Christology-Missiology-Ecclesiology??

When I first heard the Frost/Hirsch formulation of Christology-Missiology-Ecclesiology it was a lightbulb moment for me. Their critique was simple- most churches got the Christology piece right, but inverted the last two, built their Ecclesiology (their church structure) and then formed a sense of Missiology- how they would live out mission in the world. But since they did it in that order, what they did in mission was necessarily shaped by the church strutures they had already formed. Thus, there were pieces and places of mission that were left untouched because "we have never done it that way" or "we don't have the facilities for that." Frost and Hirsch flipped the script and challenged the church to be shaped by our mission- to let mission flow out of our understanding of Jesus and who He is (the sent and sending God), and so be the sent community that structures itself along the lines of cooperation with God, what He's doing and sending/calling us to do. 

Dave Fitch has long made no secret of his dislike of this formulation. I've never really understood it, since I think at heart he agrees with the idea that the church should be mission-shaped, not the other way around (our mission should be church-shaped).

But today I finally got his dislike when he asked the question: so where does the Christology come from? His critique is that the Frost/Hirsch formula seems to imply that the individual can come to an understanding of who Jesus is apart from community. And as far as that goes, it's a fair question. But it doesn't negate the overall flow that we base what we do on who Jesus is and we base who we are as a people on what we are called to do. 

So maybe... instead of this:

it looks more like this: 

The idea is that our ideas of Jesus are formed in the community- we discover Jesus in the intersection of Scripture/Church/His working in the world- that is, when we participate in His Body. 

I recognize this is probably inside baseball for most, but of the 2% of you who get a charge in thinking about issues theological/ecclesiological/missiological... what do you think? Is the general flow right? 

 

Comments

[david]

i get it. and don't disagree.

can you somehow insert "revelation" into the diagram?

[UMJeremy]

It's similar to Gutierrez's "Practice-Theory-Practice" model where what we do informs our theory and then our theory informs what we do. But personally, I think the arrows go both directions not just in a clockwise circle.

[Alberto Medrano]

If it goes the other way as well, what happens when missiology points to Christology?

[Bob hyatt]

David- revelation comes all along the way- we learn our Christology in Scripture and community and as we launch out in mission we are able to test the truth of what we know about Him.

Alberto- I don't think it does- the question is "what builds on what?" I'm not sure our Christology is ever *directly* informed by our missiology. Though, my statement to Dabid might seem to contradict that... :)

[CulturalSavage]

I think that it is much more of a circular process. Christology may be the best (in my opinion) starting point, but in reality we cannot have a complete Christology without the community (Ecclisology) rightly expressing it's self in mission (Missiology).

The key idea here (for me anyways) is this: all of our "ology's" allong with all of our praxis needs to lead us back to Christology. If it fails to do that, then the progression is stunted and we stop growing with apostolic imagination.

At least that's what I think.

I wrote up a post about this a few years ago. I'll leave the link in hops that it can further the discussion.

http://culturalsavage.com/spirituality/is-mission-the-mother-of-theology/

[Ed Stetzer]

I agree wholeheartedly... but I may be biased. ;-)

http://churchplantingnovice.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/hirsch-vs-stetzer-on-ecclesiology/

[Richard Passmore]

I agree the process needs to be more interactive. However I still think your approach (default startpoint) sounds ecclesiocentric which is problematic as it gives us a pale vision of christ and doesnt take culture seriously enough . Much what you are talking about stems from Bosch and needs a Missio dei understanding. A key is to see the missio dei in culture and allow the journey of following God to shape all. Church starts where Jesus is with other, and we discover Christ as we engage with others, this enables all three parts to become more truly christ centered, as we rediscover who christ is, what mission is and how church should be.

[Jrrozko]

Bob, I do think you "got" Dave on this. The reciprocal arrow (as with Ed & Alan's arrows) are helpful as well I think.

To Richard's point, and in line w/ my own particular bias, I do think we need to conceptualize (and actualize!) this against the backdrop of the missio Dei. God's mission, while aimed at the creation of a covenant people, addresses the whole of creation and thus there is a larger... project(?) that this all takes place within. Hope the time in Richmond was great, wish I could have been there.

[Kipp]

Bob, I may be off-base on this, but are you confusing community with ecclesiology with church praxis? I guess maybe it would help if I understood your definition of ecclesiology. It feels like you're making no distinction between theory and practice.