a whole community of people to move into that neighborhood, live life together, and extend hospitality to the international students that God was bringing from all over the world—places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and China.
Sitting at a coffee shop in that neighborhood, I wrote a vision paper and started sharing it with my friends, inviting them to move in, extend hospitality, and proclaim the good news. We called ourselves the “Moravian Community,” because a number of us had been reading about an eighteenth-century community of refugees in Germany called the Moravians, a group of ordinary people who believed in an extraordinary God. They were used by him to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. We were captured by their story and prayed that God would use ordinary knuckleheads like us too.
About eighty people initially responded and joined the Moravian Community; about a third of them moved into the international student neighborhood. We organized ourselves around a weekly prayer meeting, six different home groups, and daily interactions with international students. Our goal was to reflect God’s hospitality by breaking bread, drinking tea, and helping these newcomers navigate the complexities of life in America. Hundreds of international students heard the gospel and saw it displayed by this peculiar community of ordinary people. We also had a vision of sending people to unreached countries. Eventually over twenty of the members of our community moved overseas to bear witness to Jesus. Even my wife and I led a team to Turkey and lived there for three years.
Our time with the Moravian Community and our three years in Turkey created a perfect opportunity to ask important questions about God’s mission and how normal people like us should participate. Whether it was eating bagels on Sunday mornings in Tempe, Arizona, or snacking on Turkish simit on the streets of Ankara, my community of young, zealous followers of Christ kept returning to the same few questions:
What is God’s mission?
What is my role within God’s mission?
What does mission look like in daily life?
Over the past ten years as a pastor, I’ve found that most people who know and love God are asking the same things.
What is God’s mission? Within the Moravian Community this question was framed in a number of different ways. Sometimes it came in the form of debating which needs were the most urgent in the world. Should we focus on poverty alleviation, church planting, eradicating sex trafficking? Should we just focus on evangelism? Does God’s mission include things like job creation, environmental stewardship, and peacemaking? Eventually we came to agree that all these things play a role in God’s mission—but what should we prioritize? Some of us argued for unreached people groups in distant lands, others for the most vulnerable in our own area, and others for culturally influential cities.
We tried to figure out an answer by going to missions conferences and reaching out to nonprofits. Each one of them seemed to have a different sense of God’s mission, or at least of what God cared about most. Each offered compelling biblical arguments, tearjerker videos, and some well-selected statistics. We walked away from each meeting and conference feeling that if we didn’t sign up for their particular cause, we would be wasting our lives.
This constant exposure to missions marketing, combined with my lack of wisdom in my early twenties, gave me a serious case of Missional Attention Deficit Disorder. Not wanting to waste my life, I bounced from cause to cause and idea to idea, trying to drag the rest of the Moravian Community along with me.
For a while I thought, “Mission is about unreached people groups.” I was deeply moved by the appeal of various missions agencies that told me about whole people groups without a single known Christian. They challenged me to leave my own country—where there was a church on every corner—and instead plant churches among the nations. They made a powerful appeal to young, zealous, single men like myself to live a “radical” life in the most dangerous places on earth. For a while I was captivated by this vision and challenged the Moravian Community to make it our highest aspiration to “get our heads chopped off in the name of Jesus.” This sort of cause really seemed to attract zealous young men like me; unfortunately, it also seemed to deter wise young women from joining me on a date. But one courageous woman named Jenny gave me a chance. We were eventually married and decided that our young team should move to Turkey because it was 99 percent unreached.
Then for a while I thought, “Mission is about church planting.” With the growth of the Acts 29 Network, many people were making the case that church planting is the most important approach to mission, because the church is sustainable and the church is the bride of Christ. Therefore, we decided not just to go to Turkey but to focus on church planting while we were there.
Then I thought, “Mission is about campus ministry.” Months prior to moving to Turkey, I began meeting with leaders of large campus ministries who emphasized the importance of doing evangelism on college campuses because college is a crucial life stage. Having just graduated from college, many of the Moravians resonated with this idea, so we decided to try to connect with universities in Turkey.
Then I thought, “Mission is about urban mission.” This next shift came when I started reading about the importance of mission to the cities. These books argued that Paul’s strategy was to focus on major urban centers because they were the centers of cultural influence. So the Moravians decided that we needed to do more than merely move to Turkey, do campus ministry, and try to plant a church. We needed to be in a large, influential urban center, like Ankara, the capital of Turkey.
Then I decided, “Mission is about our daily work and vocations.” During my first few months in Turkey, I read several books about business as mission, the importance of providing jobs, and the opportunities to make disciples within the rhythms of everyday life, so the Moravians decided that we needed to dream up ways to start some businesses.
Then I thought, “Mission is about living among the poor.” After being in Turkey for about a year, I began listening to sermons and lectures about God’s heart for the poor and became convinced that we needed to move to an economically distressed neighborhood and live in solidarity with the poor, or even move to an altogether more economically distressed country.
Inevitably, about this time, my wife and teammates had had enough of me. I was wearing them out with a dizzying barrage of conflicting visions. Trying to figure out the most important aspect of God’s mission, we hedged our bets by moving to an influential city in a country that was 99 percent Muslim to start businesses and do campus ministry and plant churches while I started looking for apartments in the poorest neighborhoods.
My disoriented team began to suggest that something must be wrong with the way I was viewing mission. In part, I was guilty of chasing the idol of significance rather than pursuing the heart of God. But mostly, I was bouncing around because I had confused the various missional strategies with the scope of God’s mission. I thought then that God’s mission must be about primarily one of these activities. I would eventually learn that God’s mission is as broad as creation itself. And one of the ways I learned this was through Mike’s writings.
During those three years in Turkey, I would often walk to my favorite café, open up my Bible, and try to find a verse with the answer to my questions about mission. One day I received an email from Chris Gonzalez, a pastor of Missio Dei Communities in Tempe, Arizona, and my good friend. Knowing the questions I was wrestling with, he recommended I read The Drama of Scripture by Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew. This book has had a profound influence on my view of mission (even though that isn’t the primary aim of the book), because it so radically reshaped my understanding of the Bible itself.
I realized that I had treated the Bible as a collection of disconnected verses rather than as a unified story that gives meaning to all of life. This new way of reading the Scriptures created a massive shift in my understanding. I stopped looking for a few verses about mission and came to see the whole Bible as a story of a missional God whose goal is to restore a broken world. I came to see that God called a people—the church—to participate in his broad mission of restoration.
When I moved back to Arizona, I was delighted and surprised to learn that Mike had built a strong relationship with several churches there. He was instrumental in helping shape the Surge School structure, a discipleship program that I now help to lead. Eventually, he and his wife, Marnie, moved to Phoenix for part of the year to launch MTC to equip pastors and leaders for missional leadership in the local church. As I’ve participated in the work of MTC and been involved on the board of directors, I have come to know Mike as a friend and mentor. He’s greatly influenced my understanding of theology and mission. Many of the stories I tell in this book are the results of what I’ve learned about mission from him. It’s truly a privilege to write this book with someone who has had such a profound influence on my life.
Surge School
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To understand the origins of this book it is important to understand the Surge School, which arose among a network of churches in the Phoenix area. Surge School is the brainchild of Tyler Johnson and Chris Gonzalez, who were looking for a way to lead their churches into a broader understanding and practice of mission. In 2008 it began with a handful of people from several churches. Today over three hundred people from more than forty churches participate each year. It is designed as an ecumenical discipleship program rooted in the local congregation. [6]
The curriculum is divided into four quarters. In the first quarter, participants learn to read the Bible as one story. In the second quarter, they consider how to root themselves in the gospel and live in that story. In the third quarter, they deal with the nature and breadth of the church’s mission. And finally, in the fourth quarter, participants are challenged to discover how their particular callings fit into the mission of God. Many concrete questions arise from participants during the last two quarters as to what it looks like to participate in God’s mission, especially in their vocations. Jim is one of the leaders of Surge School and has also led Surge tables for many years. [7] This book comes, in part, from his attempts to answer the many questions that arise and to offer stories to spark the imagination of what their participation might look like. Many of the stories told in this book are the fruit of Surge School and our mutual friends in the Phoenix area. Other stories come from Jim’s or Mike’s personal experiences.
This Book
In this book we deal with the three big questions we both have wrestled with.
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What is mission? We hope to show just how big mission is. As the church participates in God’s campaign to heal the world, mission includes all the approaches we mentioned above. They should harmonize, not compete with one another.
What is my role within God’s mission? While most people don’t suffer from the level of Missional Attention Deficit Disorder that Jim suffered from, many of us struggle to figure out where we fit within God’s work. Even when we know that its scope embraces all of life, we are still left with the questions of our calling and where we should focus our energies. We wonder how our particular gifts, burdens, and experiences have equipped us to participate in God’s mission. In this book, we provide opportunities to reflect on these issues.
What does mission look like in daily life? The question of how is not the most important question, but it might be the most overlooked. It’s important to understand what God’s mission is and how the particular good works we were created to do fit in, but we still need to address one more question: What does it look like to participate in God’s mission through the daily rhythms of life? Rather than prescribing a script, examples of tangible practices are provided to help our readers creatively and prayerfully dream up ways to participate in God’s mission that will be meaningful in their own life contexts.
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The primary metaphor for this book is the symphony. Ironically, neither of us is musically gifted. Mike may have a slight advantage because his wife and all four of his children and their spouses are very musical. Because he loves them, he has developed some appreciation for classical music. However, Mike is the outlier, the one nonmusical person in a very musical family. And until recently, Jim had only limited exposure to classical music. Nevertheless, the metaphor came to him one day as he listened to Mike teach about mission while classical music quietly played in the background, making a sort of soundtrack for his teaching. Because Jim is a highly distractible but also imaginative man, his mind began to wander. Symphony, he thought, is actually a stellar metaphor for mission.
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God’s mission is like a symphony. He is restoring the harmony of creation to a world broken by sin. Just as a symphony brings together the string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments to make a beautiful sound, God’s mission is to bring the various aspects of creation together in perfect harmony through the work of Christ “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Eph. 1:10).
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God is the great composer of the plan to redeem, reconcile, and restore all of creation. This plan is the beautiful music of blessing that God plays for the nations, welcoming them to take their part in producing its harmony. God is also the great conductor: the Spirit guides the church in a wide array of activities that contribute to his mission, distributing various gifts and callings to his people. Just as flutes, drums, and trombones have distinct sounds to contribute to a symphony, things like poverty alleviation, personal evangelism, discovery Bible studies, and entrepreneurship all play complementary melodies and harmonies in the symphony of mission. To devalue any one of them is to diminish the overall work and distort the music of the gospel.
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God invites us to join him, to participate in his symphony. In the first chapter, we provide a brief overview of the biblical story that describes the goal of God’s mission, which is simply (and profoundly) to restore his good creation. Just as we can discern the heart of a composer by continually listening to his or her music, we can discern God’s purpose and plan for the world by immersing ourselves in the biblical story.
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When someone picks up a new instrument, they learn how to play basic notes arranged in a simple melody before moving on to complex pieces. For people called to participate in God’s mission, the basic notes of simple faithfulness form the foundation on which all intentional and creative mission is built. Therefore, in chapter 2, we reflect on the simple attitudes and actions suited to the mission to which we are called. These attitudes and actions include being motivated by love, being empowered by the Spirit, understanding the comprehensive scope of mission, living in community, and being committed to incarnational presence. These are the basic, foundational notes in the symphony of mission.
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We then turn to the issue of cultivating missional intentionality. We describe three major ways to participate in God’s mission: stewardship, service, and spoken word. Chapter 3 provides an overview of all three of these “movements” in the symphony of mission. Each movement is important in itself and complements the others. When we lack stewardship or service or the spoken word, our participation in God’s mission is incomplete.
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Each of the next three chapters is devoted to one of those movements of mission. In chapter 4 we reflect on the stewardship movement and how we are called to display the glory of the Father through the work of our hands. In chapter 5 we focus on the service movement and how we display the love of Christ by washing the feet of the world. In chapter 6 we attend to the verbal proclamation of the gospel—what we call the spoken word movement—and how we’re called to participate in the work of the Spirit by opening our mouths.
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The next section of the book focuses on important practices for participating in God’s mission. We start in chapter 7 with a reflection on calling—finding our place within God’s mission—providing several practices, exercises, and insights to help discern what kind of instrument God has made each of us to be within his mission. Chapter 8 focuses on our specific contexts, defines specific areas of mission focus, and reflects on specific ways to perform the symphony of mission. Finally, the last chapter concludes with three practices—subversive Sabbath, praying like a human, and lament—to help the reader persevere through the challenges of participating in God’s mission.
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Ultimately, our aim in writing this book is to help God’s people participate in the symphony of mission through all aspects of life. John Calvin once said, “The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra.” [8] Along with Calvin we issue an invitation to see every aspect of life—from life at home to daily work, from private conversations to public discourse—as practice rooms, recital chambers, and concert halls in which to perform the symphony of mission. In sharing the following chapters, we hope we will all be able to discern our places in God’s mission and together perform the music of God’s glory, love, and power for a listening and watching world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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It remains for us to thank the many people in our lives who have made this book possible. As always I (Mike) am grateful for my family and the MTC board, who is so supportive of my work. But the writing of this book has also made me acutely conscious of and thankful for the many pastors I work with in various places, especially in Phoenix, Brazil, and Hungary. While I have attempted to keep myself deeply rooted in the local congregation in pastoral leadership so that my scholarship serves the church, I am aware that many of the pastors I serve know how to implement what I teach in ways that move far beyond me. That I have learned much from Jim’s pastoral wisdom about what mission is and what it should look like is evident in the book that follows. The many gifted pastors I have partnered with have greatly expanded my understanding of God’s mission and our place in it.
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I (Jim) must express my deep gratitude for my wife, Jenny. This book could have been filled with hundreds of stories of her sacrificial love and hidden generosity. Her life is a beautiful commentary on the self-giving love of Christ. And my daughter, Elliana, has been my tour guide in the kingdom of God. Each Saturday morning as we spend time giving thanks to God, she expresses gratitude for the simple, overlooked, yet profoundly glorious aspects of creation—like pinecones, Tuesday afternoons, and geckos. Her unique lens for God’s world has helped me see the goodness of creation and the possibilities of creative love, two themes that will be prevalent in this book. And it is to Jenny and Elliana that I want to dedicate this book.
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I would also like to express my gratitude to the church in Arizona, especially those congregations that are part of the Surge Network. It has been a gift to be able to partner with them in displaying the glory of God in the desert. The idea for writing this book emerged from my conversations with the Surge team, especially Dennae Pierre, the executive director of Surge, whose leadership has been stellar and friendship emboldening. God has also used Chris Gonzalez and Tyler Johnson in profound ways to launch Surge and the MTC.
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Words cannot do justice to my gratitude for Redemption Church and especially Redemption Tempe, where I have encountered countless examples of creative love. It has been a great privilege to serve alongside my fellow elders and pastors there. I’m sincerely grateful for the many friends who have read and provided feedback for portions of this book and especially for Sari Klontz, who truly knows how to cultivate goodness out of the soil of the English language. I must mention my gratitude for three mentors who encouraged me to write and whose lives profoundly influenced this book: Steven Garber, Rick Love, and Mark Rentz. I’m thankful for the generosity of Reese and Teena Dare, Ron and Gennie Fuemmler, and Chuck and Kathi Bishop for providing the space for me to have a few writing retreats. While much of my writing happened on Friday mornings at Crepe Bar, it was fueled by my conversations with my dear brothers on Tuesday mornings and my MTC cohort on Thursday mornings.
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We are also thankful to Jim Kinney, who supported this project so fully and helped in the process of moving it to completion. Doug and Karey Loney have helped to make this manuscript much more fluent and clear. It comes from their ability to write and use the English language. It also comes from their knowledge of the subject matter in their own lives. We are indebted to them.
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Together we dedicate this book to Tom Shrader. Tom went to be with the Lord in January 2019, and so he will not be here to see the release of this book. Thankfully we were able to read this dedication to him and share our gratitude for his work the month before he died. His work has and will continue to influence Phoenix in a rich variety of ways. There are few ecumenical networks of churches that have accomplished as much together or had so many congregations working together on so many projects. Much of this has been led by pastors, now in their late thirties and forties, who were discipled by Tom. He planted and pastored Redemption Gilbert (formerly East Valley Bible Church), which subsequently became a flagship church in the Surge Network. Tom planted many theological seeds that have borne much fruit in many churches in the Surge Network: an outward-looking, service-oriented church; a church that confesses Christ’s lordship over all human life, including the public square; a church that disciples leaders; and a generous and self-giving church. He handed off the fruit of his own labors to younger men and supported their work as they recognized that changing times need fresh approaches and new directions. The work in Phoenix is the work of God’s Spirit, but God has used Tom as an instrument. We are thankful for Tom’s work and life, and we dedicate this book to him as a token of our gratitude.
[1] Harvie Conn, Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992), 10.
[2] You can find out more about MTC here: http://www.missionaltraining.org/.
[3] Fritz Ridenour, Tell It Like It Is: How Not to Be a Witless Witness (Glendale, CA: Regal Books, 1968).
[4] Twenty-five years later, this class would inspire An Introduction to Christian Mission Today: Scripture, History, and Issues (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014).
[5] My book A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011) was an effort almost four decades later to take the Bavinck storied approach to a biblical foundation for mission and to expand and contextualize it.
[6] You can learn more about the Surge School here: http://surgenetwork.com/surge-school/. You can view an older video regarding its impact on some of its earlier participants here: https://vimeo.com/72829264.
[7] A Surge table is an intensive small group of participants in a nine-month discipleship program called Surge School. It’s focused on viewing all of life through the lens of the biblical story, addressing idols of the heart, participating in mission, and discerning vocation.
[8] John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms, trans. James Anderson (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1839), 5:178. Calvin is commenting on Ps. 135:13.
CONTENTS
1. Story: Listening to the Symphony
2. Simplicity: Learning the Notes
3. Intentionality: The Movements of Mission
4. Stewardship: Displaying the Glory of the Father through the Work of Our Hands
5. Service: Displaying the Love of Christ by Washing the Feet of the World
6. The Spoken Word: Displaying the Power of the Holy Spirit by Opening Our Mouths
7. Listening: Finding Your Place in God's Symphony
8. Performing: Participating in God's Symphony
9. Sustaining: Persevering in God's Symphony
Recommended Resources
ENDORSEMENTS
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"Are you concerned about justice but overwhelmed by the mess of the world around you? Do you wonder what God wants you to do with your life? Don't despair--read this book! Goheen and Mullins are virtuosos and wise counselors in this biblical, hopeful, and practical book about our participation in God's mission."
- Stephanie Summers, CEO, Center for Public Justice
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"What is God's mission? What is my role in it? How should I orient my life given the many important local and global causes and concerns--poverty, violence, refugees, racism, unreached people--that compete for my attention? With biblical wisdom and practical guidance, Michael Goheen and Jim Mullins point a way forward for local churches and individuals seeking to faithfully follow Jesus into God's mission of rescue and restoration. The Symphony of Mission is a vital guide to hearing and heeding God's call."
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- Matthew Soerens, US director of church mobilization, World Relief; national coordinator, Evangelical Immigration Table; coauthor of Welcoming the Stranger and Seeking Refuge
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"What is basic Christianity? What is the very heart of honest faith through the centuries? In the world I know, we suffer from dualisms of all sorts that fragment faith in ways that serve neither God nor the world, missing the meaning of who God is and what he has called us to do. The church all over the world needs help, and this new book by Mike Goheen and Jim Mullins is one that I hope will be deeply and seriously read. With echoes of Newbigin and Stott, it is theologically rooted and biblically rich, inviting all of us to see ourselves in the Great Story of God's work in the world. At the same time it is deeply human, pastorally attentive, and pedagogically attuned to the complexity and nuance of life, that each one of us is unique and must find our place in the story. The Symphony of Mission is for every son of Adam and daughter of Eve who wants to make sense of life in the world, for everyone everywhere who longs to live life for the sake of the world."
- Steven Garber, professor of marketplace theology, Regent College; author of Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good
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"This book is a masterpiece of both-and. Its framing metaphor of a musical symphony captures both the robust breadth and the intricate complexity of the missio Dei. It paints a 3-D picture of a life of daily missional faithfulness that speaks to both the blue- and the white-collar worlds. It is a book for both novices and veterans of the faith-at-work movement. It provides both fresh, practical counsel regarding witness in today's culture and reminders of the timeless wisdom of the great Reformers. It is rich in theology and praxis. In short, Goheen and Mullins have given the church a resource that is winsome and pointed, imaginative and grounded, deep and accessible. Five stars!"
- Amy L. Sherman, author of Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good
"Ever since recognizing the call of Psalm 96 to 'Sing a new song... all the earth... among the nations... among all peoples' as a glorious picture of the music of mission, I have advocated a musical metaphor as a valid biblical way of thinking about mission, in contrast to the more common military images (though they have biblical warrant too). And here it is! A whole book on the music of mission! I just love the fertile imagery of mission as God's great symphony for the whole creation. But Goheen and Mullins do far more than exploit a metaphor. Their book is richly biblical, filled with inspiring and challenging real-life experience, and stands out as one of the most down-to-earth, practical guidebooks I have read on how all so-called ordinary Christians can and should be playing their part in God's mission. We are not the audience applauding the professional (missionary) musicians. We are the orchestra itself, God is the composer, and his is the glorious music we are invited to play together."
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- Christopher J. H. Wright, Langham Partnership; author of The Mission of God
"The Symphony of Mission clinically outlines how we are to participate as earthly instruments, bringing restoration through the melodic resources of heaven. Goheen and Mullins have snatched the narrative arc of redemption from the ethereal and placed it in the practical rhythms of everyday interactions."
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- Sho Baraka, artist, The Narrative; executive director, Terminus Collective
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"This is one of the best books on mission that I've encountered in recent years. I resonate with the authors' picture of mission as a glorious symphony, which harmonizes various missional activities and callings within the divine composer's purpose for all of creation. What makes Goheen and Mullins's approach distinctive is their attention to how God's mission plays out in everyday practice. The book teems with engaging examples, gripping stories, and useful tools. Readers, prepare to be deeply moved and personally challenged to more faithfully participate in God's symphony. I can't wait to share this book with my students!"
- Dean Flemming, professor of New Testament, Nazarene University
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"The Symphony of Mission is a magnificent contribution to current conversations about the nature of Christian mission. Bringing a rare blend of theological expertise and ministry experience to the table, Goheen and Mullins provide a narrative-based biblical theology and a holistic approach to mission from which pastors, students, and professors alike will benefit. Highly recommended."
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- Bruce Ashford, provost and professor of theology and culture, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
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"The mission of God's people in the world is a contested topic. But I am of the opinion that many of the challenges we face today are due to the church having a truncated view of what it means to be Christ's body in the here and now. This book serves not just the church but society in articulating a view of mission that cares about the totality of God's world."
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- Tyler Johnson, lead pastor, Redemption Church, Arizona