Mission is the Shape of Water

Mission is the Shape of Water is the title of a new book by Mike Frost. Frost writes “Our mission … is to alert everyone everywhere to God’s universal reign through Christ, by both speech and action, by explaining and demonstrating, by word and deed. We proclaim it with our mouths, through our joyful witness to our experience of God’s reign, by our testimony of coming under God’s reign, and through evangelistic preaching about God’s reign.”

Great. But how? Frost’s use of water imagery informs us that it is less about the ‘how’ and more about the when and where. Just like water which moulds to the shape of its container, for Frost, the shape of Christian mission is determined by the host culture and the social historical moment in which mission takes place. God’s reign is universal and eternal, yet explained and demonstrated inside history.

Frost then outlines 10 shapes that the Christian mission has embodied over the past 2000 years. These include seasons of slaying fear-engendering gods, peacemaking as Goths and Huns battled Romans as the empire crumbled, flame bearing in monasteries and so on. This part of the book is helpful. Whether or not entire ears of history can be summed up in one or two words is debatable. But the basic thesis that there are eras in history, and mission – like water – adapts to its context is sound.

Frost has two words to describe our current context. One is Remissioning. We have at this moment an opportunity to re-imagine and re-form mission as God centred, not program driven institution. The other is Unearthing, which acknowledges that for many in the West the Christian faith is not so much foreign but rather forgotten.

The water imagery is powerful, but I question if it avoids the risk of syncretism (adapting too much to your context). Hindsight is wisdom. Working out what shape mission ought to take now is another matter.

Rev David Rietveld
Acting Rector