missio dei and a sent people: initial thoughts on renov8

Here are some quick initial thoughts, from a university ministry standpoint, on the first session with Mike Frost at the Renov8 conference.

As always, I love the way Frost ties mission to the Missio Dei, the Missional God, and makes it clear that mission is not something God does, but is central to who God is. As Frost put it, If you take the mission away from God, you don’t have God anymore. Sending and going lie in the very heart and nature of God.

Frost’s definition of the gospel is also important. He defines our mission as alerting people to the rule and reign of God in Christ. It’s the same as N. T. Wright’s definition, which I prefer: The gospel is the declaration in word and deed that Jesus is Lord. What this means is that the message of salvation, the message that you and I can be saved, while important and the direct result of it, is not the gospel. The gospel is actually about Jesus. (Who’d have thought, eh?) The gospel is the good news that Jesus has won a great victory, and is going to finally bring justice, goodness, and wholeness to all of creation. Heaven is coming to earth. (Sound familiar, theologues?) The best way to take part in this mission, according to Frost, is to create foretastes of what is to come by living and speaking that future reality in the present.

Combine the last two paragraphs, and you get the essence of the evening. Jesus is Lord, He will one day restore the world, do justice, and put things aright, and in the present we are sent to the world in the same way that Jesus was, to bring that future reality into the present. Frost’s ultimate measure of this is just as good for campus ministries as churches: are the people to whom you are sent (for us that’s uCalgary) better off because you are among them? We are to be Jesus among and for them, and that means loving and blessing them. We already do this in a lot of ways, but it still has me thinking. What do we need to do next to make the university a better place because we’re around? What could we do so that, in 3 or 4 years, people who never come to anything we do would still miss bsmucalgary if we disappeared? What could we do so that, in 3 or 4 years, uCalgary looked more like a university in the Kingdom? What problem does uCalgary have that we could help solve? Answering these questions will move us forward as the missional people of the Missio Dei.

More ways to follow Renov8

• I’m planning to share a few more thoughts during the week, as I find things worth sharing, so I’ve created a Renov8 category on this blog to make it easy to follow.
• For up to the minute quotes and quips, you can follow me on Twitter.
• Follow everyone tweeting the conference with the #rv8 tag.
• Michael Krahn, who is more industrious than I, has written a good synopsis of the first evening, and looks intent on live blogging the week, which is more than you’re going to get out of me.
• For the old fashioned, there’s in person communication. Calgary Church is hosting an after-hours conversation in Kensington Wednesday night. Think of it as a virtual chat room with very realistic avatars.