THE UNITED THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE BA NGA LORE

DEPA RTM ENT OF M ISSION AND ECUM ENICS

MODERN MISSION CONCEPTS AND PARADIGMS MISSIO-DEI, HOLISTIC

MISSION AND EXTENSIO-DEI

PRESENTER: JOHN PAUL DEVAKUMAR RESPONDENT: LA LSANGLIA NA K

COURSE: CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGIES OF MISSION PROFESSOR: REV.DR.P.T.GEORGE

Contents:-

1. Introduction
2. Missio Dei
2.1 Origin and Development
2.2 Popularization and conceptual development
2.3 Missio Dei’s mission emphasis
2.4 Biblical relevance for Missio Dei
2.5 Missio Dei more than mere Theology
3. Holistic Mission
3.1 Fourfold mission
3.2 Lausanne and Holistic mission
3.3 Mission as Transformation
4. Extensio-Dei
4.1 “The Vow of Mission”
4.2 Message of Love
4.3 Beyond “Missio Dei”
5. Implications
6. Conclusion
Bibliography

1. Introduction:

In this paper we will briefly discuss three of the contemporary Mission theologies which in the
recent years had guided the church’ understanding of mission. The first section will deal with
Missio-Dei, followed by the discussions on Holistic Mission and the last section will briefly
highlight Jacob Kavunkal’s Extensio-Dei.

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2. Missio Dei:

The phrase Missio Dei is a Latin theological term which is translated as “Mission of God,” and it
refers to the work of the church as being part of God’s work i.e., it’s not church’s mission, but
it’s God’s mission. 1 This Latin term understood as “the sending of God,” in the sense of “being
sent,” is a phrase used in Protestant missiological discussion especially since the 1950s. This
concept took the world stage in the area of missional studies because of Georg F. Vicedom at the
CWME meeting in Mexico City (1963). 2

2.1 Origin and Development:

This concept of “Missio Dei” has a long history and can be traced as far back as Augustine.
Later, it was Aquinas who first used the term to describe the activity of the Triune God; sending
of both the Son and the Spirit by God the Father (John 3:17; 5:30; 11:42; 17:18). 3 In modern
setting, Karl Barth in 1932 presented the idea that mission was God’s work and that authentic
church mission must be in response to God’s mission. He became the first theologian to
articulate missions as an activity of God himself. By this, he broke the Enlightenment approach
to theology and ushered into a new theological paradigm. 4 Soon after, Karl Hartenstein, a
German missiologist was motivated by Karl Barth’s emphasis on action of God and so used the
term “Missio Dei” to distinguish it from Missio ecclesiae, the mission of the church. 5

2.2 Popularization and conceptual development:

At the Tambaram meeting of the IMC (1938), a statement by the German delegation became an
important catalyst in the development of a new understanding of mission. Karl Barth is called the
first exponent of this new missiological paradigm, because his influence on missionary thinking
reached a peak at the Willingen Conference of the IMC (1952). It was here that the idea (not the
exact term) Missio Dei was first understood as mission being derived from the very nature of
God. It was thus put in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or
soteriology. 6 In Willingen, discussion proceeded with the premise that our mission has no life of
its own: only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission, not least since the
missionary initiative comes from God alone. The meeting at Willingen, Germany from July 5-17
was attended by 190 delegates. The meeting took place in a difficult time in the life of the
church. The Second World War had been replaced by the cold war and the church was coming to
terms with the expulsion of missionaries from China. Against this pessimistic background,

1
Tormod Engelsviken, “M issio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Concept in
European Churches and Missiology,” International Review of Mission 92.367 (2003): 482.
2
A. Scott Moreau et al., eds., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rap ids,
Michigan: Baker Books-Paternoster Press, 2000), 631.
3
Moreau et al., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, 631.
4
David Jacobus Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission , Twentieth anniversary ed.,
American Society of Missiology Series no. 16 (Mary knoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2011), 333.
5
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 333.
6
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 333.

2
Willingen expounded the theology of mission that Barth, Hartenstein and others had been
moving towards. In his report of the conference, Hartenstein described mission as “participation
in the sending of the Son, in the Missio Dei, with an inclusive aim of establishing the Lordship of
Christ over the whole redeemed creation.” 7

There are two new particular emphases on missiological thinking which emerged from
Willingen. According to Goheen, firstly, mission is first and foremost God’s mission and the
church does not have a mission of its own. Rather, the primary emphasis is on what God is doing
for the redemption of the world. Thereafter, consideration is given to how the church participates
in God’s redeeming mission. Second, God’s mission is defined in terms of the Triune c haracter
and work of God. The Trinitarian emphasis was particularly important as mission was
understood as being derived from the very nature of God. Therefore, Goheen defines these two
points of view as Christocentric-Trinitarian and Cosmo-centric-Trinitarian. 8

It can be understood as the Christocentric view sees God’s mission as centering on the work of
Christ through the Church, whereas the Cosmo-centric view of which the Dutch missiologist
Johannes C. Hoekendijk was the most prominent proponent sees God’s mission as being active
in all of the cosmos. For Hoekendijk, the church is an appendix to God’s work, i.e., “when one
desires to speak about God’s dealings with the world, the church can be mentioned only in
passing and without strong emphasis.”9 However, through the 1960s an increasing number of
people from a variety of backgrounds, from academicians to church leaders adopted
Hoekendijk’s view to such an extent that at the 1968 Uppsala conference of the WCC “the
church itself was seen as an arena for mission.” 10

This concept for the field of Missiology was popularized by Georg F. Vicedom at Council for
World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) meeting in Mexico City (1963), which focused on the
motto ‘God’s Mission and Our Task’. He published a book entitled “The Mission of God: An
Introduction to the Theology of Mission” in 1965; in this book he closely tied Missio Dei to the
Kingdom of God. However, Vicedom used Kingdom of God in two distinct ways; the rule of
God over the whole of creation and the restoration of relationships with God and humanity
through the death of Christ. This inconsistency facilitated the divergence in understanding of
Missio Dei which developed during the 1960s. 11

7
Engelsviken, “M issio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Conc ept in European
Churches and Missiology,” 482.
8
Michael W. Goheen, “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You”: J.E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary
Ecclesiology, Mission (Zoetermeer: Boekencentru m, 2000), 115–16.
9
Engelsviken, “M issio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Concept in European
Churches and Missiology,” 488.
10
Stephen B. Bevans and Roger Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today, A merican
Society of Missiology Series no. 30 (Mary knoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2004), 291.
11
Engelsviken, “Missio Dei: The Understanding and Misunderstanding of a Theological Concept in European
Churches and Missiology,” 483.

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2.3 Missio Dei’s mission emphasis:

The classical doctrine on the Missio Dei as God the Father, sending the Son and God the Father
and the Son sending the Spirit was expanded to include yet another ‘movement’, i.e., the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit sending the church into the world. As far as missionary thinking was
concerned, this linking with the doctrine of the Trinity constituted an important innovation and
step forward in missional notion. 12 It is not the church that has a mission; it is God’s mission that
has a church. Mission is wherever God is at work fulfilling his missionary purpose. The strong
corrective element in the concept has helped to relinquish mission from the ownership of the
Western churches and to make it a truly worldwide phenomenon. Missio Dei is God’s mission,
God’s self- revelation as the one who loves the world, God’s involvement in and with the world,
the nature and activity of God. Mission refers to particular forms, related to specific times, place
or needs of participation in the Missio Dei. 13

Thus, Missio Dei clearly expounds the biblical concept of mission which comprehends the
authority of the one who sends; the obedience of the one sent; a task to be accomplished; the
power to accomplish the task; and a purpose within the moral framework of God’s covenantal
working of judgment or redemption. 14 The Dutch missiologist Hoekenedijk was zealous to have
the true arena of God’s saving action be perceived as the universe of human undertakings and the
human condition, rather than the congregation. Therefore, the mission of God was to establish
“Shalom (peace), integrity community, harmony and justice, and humanization in this world.”15
Hence, Missio Dei can easily be construed as the way mission has to be conceptualize d and done
by the church; especially this is highly relevant for the contemporary world we live in now.

2.4 Biblical relevance for Missio Dei:

Christopher Wright in his book, The Mission of God, gives a comprehensive biblical grounding
for the missio Dei he writes:

The Bible presents to us a portrait of God that is unquestionably purposeful. The God
who walks the paths of history through the pages of the Bible pins a mission statement to
every signpost on the way. It could be said that the mission of this book is to explore that
divine mission and all that lies behind it and flows from it in revelation to God himself,
God’s people and God’s world, insofar as it is revealed to us in God’s Word. 16

Thus, for Wright the theology of Missio Dei is the sending of God from the beginning of
creation, the sending of Israel, the sending of Jesus, the sending of the Holy Spirit, the sending of

12
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 488–89.
13
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 13.
14
Kenneth R. Ross et al., eds., Ecumenical Missiology: Changing Landscapes and New Conceptions of Mission,
Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series Volu me 35 (Oxfo rd: Regnum, 2016), 63.
15
Moreau et al., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, 632.
16
Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (London, UK: IVP
Academic, 2006), 23.

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the apostles, until Jesus returns at the apocalyptic event. It holistically includes each figure of the
triune God, which inclusive and involves not only a plan for restored relationship, but a serving
heart for people whom God loves. In the words of Bevans, who too believes that “when mission
starts with the heart it first affects the heart”17 Some of the common biblical passages cited by
cite missiologists to justify the Missio Dei are, the personal God conveyed in Hosea; in the
Gospel of John, 20:21 just as Jesus was sent by the father, so he sends us; in the book of Acts, etc
yet we cannot confine this notion to any one of these passages, rather take the entire biblical
narrative to be about Missio Dei.

2.5 Missio Dei more than me re Theology:

One of the most profound statements in Mission Theology by David Bosch is that “Mission has
its origin in the Heart of God; God is a fountain of sending love; this is the deepest source of
Mission.”18 Now, knowing that mission has its source in the nature and purpose of God, why
should there be conflicts in the praxis of this mission, amongst the very agents who are working
alongside God. Ecumenicals define Missio Dei as, “everything God does for the communication
of salvation and in a narrow sense, everything the church itself is sent to do.” While most
evangelicals focus on the more immediate purpose of the Triune God in the sending of the Son:
the task of world evangelization, planting of the church a mong non-Christians, and the nurture of
such churches. The all encompassing mission is the deliberate reconciliation of building the
congregation and changing society. 19 We can understand that the difference between these two
approaches hinges on how the primary and fundamental human problem is defined, whether as a
broken relationship with a transcendent God, or as suffering, oppression, and broken human
relationships. Either way, the most imminent thing is building broken relationships between
God-humans, humans-world and humans-humans. Though there is confusion as who carries out
God’s mission, Kirk suggests that he believes both the church and the world are agents of Missio
Dei, it is carried out to a greater degree by those who believe and obey the gospe l. 20 Therefore,
Missio Dei is definitely more than mere theology of mission.

3. Holistic Mission:

“Holistic mission is concerned with ministry to the whole person through the transforming power
of the gospel. While holistic mission affirms the functional uniqueness of evangelism and
social responsibility, it views them as inseparable from the ministry of the kingdom of
God.”21 Thus, holistic mission is understood as the intentional integration of building the church
and transforming society. In the contemporary missiology this is construed as the missiology of

17
Stephen B. Bevans and Roger Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections on Christian Mission Today
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 18.
18
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 392.
19
Moreau et al., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, 632.
20
J. Andrew Kirk, What Is Mission? Theological Explorations (Minneapolis, MN: Fo rtress Press, 2000), 33.
21
Moreau et al., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, 448.

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transformation. In following section we will further discuss the development and significance of
this missional notion.

3.1 Fourfold mission:

The church throughout the history has been involved in the mission of God in distinct ways.
Especially, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the churches of Europe and America were
involved in what was understood as a fourfold mission. In which the agencies supported by the
church sent out missionaries to do mission among people other than their own. Their mission
policy and ideology in the fourfold mission was based on the understanding that the others did
not know, thus they needed information and technology to be able to know. This mission
strategy composed of evangelism, education, medical work and industrial training. Even if
education, industrial and medical work could contribute in changing the lifestyle of the people
that were being evangelized, it was not enough unless they had obtained what the missionaries
defined as ‘positive salvation of the individual’ i.e. Evangelism was just conversion, as it was the
definitive of Salvation. 22 Hence, in midst of a holistic mission agenda, this notion of evangelism
can be seen as the flaw of the conservative understanding of the intention of mission during that
time period. This along with the suspicion of the colonial expansion using these means caused
many blockades for mission paradigm right after the e nlightenment era and just before the post-
modern era could begin. Therefore, two things can be understood in this context, firstly, that
‘holistic mission’ wasn’t a post- modern phenomenon; secondly, the need for revision in the years
to come with regards to the ideal notion of ‘holistic mission’ which would incorporate this
fourfold mission as its cornerstone.

3.2 Lausanne and Holistic mission:

According to Bosch, the reaction of church and mission to the challenge of modernism was very
generally put into twofold: firstly, Catholic and Protestant circles prepared their congregation to
continue to define salvation in traditional terms, ignoring, as it were, the challenges of the
Enlightenment and proceeding as if nothing had changed; secondly, they made attempts to take
the challenges of modernism seriously, also with respect to its understanding of
salvation. 23 During this time, the European, Northern and Southern American evangelical
churches were growing and producing leaders who wanted to take part in the international affairs
of mission. Therefore, in Lausanne 1974, they gathered ‘some 2,700 participants and guests from
over 159 nations’, its goal being ‘to mobilize the whole church to proclaim the whole gospel to
the whole world.’ 24 The Lausanne Congress was certainly a milestone in the global evangelical
circles. Peniel Rajkumar opines in due proportion and considering its typical significance, it

22
Brian Woolnough and Wonsuk Ma, eds., Holistic Mission: God’s Plan for God’s People, Regnum Ed inburgh
2010 Series (Oxford : Regnum, 2010), 38.
23
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 338.
24
Emma Wild-Wood and Peniel Rajku mar, Foundations for Mission, Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series
(Oregon, United States: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 211.

6
could be said that Lausanne meant for evangelicals what Vatican II meant for the Roman
Catholics. 25

Despite the split between Evangelicals and Ecumenicals, the dialogue between the two sides
never stopped. A number of Evangelicals also remained active within WCC structures, while the
1975 Nairobi Assembly of the WCC, similarly to Lausanne, spoke about ‘the whole Gospel for
the whole world by the whole church’. 26 The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization
(LCWE), which emerged out of the Lausanne Congress, set the agenda for the following years
around key issues emerging of the Covenant, addressing them through well moderated
consultations: the homogenous unit principle (1977), Gospel and culture (1978), simple lifestyle
(1980), social responsibility (1982), the Holy Spirit (1985) and conversion (1988). These
gatherings kept the Lausanne flame much alive and helped to establish a missiological agenda
for the evangelical world, while also providing a bridge of conversation between global North
and South. It also handled the ‘verbal-priority’ of the evangelistic emphasis with reference to the
‘holistic mission’, an important conversation continued to give Lausanne a sense of a common
journey along with the Ecumenicals. These events also kept monitoring and addressing the state
of world evangelization, of mission practice and even mission theology. 27

3.3 Mission as Transformation:

According to Chris Sugden, the theology and missiology of transformation was developed
through an interrogation of scripture in the light of the realities of mission; also this wasn’t a
debate between evangelicals and liberals, rather debated within evangelicalism. 28 This was
because, the dispute between western capitalism and various types of Marxism in the 1970’s and
1980’s, any sympathy with changing social structures or going beyond the relief of distress was
under suspicion in some parts of evangelicalism. A number of theological categories and
traditions to attack the evangelical legitimacy of those who were making the case for holistic
mission: these included the metaphorical interpretation of biblical passages such as release to the
captives and a residual dualism of the priority of eternal salvation over present well-being. 29 This
was during the time when the understanding of salvation from the WCC meetings was being
implied as liberation from religious superstition, attention to human welfare and the moral
improvement of humanity. 30

This concern for holistic mission focused on mission done in context, which led to an increasing
appreciation of biblically informed social analysis and of the role of the context in helping us to
understand scripture and our mission, and in particular how to understand poverty and why
people are poor, what change takes place and how, and what change really is. As a res ult, many

25
Wild-Wood and Rajku mar, Foundations for Mission, 212.
26
Ross et al., Ecu menical Missiology, 159.
27
Wild-Wood and Rajku mar, Foundations for Mission, 213.
28
Woolnough and Ma, Holistic Mission, 31.
29
Woolnough and Ma, Holistic Mission, 32.
30
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 338.

7
people of the evangelicalism were convinced of the biblical case for holistic mission. 31 The
central concern of holistic mission was the relationship between evangelism and social
responsibility, which the evangelicals tried to sort out through the Lausanne Covenant (1974)
and the Manila Manifesto (1989) i.e. both of these focused on evangelism, yet the latter
emphasized the issue of the whole gospel, demonstrating the wide acceptance of social concern
as an integral part of the Good News of Christ. 32

Mission as transformation was formulated part of a wider consultation entitled ‘I will build my
church’ in the Lausanne Covenant because it raised the concept o f holistic mission. Thus,
according to Vinay Samuel, “Transformation is to enable God’s vision of society to be actualized
in all relationships, social, economic and spiritual, so that God’s will may be reflected in human
society and his love be experienced by all communities, especially the poor.” 33 Mission as
transformation was able to tie together the whole gospel (including gospel to the poor), the whole
church (which included communities of believers) and the kingdom of God (which enabled us to
recover the point that it is life, not just a message or beliefs). 34

4. Extensio-Dei:

The word ‘extensio’ is derived from the Latin verb extendere (to reach out) with its past
participle, extensus and the root of the abstract noun extensio, to mean, reaching out or reaching
toward. It is almost identical with another Latin term, protendere, reaching toward. Due to the
familiarity in English of the word ‘extension’, Jacob Kavunkal, the proponent of this notion,
prefers to connote Extensio Dei as “Divine Reaching Out”. According to Jacob, Extensio Dei
goes beyond Missio Dei of the Willingen Conference (1952), in so far as God’s very nature, as
love, is reaching out. Therefore, as understood by the Second Vatican Council that described
God as “Fountain- like Love”, mission is the very identity of God and the church, as the
continuation of that divine reaching out through Jesus Christ. 35

4.1 “The Vow of Mission”:

Jacob cites the fourth vow that was added by St. Ignatius of Loyola founder of the Jesuit Order
along with the usual three vows of Catholicism. This new one was “the Vow of Mission” which
meant that the members of the Order are prepared to discharge any mission that the Pope would
give. An associated idea was the ‘frontier mission’ where the actual engagement of fighting non-
Christians to make them Christians, took place in a geographical setting. However, the Vatican II
proved to be a radical leap forward, as far as the concept of mission was concerned, even if not

31
Woolnough and Ma, Holistic Mission, 32.
32
Moreau et al., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, 449.
33
Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden, eds., Mission as Transformation: A Theology of the Whole Gospel (Oxford :
Regnum, 1999).
34
Woolnough and Ma, Holistic Mission, 33.
35
Jacob Kavunkal SVD, Extensio Dei-Mission as Divine Reaching Out (Delhi, India: Indian Society for Pro moting
Christian Knowledge, 2020), v ii.

8
always the description of it. Jacob opines this “sending” model of mission is colonial in its nature
and not fully Biblical. The biblical understanding of the church and mission is no more just a
quality or a note of the church, but the church as the continuation of God as love, as mission
reaching out in this love. Therefore, according to Jacob, God as mission reaches out in creation,
covenants and the different means and eventually, in God’s word incarnate, Jesus Christ. The
very identity of the church is its reaching out; simply meaning mission defines the church. 36

4.2 Message of Love:

Here Jacob refers to Christopher Wright from his book “The Mission of God: Unlocking the
Bible’s Grand Narrative”, where Wright claims that “Mission is what the Bible is all about; we
could as meaningfully talk of the missional basis of the Bible as the Biblical basis of mission.”
That mission is the diffusion of the divine love. Further, Jacob argues that in the Bible the way
God sees is, “not with the eyes, but with the heart, thus the heart in the biblical physiology being
the seat of understanding, rather than of feeling.” He believes that the four gospels tell us how
Jesus was a spelling out of this heart of God. Also, he asserts that though we may never come to
know about the physical appearance of Jesus, we cannot miss the window to God’s heart in
Jesus. 37 We can understand that Jacob is building his argument on the message of love to be the
corner stone for mission.

For Jacob, through the church’ exercises of love and service, it becomes a sort of “soft-power”
for the transformation of modern culture to make it more other-centered. He mentions Walter
Kasper' argument that the most serious critic against the church today, is the accusation that
oftentimes only a few deeds follow its words of love and service. Jacob refers to the words of the
Mary Motte, a missiologist belonging to the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, who says that “the
awareness of God’s sustaining love and creative power leads us to a missionary spirituality that
is basically contemplative”, by which a spirituality that regards everything from the view that
God’s love is a creating love, embracing all persons and all creation. 38

4.3 Beyond “Missio Dei”:

In the church, the notion of sending received high priority since the beginning of colonialism.
Therefore, for Jacob, the very concept of mission as sending has its origin with colonial
expansion and as mentioned earlier it is associated with the fourth vow of mission that St.
Ignatius introduced for the Jesuit Order. 39 Here, this vow meant to do the assignments the Pope
would give them which where pertained to territorial aspect; this soon became the norm of other
Catholic congregations of the colonial regime and extended even during the post-colonial era.
Even though the post-colonial understanding progressed from this notion into mission in which

36
Kavunkal SVD, Extensio Dei-Mission as Divine Reaching Out, xii.
37
Kavunkal SVD, Extensio Dei-Mission as Divine Reaching Out, 26.
38
Kavunkal SVD, Extensio Dei-Mission as Divine Reaching Out, 27– 28.
39
Jacob Kavunkal SVD, “Extensio Dei: The Need to Go Beyond Missio Dei,” Verbum SVD Online 1.2 (2013): 2.

9
God is the sender and not the Church while emphasizing the mission of God (missio Dei).40
Further, Jacob asserts that the impact of globalization and the presence of people from other
religions everywhere in the world had made this sending idea of mission meaningless. Thus, this
irrelevance of the mission needs to be evaluated and addressed immediately, as the need for a
new paradigm of mission which is biblically rooted and meaningful for our times is required. 41

Jacob claims his premise that missio Dei refers chiefly to an activity of God, that of sending,
whereas the very nature of God is mission is reaching out. He infact critiques the basis of missio
Dei from the “sending” notion of the Trinitarian God as the church’s mission began much before
the doctrine of the Trinity itself. He ground his notion biblically, by arguing that the entire
biblical discourse can be encapsulated in one phrase: extensio Dei (‘extendere’ meaning ‘to reach
out’), divine self- reaching out. It is God’s going out of God’s self, in love. Humanly speaking,
the first moment of this divine self-reaching out is creation. This divine self- reaching out is
continued through the covenants that God establishes, both universal (Gen 9:9-17) and particular
(Ex 20) as well as through the judges, the Prophets and ultimately through God’s Word
Incarnate, Jesus the Christ. 42 Hence, this contemporary notion of mission theology seems to be
the latest understanding amongst missiologists.

5. Implications:

The notions of missio Dei has definitely paved way for a descriptive understanding of mission
that shifted from the understanding mission as a church initiative to a Triune God’s initiative.
Then, the evangelicals highlighting the need to have a holistic mission outlook has also opened
the mindsets of those uphold the traditional and conservative scheme of mission. This also in a
way has made the church and its mission as something not just for religious and spiritual
maturity, but for a holistic development. These progressive ideas in mission are a good sign that
the church is adapting itself to the changing times. The conflicting views between the
evangelicals and ecumenicals over the years can be seen with an optimistic lens, as these
dissertations have produced many notions and means to do mission. In the words of Johannes
Hoekendijk, we must “speak more of God’s work in the secular world, in the political, cultural
and scientific movements of the time.” He also opines that the church is “the laboratory, the
diakonia of a little group, living in a concrete situation and serving each other and their
environment by reforming the structure of a segment of society.” 43 Thus, mission has to reform
and transform the society, but the means of doing so should be through love just as what
Extensio Dei stresses. The present day church which has to first understand that it’s sending
nature doesn’t make to superior to the world, rather work in solidarity with the world which will
share the message of love, in the way of love, just like what God did through Jesus Christ.

40
Kavunkal SVD, “Extensio Dei: The Need to Go Beyond Missio Dei,” 3.
41
Kavunkal SVD, “Extensio Dei: The Need to Go Beyond Missio Dei,” 4.
42
Kavunkal SVD, “Extensio Dei: The Need to Go Beyond Missio Dei,” 5.
43
J. C Hoekendijk et al., The Church inside Out (London: SCM, 1967), 223.

10
6. Conclusion:

The discussions on the selected contemporary mission theologies have explained clearly that the
mission of church is ever changing and adapting to the context. The mission of the church first
starts with revamping itself based on the present context. Also, the question of whether mission
is all about saving souls or the emancipation of humankind is addressed through the above
discussions. We can conclude that the right balance between the evangelism and social
responsibility is the right way to do mission.

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