Mission and ecclesiology: Cart before the horse?

D.B. Hamill notes that unless we agree on what the Church’s mission is, we won’t agree on what “missional” purpose and action look like. 
 
 

The Church as the Liberated Zone

Father Daniel Syosyev, the recently murdered Moscow missionary priest, said something very interesting in an interview shortly before his death. He was explaining why Christians should go to Church on Sunday, and his explanation reveals something of what the Church is.

My church or The Church?

Ray Ortlund at Christ is Deeper Still writes:
“My passion isn’t to build up my church. My passion is for God’s Kingdom.”
Ever heard someone say that? I have. It sounds large-hearted, but it’s wrong. It can even be destructive.
Suppose I said, “My passion isn’t to build up my marriage. My passion is [...]

On “the communion of saints”

“All the company of heaven” means everybody we ever loved and lost, including the ones we didn’t know we loved until we lost them or didn’t love at all. It means people we never heard of. It means everybody who ever did – or at some unimaginable time in the future ever will – come together at something like this table in search of something like what is offered at it…

The Communion of Prayer

“Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). Have you ever wondered what Jesus did when He prayed all night? Have you ever tried to pray all night? If your conception of prayer is a monologue of needs, information and requests, then your experience of prayer is either that it is very short or very repetitive…

The Spirituality of the Celtic Church

If the rich history of the Celtic churches is a fairly recent discovery, their spirituality may be an even more surprising resource for a life-affirming, holistic, and faithful way of life for Christians in this “postmodern” world and, more importantly, the world of the future…

Vincent of Lerins: Finding the true faith (434 AD)

Vincent attempted, as did St John Cassian, to find a way that avoided the extremes both of Pelagius and of Augustine. His Commonitories [reminders] offer a guide to distinguish Orthodox teaching from innovation, the maxim now known as the Vincentian Canon: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (i.e. only “what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all” is the catholic Faith of Christianity). Vincent taught that the ultimate source of Christian truth was Holy Scripture and that the tradition of the Church was to be invoked to guarantee the correct interpretation of Scripture…

Cyprian of Carthage: What unites the Church? (250 AD)

Related:
The Martyrdom of Cyprian of Carthage

Since the Lord warns us, saying, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” and since He bids us to be simple to harmlessness, and yet with our simplicity to be prudent, then what else, beloved brethren, befits us than to use foresight and watching with an anxious heart, both to [...]