Prayer and Missionary Movement Beyond the Self

INTRODUCTION¹

This essay considers the problem and possibility of a mission spirituality. A significant tradition of mission spirituality exists amongst Catholic missionary orders, and Protestant contributions are by no means absent.² However, in the main, these discussions focus on the link between spirituality and the particular missionary vocation—the spirituality serves this vocation. This article argues in a different direction. The missionary calling in question relates not to a separate vocation; it describes the Christian life as such. If we understand the Christian God to be missionary, as is the common ecumenical position (Ad Gentes §2), a corresponding missionary calling belongs to the being of a Christian. We find our identity in Jesus Christ as we, impelled by the Spirit, move beyond our closed histories and into the history of his mission to the world.

The term "mission" is, of course, a contentious one within Western theological discourse. The rejection of a colonial past has included a related tendency to conceive mission not first as an external movement, but as an animus internal to the church. Mission, by this definition, becomes the witness of a community which builds itself up according to its spiritual practices and rhythms. Any externality, any movement of the church into the world, though not precluded, becomes contingent upon this internal dynamic. While a number of positive theological reasons might underlie this interpretive direction, one in particular stands out: we attempt to avoid the problem of missionary colonization by focusing on the spiritual life defined in relation to the church and its practices.

There is, however, a counter argument to be made. Much mission theology of the latter half of the 20th century located the problem of missionary imperialism within Western ecclesiologies.³ That is, ecclesiologies which understood mission to be an external and secondary endeavor promoted a colonial mission strategy: mission replicated, in other places, those practices, rituals, and institutions deemed necessary to a proper spiritual witness "at home." Consolidating missionary witness within the church, in other words, produced an external mission method termed colonization.

To be sure, the logic is counterintuitive and counters much ecumenical discussion concerning the nature of the church, but it underlines a particular theological assumption: the prioritizing of worship and a corresponding spiritual life as essential over missionary movement as secondary and unessential. To address the problems related to this more or less firm binary, the following looks to the turning outward of the Christian spiritual life, and to develop better links between this life and its underlying missionary calling. This will be accomplished by using Karl Barth's treatment of invocation as the key act of obedience of the Christian. This understanding of prayer relates to his understanding of the active life and so to the issue of divine/human agency. Finally, the person of the Spirit and the spiritual life are explored. Throughout, prayer as the invocation of God moves the Christian and the Christian community beyond its closed history and toward the witness of the reconciliation of God found in Jesus Christ.

THE PROBLEM OF PRIORITIZING OF WORSHIP OVER MISSIONARY MOVEMENT

To develop this link between prayer and mission spirituality, it is first necessary to consider the relative ordering of Christian life and spirituality, with its rhythms and practices, over and above that of missionary movement. This ordering is especially evident when considering contemporary ecumenical accounts of the church and its witness. The logic begins with a notion of mission linked to the church's apostolicity and with an affirmation of the Christian community as the primary witness to the Kingdom of God. Grounded in the apostolic tradition, this community is constituted by a range of practices and led in a way derived from and reflective of the gospel. So defined, the processes of Christian formation and sanctification take center stage, and witness is the natural overflow of this proper inward action of upbuilding the Christian koinonia. Witness emerges as the consequence of a sustained process of enculturation into a Christian culture built up from a specific set of practices, symbols, institutions, and rituals, of a "prolonged catechesis" into these institutions...