Edinburgh to Salvador: Twentieth Century Ecumenical Missiology
by T.V. Philip

Chapter 2: Church and Mission

In the nineteenth century there existed a separation between church and mission, which had disastrous consequences for both. It was in the mission field that this false situation had been greatly recognised. As a result of the separation of church and mission in missionary thinking, the only reality for both the missionaries and the Christians in the mission field, was mission. The missionaries in the field were representatives of a missionary society under the authority of that society; the majority of the Christians in the field belonged to a missionary society such as the Lutheran Missionary Society or the Church Missionary Society (CMS), and were not conscious of belonging to a church. Stephen Neill tells the story (probably an apocryphal one) of an Indian clergyman who went to London in the 19th century, looked at St. Paul’s cathedral and asked whether it was a CMS or SPG church.¹ In the missionary thinking of the 19th century, there was no proper recognition of Christians in the mission field as belonging to a church of that country. The missionary historians treated the history of the church in Asia or Africa as part of the history of missionary societies and of western missionary expansion. As D.T. Niles once remarked, the churches in Asia or Africa, as far as the western missionary societies were concerned, were only dots on the missionary map. One sad result of treating Asian or African churches as part of western missionary expansion was that those churches did not develop an identity of their own with a sense of mission and were often burdened with western ecclesiastical problems.

It was only gradually that the missionary movement discovered the church. It has been said that each World Missionary Conference from Edinburgh (1910) to Willingen (1952) was a step forward in the progressive narrowing of the gap between the church and mission. It was also a step in the direction of discovering their true relationship.² One principal factor in the discovery of the relationship between church and mission was the growth of the younger churches. In a sense, we could say that in facing the problem of the relationship between older and younger churches, the missionary movement was confronted with the question of the relationship between church and mission.

The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910

The conference in Edinburgh was one organised for Protestant missionary societies working among non-Christian peoples. The majority of the participants were from Europe and North America. Out of the twelve hundred delegates, only seventeen were from the younger churches. They came, not as representatives of their churches, but as special delegates appointed by the missionary societies. There was opposition in some quarters even to the appointment of these few.³ Though of great ecumenical significance, the contribution of Edinburgh was not in the theology of missions. The task of rethinking the theological pre-supposition of mission was not the concern of the conference.

The Conference took place at a time when missionary enthusiasm was at a high point and the missionary obligation on the part of the Christians was a self-evident axiom to be obeyed. There was a sense of optimism about the missionary enterprise which prevented any questioning of the motivation of mission or of the missionary message. The planners of the conference had decided that no expression of opinion should be sought from the conference in any matter involving ecclesiastical or doctrinal questions on which those taking part in the conference differed among themselves.⁴ The title of the conference was, ‘The World Mission Conference to consider missionary problems in relation to the non-Christian’s world’. It was concerned about strategy for mission work among the non-Christians and the emphasis was on co-operation in mission. The Conference report reads, "We have, therefore, devoted much time to a close scrutiny of the ways in which we may best utilise the existing agencies by improving their administration and training of their agents".⁵

Of the eight commissions of the Conference, one was on ‘The Church in the Mission Field’. Though the Conference recognised that there existed, in the mission field, a church gathered from among the heathen, the description of this church in the report of the commission is rather interesting. In the report, the church in the ‘mission field’ is differentiated from the ‘home church’ in two respects. In the first place, the church in the mission field is surrounded by a non-Christian community and it is the function of the Christian community to subdue the non-Christian community for the kingdom. Secondly, the church in the mission field is "in close relation with an older Christian community from which it at first received the truth, which stands to it in a parental relation and still offers to it such help, leadership, and even control as may seem appropriate to the present stage of its development".⁶ Thus according to the report, a non-Christian environment and a daughter-mother relationship to an older church were the distinguishing marks of a church in the mission field. The report further said:

This statement makes clear the general assumption of the Edinburgh Conference. The mission was from the West to the East, with the West being understood as Christian and the East as non-Christian. Non-Christian background and the dependence on the ‘Home church’ made the church in the mission field in the ‘domain of missions’ and not a church in the proper sense of the word. It was, therefore, not in the region of general church history. This clearly illustrated the dichotomy that existed between the church and mission in the missionary theology of the time.

At Edinburgh, it was not the relationship between church and mission, or between older and younger church which received most attention, but the relationship between the missionary and the ‘native’ worker. Bishop Azariah of India raised the question sharply when he said:

However, Cheng Chung-Yi of China did forcefully raise, to the attention of the Conference, the relationship between the older and the younger churches in his plea for the unity of the church in China. He said, "Speaking plainly, we hope to see, in the near future a united church without any denominational distinctions". It was his opinion that such a union was needed for the growth and development of the Chinese church. "From the Chinese stand point there is nothing impossible about such a union", he said.

Though the faith and order issues were ruled out of the agenda of the Conference, there was one Commission at Edinburgh discussing co-operation and promotion of unity. As discussed in the previous chapter, in reviewing the situation in the mission field, this Commission noted the fear of missionaries, and missionary societies, about the new developments in the mission field and the possibility of churches in the mission field breaking away from western ecclesiastical traditions and control. It was these new developments in the mission field that raised the question of the relationship between the missionary societies and the churches in the mission field and, consequently, the theological issue of the relationship between church and mission. The relationship between missionary societies and the churches in the mission field was a major concern at the next meeting of the International Missionary Council (IMC) in Jerusalem, 1928.

Jerusalem 1928

By 1928 the reality of the ‘church’ in the existence of the younger churches as the fruit of the missionary activity, had forced itself upon the attention of the missionary movement. By this time, it also became clear to the missionary enterprise that it was no longer possible to discuss profitably, in an international meeting, the building of the Kingdom of God in India or China or Africa with the almost complete absence of Indians or Chinese or Africans.⁹ In a statement before the Conference, the IMC hoped that Jerusalem would afford an opportunity, for the first time, for the representatives of the older and younger churches to consider together how the relationship between the churches might be made mutually helpful.¹⁰ Out of the two hundred and thirty one members at the Jerusalem Conference, only fifty-two (about one-fourth) were from the younger churches. In Jerusalem, much more than in Edinburgh, the relationship between the older and younger churches, and the development of younger churches, became serious concerns. In preparation for the meeting, the IMC invited the National Christian Councils and similar organizations in which the younger churches were represented, to indicate ways in which the older churches could help in meeting the physical, educational and spiritual needs of their countries. ¹¹

In the administration of missionary work, the missionary societies or mission boards had authorised the missionaries in each of their respective areas to form themselves as a mission or a mission council. The discussion at Jerusalem centred around the relationship of such councils or missions to the ‘home’ church on the one hand and to the indigenous (younger) churches on the other. The dealings of the missionary societies with the indigenous churches were through these missions or councils. At Jerusalem, the younger churches desired a direct link between them and the societies and the churches they represented. They desired a church to church relationship. This was voiced by Cheng Chung-Yi of China when he said. "We believe that the relation between the Christian Church of East and of the West will become direct with no intermediary organization of ‘mission’ between".¹² Even before the Jerusalem Conference, the Chinese church was asking for such a direct relationship. In 1925, S.C. Leung of China wrote that, hereafter, missions and the Chinese church should not appear as two parallel organizations and that all activities initiated, maintained, and financed by missions should be expressed only through the Chinese church. "This means the recognition of the Chinese church as the chief centre of responsibility, the transfer of responsibility now attached to the missions to the Chinese church, the willingness of the missions to function only through the Chinese church, and the willingness of the individual missionaries to function as officers of the church and no longer as mere representatives of the mission boards who are entirely beyond the control of the Chinese church."¹³ He also suggested that a direct relationship between the churches in the West and the Chinese church should be established. The demand of the younger churches in Jerusalem was that the situation where missions and churches remained as a sort of diarchy should cease and that missionary activity should centre in, and on, the church. Henry T. Silcock in summing up the discussion observed:

As a result of this church-centric view of missions, "there is possible now a true partnership enabling the older churches in an ever increasing degree to work with, through or in the younger" said the final statement of the Conference. It added, "This partnership enables the older and the younger churches to face with greater hope of ultimate success than ever before".¹⁵

It was in this context that the Conference discussed the meaning of an ‘indigenous church’. "No more important problem confronts the older and younger churches alike than to discover the secret of a living, indigenous church", said the Conference statement.¹⁶ In the Edinburgh definition of the church in the mission field, it is said that a Christian community in a particular place passes from the ‘domain’ of missions to the regions of church history when certain conditions are fulfilled. At the time of the Jerusalem meeting, there was an effort to define an indigenous church as a product of a process of growth or evolution. According to Henry Venn, Secretary of the Church Missionary Society in the nineteenth century, the missionary aim should be to help the Christian communities in the mission field to grow into self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing churches. At the end of the process, the mission passes into a settled Christian community. At this point, according to Venn, the euthanasia of mission takes place. "Then the missionary and all missionary agencies should be transferred to the regions beyond". At Jerusalem, several applied the principles of Venn to define an indigenous church in terms of self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing. However, there was opposition to such an understanding from the younger churches. The Christo Samaj of India, in a statement prepared in 1921, made a protest against the transplanted ideas, and the effort to define the expressions ‘self-supporting’, ‘self-governing’, and ‘self-propagating’ in terms of Western organization. "The administrative independence of the Indian church cannot be effected by the imposition of a machinery essentially foreign in its conception and execution, but by making room for simpler and spontaneous organizations natural to the soil’.¹⁷ They pleaded for the development of an Indian type of Christianity embodying Indian ideals.

Cheng Chung-Yi of China pointed out that to some, the indigenous church almost means the utopia of the Christian movement in the world. Others look upon it with a great deal of doubt and misgiving, fearing that the young church in the mission field may go astray, create something that is quite different from historical Christianity, and thus lose the essentials of Christian religion. "In our opinion", he said, "an indigenous Church is nothing more or less than a normal, healthy growth of the Christian Church of which Jesus Christ is the supreme Head. An indigenous church in the mission field is not essentially different from a normal Church in any other part of the world". He went on to say, "By indigenous church we mean a Christian church that is best adapted to meet the religious needs of the Chinese people, most congenial to Chinese life and culture and most effective in arousing in Chinese Christians the sense of responsibility". It is a church that is the natural outgrowth and expression of the corporate religious experience of Chinese Christians.¹⁸

From the point of view of the younger churches we cannot artificially create an indigenous church. Self-support, self-government, and self-propagation alone do not create an indigenous church. They are but some of the characteristics of an indigenous church. An indigenous church is the natural and spontaneous expression of the corporate religious experience of Christians in a particular place. In the history of the churches in India, China or Africa, a lot of time and effort has been spent in the twentieth century, in ‘indigenisation of the church’s life and devolution of missionary power’. This was so because of the false situation created by the separation of church and mission in missionary thinking. What the conference in Jerusalem discovered was that an indigenous church in Asia or Africa was not essentially different from any other church, in any other part of the world, of which Jesus Christ is the Head

In closing our discussion of the Conference in Jerusalem, we need to refer to a very significant statement made by Nathan Soderblom, the great ecumenical pioneer and architect of the Life and Work Movement. In his address to the Jerusalem Conference he pointed out that the propagation of church fellowship in the early period of Christian history had created new centres of fellowship which became rather more important than Jerusalem itself - even though Jerusalem was God’s holy city where the supreme sacrifice, atonement and the new covenant had been accomplished. In Antioch they were called Christians for the first time. Other centres to be created were Ephesus, Rome and Alexandria, the first chief centre of theology. These very soon surpassed Jerusalem in importance as centres of the church. There were, of course, several reasons for this development, one of which is found in the spiritual character of Christianity. According to Soderblom:

Mission is not therefore simply a function or activity of the church. The church always extends itself in mission. It has no fixed or permanent centre anywhere, not even in Jerusalem. As the Christian fellowship extends, it creates new centres as important for the Lord’s church, its life and its future, as the old centres. What does it say about the relationship between church and mission, and about the unity of the church? This was the most important question raised by the Jerusalem Conference for the ecumenical movement.

At Jerusalem, it was the reality of the church in the mission field that forced the missionary movement to take seriously the ‘church’ in its thinking. But there were also other important social, political and ecumenical forces which influenced missionary thinking.

It was recognised in Edinburgh in 1910 that "the following ten years would in all probability constitute a turning point in human history and might be more critical in determining the spiritual revolution of humankind than many centuries of ordinary experience."²⁰ Undoubtedly they were, but scarcely as Edinburgh expected. Those ten years were to be fateful years for the world and the church - ten years which were to see the First World war, the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism. These were the years that brought Marxist communism to China and to many other parts of the world.²¹ The outbreak of the First World War marked the beginning of a new era. The tragic experience of being caught up in the irrationality and meaninglessness of war made people wonder whether life could really be explained in the easy, optimistic and evolutionary way that had come to be generally accepted in the preceding period.²² Liberal theology in its various forms, which was in ascendancy in this period, seemed to have few answers to the agonising questions that were raised by the break down of civilisation. The missionary enterprise was beginning to realise the inadequacy of its own theological pre-suppositions.

In 1918 Karl Barth published his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. The new theological trend represented in this book was in part a reaction to the liberalism of the 19th century and a return to earlier protestant orthodoxy, especially to Calvin. To some extent, it was a product of the environment. As liberalism had reflected the optimism and humanism of the 19th century, so neo-orthodoxy²³, to no small degree, arose from the pessimism and the despair begotten of the terrors of World War I. It emphasised human sinfulness and the inability, unaided, to discover God or to extricate oneself from the horrors brought by one’s depravity.²⁴ One important feature of neo-orthodoxy was its emphasis on Biblical theology. The revival of Biblical theology brought to the forefront the centrality of the church in the divine economy. The ‘church’ itself became a theme of theological inquiry and discussion. This was in marked contrast to the situation of fifty or sixty years ago.²⁵ Biblical theology emphasised that the core of Biblical history is the story of the calling of a visible community to be God’s people, His royal priesthood on earth, and the bearer of His light to the nations. The rediscovery of the church has been greatly helped by the revival of Biblical theology. This also explains, to a large extent, the rapid growth of the ecumenical movement since the 1930s.

The ten years which lapsed between the conference in Jerusalem, and the next meeting in Madras were momentous not only for the enterprise of missions but for the entire world with which mission was concerned. Three years after the Jerusalem Conference adjourned, Japan invaded Manchuria. Three years later Hitler came into power in Germany. Originally the Conference was to have met in Hangchow in China and plans were already far advanced when the outbreak of the war between China and Japan made it impossible. Tambaram near Madras, therefore, became the scene of the third World Missionary Conference in 1938.

The Christian church in Germany during the Third Reich became a centre of violent controversy and persecution. German universities had already succumbed to the pressures of the government, but the ‘confessing’ church in Germany stood fast to its freedom and defied the government. It proclaimed the sovereign Lordship of Jesus Christ and the spiritual rights of the community of Christ, whatever might be the secular government under which the Christians lived. In this struggle a new church consciousness was born. The German Christians had been forbidden, by their government, to attend the Oxford Conference of Life and Work in 1937. At Oxford it had been strongly stated, "If the war breaks out, then, pre-eminently the church must manifestly be the Church, still united as one Body of Christ, though the nations where it is planted, fight one another, consciously offering the same prayers that God’s name be hallowed."²⁶ This was the background of the Madras meeting.

Madras 1938

There were four hundred and seventy one delegates from sixty-nine countries and almost half of the delegates came from the younger churches. The main theme of the Conference was: The World Mission of the Church. At a meeting of the Ad Interim committee of the IMC at Salisbury in 1934, it was strongly urged that the meeting should concentrate upon the ‘on going Christian community’, both on the grounds of principle and on those of expediency.²⁷

So from the beginning it was determined that the central theme of the meeting should be the building up of the younger churches as a part of the historic universal Christian community. The subject of the meeting was dealt with under five main divisions: The faith by which the church lives, the witness of the church, the life and work of the church, the environment of the church, and co-operation and unity. Of these, two aspects received special attention at Madras, namely, the relationship between the Christian mission and non-Christian religions, and the rediscovery of the church as the agent of the evangel.

Whereas the theme in Jerusalem was The World Mission of Christianity, at Madras it was the World Mission of the Church. In the choice of this central theme, the missionary movement came into the same stream of thought as two other branches of the ecumenical movement, namely, the Faith and Order, and Life and Work movements. Both had held conferences in 1937 and at each the central theme was the ‘church’ having in view chiefly, but not exclusively, the older churches.²⁹ "In each of these great gatherings, less varied in race and nation than that of Tambaram but more varied in denomination and church tradition, there was to be discerned the sense that for the Christian cause all depends, under God, upon the life of the Christian community, the quality of its witness, the cogency with which within the varied and tumultuous life of man that community believes in and lives upon the power and wisdom of the Gospel".³⁰

It was in confronting the younger churches in the mission field that Jerusalem came to face the reality of the church in missionary thinking. Although Madras announced at the outset that its purpose was to consider the building up of the younger churches, and although the Conference gave much thought to the development of younger churches, it was the political, cultural and theological developments in Europe, and the concerns of the older churches, that influenced the thinking and assumptions of the Conference more than the situations of the younger churches. For example, its definition of the church, its nature and function was borrowed directly from the Faith and Order Conference at Edinburgh 1937.

Major subjects discussed at the Madras Conference were all related to ‘the church’. From Madras on, the ‘church’ played an ever-increasing role in missionary thinking. Richey Hogg points out:

Speaking of the relevance of the church to the life of Christians and the spread of the Gospel, the Conference pointed out that in spite of all its past and present failures to live up to its divine mission, the church is, and remains, the fellowship to which our Lord has given promises, and through which He carries forward His purpose for humankind. This fellowship is not merely invisible and ideal, but real and concrete, taking definite form in history. It is, therefore, the duty of all disciples of Christ to take their place in the given Christian church, that is, one of those concrete bodies in which and through which the Universal Church of Christ, the world wide company of His followers, is seeking to find expression. The Conference went on to say:

The Conference was convinced that Christian faith alone gives the vision and power that are essential for the resolution of the problems of our troubled world. God saves through Jesus Christ, is the Christian message. It is this message which is given to the church to proclaim. The report of the Conference reads:

The Conference called the churches to bear courageous and unflinching witness to the nations that the base purposes of people, whether individuals or of groups, cannot prevail against the will of the holy and compassionate God. The churches were urged to attack social evils at their roots. Above all, they were called to declare the Gospel of compassion and pardon of God that people may see the light, which is in Jesus Christ, and surrender themselves to His service.

The main conclusion of the Madras Conference was that church and mission are inseparable. It said, "World evangelism is the God-given task of the Church. This is inherent in the very nature of the Church as the Body of Christ created by God to continue in the world the work which Jesus Christ began in His life and teaching, and consummated by His death and resurrection".³⁵ It is the church that is God’s missionary to the world. So from Madras on, it was impossible to speak of mission without directly linking mission to the church. Further, in summoning the churches to become in itself the actualization among men of its own message, it appeared that Madras had identified the church with the Gospel. Hence the Conference at Madras could announce to a baffled and needy world that the Christian church was its greatest hope and that the church could not be destroyed. These were very bold and strong statements to make about the church and its place in the economy of salvation.

E. Stanley Jones, an American missionary working in India and a participant at the Madras Conference, immediately questioned this emphasis on the church in missionary thinking. He feared that the substitution of the church for the Kingdom of God might rob the missionary movement of the needed fires of imagination, enthusiasm, and self-criticism. From his experience in India as a missionary to the Hindus, he felt that the idea of the church was anathema to the Hindus. In an article for the Christian Century entitled, "Where Madras Missed its Way", he wrote:

According to Stanley Jones, Madras had no absolute conception from which it worked out its main problems. In his view, Jesus worked out His thinking from the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is God’s absolute order confronting human need. The Kingdom is absolute while the church is relative. The Kingdom is the end while the church is only the means. For Stanley Jones, one could not be a revolutionary in one’s thinking and acting, if one started from the church. Then the Gospel becomes a limited one. "The conception, the Church, binds you in relativities and limitations," he wrote. The complaint of Stanley Jones was that while Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, Madras went about preaching the gospel of the Church. He wrote, "Madras looked out and saw the Kingdom and the Church at the door, opened the door to the lesser and more obvious, the Church, and left the Kingdom at the door. So Madras missed the way".³⁷

Stanley Jones’s criticism deserved some attention. Henry P. Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary, New York, in another article in the Christian Century entitled, "What Stanley Jones Missed at Madras" tried to answer the criticism of Jones.³⁸ Van Dusen pointed out that Stanley Jones was guilty of an ‘elementary confusion of thought’ in his discussion of Kingdom and Church. Jones presented the Kingdom and Church as though they were two antithetic or irreconcilable realities between which a choice must be made. He spoke as though Madras confronted them as alternatives and that it deliberately chose the Church and rejected the Kingdom. What Madras did, according to Van Dusen, was to affirm both the Kingdom and the Church.

Van Dusen explained that no individualistic Christianity, not even individualistic proclamation of the message of the Kingdom, could possibly save the world from false totalitarianism. He pointed out that the Oxford Conference of the Life and Work Movement in 1937 had made it clear that Christianity must confront false communities with the reality of the true community. "The true community must find incarnation in the Christian Church. And so, Christianity must come to the world both as a message and a movement".⁴⁰ Walter Marshall Horton of Oberlin, another participant at Madras supported Van Dusen, when he wrote in the Christian Century that, "whatever other sins my fellow delegates and I may be guilty of, we are not guilty of the one alleged by Stanley Jones’ indictment".⁴¹

Another serious criticism of Madras came from Baez Camargo, a Mexican delegate to Madras, in an article he wrote in World Dominion. While granting that there was a degree to which the church had to reassert the divine source of its being and the transcendence of its God-given commission to the world, Camargo said that there was a very grave danger of overstressing this necessary emphasis. For him, Christianity was to be understood as a Christ-centred and not as a church- centred religion. He expressed the serious concern of the Protestant Christians in Latin America, where the Roman Catholic church had claimed infallibility, that a church-centric view of religion might tempt the protestant churches also to over emphasize its place.⁴²

Whitby 1947

Within nine months after the Madras Conference, the Second World War broke out. It was a period of turmoil, destitution, suffering and change throughout the world. After the war, an enlarged meeting of the International Missionary Council took place in Whitby, Ontario in Canada in 1947. One hundred and twenty delegates from forty countries attended the meeting. The general theme of the Conference was: The Christian Witness in a Revolutionary World. It was a very timely theme. It suggested that the church was facing not simply a post war period but a revolutionary situation. The survey of countries and churches showed a world in ferment. In the material destitution and physical hardship that was experienced throughout the world, especially in Germany, there was a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Faced with such a world, Whitby proclaimed that there is no hope except in God, and that evangelism is the need of the hour. Unlike that of Madras and Jerusalem, the Conference in Whitby showed a spirit of optimism in the outcome of missionary enterprise that was similar to that of Edinburgh 1910, and of the early student Volunteer Movement. Speaking of the church’s global evangelistic responsibility, the Conference said:

At Whitby there was renewed emphasis on Christian fellowship and Christian unity. For the church in general, and for the missionary movement in particular, every geographical expansion of the war brought disruption and disaster. One notable thing during the war was that Christian fellowship across the nations remained unbroken. Whitby was possible because of the vivid reality of the ecumenical fellowship. John Mackay who was elected as chairman of the IMC at Whitby observed that it had been easier for the Christians of the warring nations to meet and confer with one another at the close of World War II, than it had been at the close of World War I. He said:

Under the tragedies of war, Christians had been driven to realize as never before their oneness in Christ.

Partnership in Mission

The theological understanding of the relationship between church and mission in Madras led to the development of the concept of partnership in Whitby. At the beginning of the Protestant missionary movement, mission was from the West to the East, from the "Christian" world to the "non-Christian" world. The great burden of Edinburgh was how to carry the Gospel to the non-Christian lands. The younger churches were only recipients of mission from the older churches. But even in Edinburgh there was a general recognition that "the Church of Christ in each nation or tribe is the supreme instrument for its complete evangelisation".⁴⁵ In Jerusalem, there was a greater recognition of the place of younger churches in mission. Jerusalem emphasised that mission and missionaries should be integrated with the indigenous churches. In many countries, the first half of the twentieth century was a period of ‘devolution’ in mission, where greater autonomy and greater responsibility were given to the younger churches. It was also emphasised that the younger churches should play a greater part in the task of evangelisation. It was possible for Jerusalem to state, "There is possible now a true partnership enabling the older churches in an ever increasing degree to work with, through or in younger". This partnership would enable the older and younger churches to face the unfinished task of evangelism with greater hope of success than ever before.

For Madras, the church was the agent of the evangel, and church and mission could not be separated. This meant that there was no church which was not a missionary church, and that the world mission was that of the whole church. Madras defined evangelism thus: "By evangelism, therefore, we understand that the Church Universal, in all its branches and through the service of all its members, must so present Christ Jesus to the world in the power of the Holy Spirit that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, accept Him as the saviour and serve Him as Lord in the fellowship of His Church".⁴⁶

Responsibility for mission rests with all the churches, old and young. The work to be done is so vast, so urgent and so important, that it calls for all the resources of all the Christians in all parts of the world. "This work in this new day", said the Madras Conference, "must be undertaken by a partnership between the older and the younger churches, by a pooling of all resources and by cooperation of all the Christians".⁴⁷

The subject, Partnership in Mission, became a serious concern at Whitby. In considering the material and human resources for mission, the emphasis of Whitby was co-ordination and united planning. The co-operation in evangelism was conceived not only for the sake of a deeper fellowship and the strength of witness it would provide, but as the only way to face a task of great magnitude and urgency. The Conference pointed out:

It was in this context of a common task, that Whitby faced the issue of the relationship between the older and younger churches and coined the slogan, "Partnership in Obedience". The often quoted statement of Whitby reads:

Partnership in Obedience expressed the idea that the task of mission is a global task and is to be undertaken in partnership. The partnership is based on a common faith and obedience to a common task.

The partnership between the older and younger churches and new forms of mission were subjects of discussion again at the next meeting of the IMC at Willingen.

Willingen 1952

By 1952, it seemed fairly certain that the period of Western domination over peoples of Asia and Africa was coming to an end. In the words of the Indian historian K.M. Panikkar, the Vasco da Gama era had come to an end. The Asian people had won their independence and the process of emancipation in Africa kept the continent in ferment. Along with national independence, there was also the revival of ancient religions of these people, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. The period also saw the beginning of every part of the world being drawn into the current of a single global civilization dominated by Western science and technology.

By the nineteen fifties, Christianity had become worldwide. In many cases the political emancipation of the countries from colonial rule had expedited the process of younger churches gaining independence from mission control. At this point, many felt that Western missionary activity overseas was coming to a close. Already the organization, methods and outlook of Western missions were subjected to intense criticism. The criticisms leveled against the Christian missions in China, by both Communists and many Chinese Christians alike, were aimed at their connections with Western civilization and Western imperialism in particular, and at their inability to foster the growth of a really dynamic and expanding Chinese Church.⁵⁰ Some of the missionary leaders were aware of this new situation. Max Warren of the Church Missionary Society, speaking at the Willingen Conference, made the following comparison with the previous meeting of the IMC at Whitby.

In such a situation it was repeatedly asked whether there was any place for Western missions in the newly independent countries in Asia and Africa.⁵² Thus the church was faced with the task of rethinking her missionary obligation. Hendrik Kramer had already indicated the need for it as early as 1938, when he wrote that the Church and all Christians "if they have ears to hear and eyes to see, are confronted with the question: What is its essential nature, and what is its obligation to the world?"⁵³

At its meeting in 1948 at Oegstgeest in the Netherlands, the IMC committee authorized its research secretary, B.G.M. Sundkler, to initiate studies on the theological basis of missions. It was recognised that in the fields of Biblical and theological studies, there had been new insights and developments that needed to be taken seriously by the missionary movement. The committee felt that fundamental thinking was needed not only on the Biblical basis of missions but also in their practical application. Because of these considerations the general theme chosen for the Willingen Conference was: The Missionary obligation of the Church. This topic had been mentioned at the Whitby Conference, and the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches held at Amsterdam in 1948 had also used the ‘church’ as the central theme of its discussions. Two of the topics at Amsterdam had been : The Universal Church in God’s Design, and The Church’s Witness to God’s Design, both of which were very closely related to the main theme at Willingen.

As soon as the main theme of the Willingen Conference was published, J.C. Hoekendijk, a Dutch theologian, in a paper in the International Review of Missions, voiced a strong protest against the church-centric view of missions.⁵⁴ The paper was communicated to all participants in the Conference for study.

In this paper he attributed all ills in the missionary movement to the church-centric thinking which had been developed during the previous two decades. As a result, he said missions had become church extensions. He quoted J. Durr saying, "Mission is the road from the Church to the Church. But how can we be sure of being on the right road unless we know the right beginning and end of this road".⁵⁵ He pointed out that the missionary now hardly left the ecclesiastical sphere and for him, there was no life out side the church; consequently, he tried to define his surrounding world in ecclesiastical categories.

In Hoekendijk’s view, a keen ecclesiological interest was generally a sign of spiritual decadence. Ecclesiology has been a subject of major concern in the ‘second generation’. In the ‘first generation’ in periods of revival, reformation or missionary advance, the interest of Christians had been absorbed by Christology and the thought patterns had been determined by eschatology. Hoekendijk blamed the Jerusalem and Madras conferences of the IMC for the tendency towards ‘church-ism’ in contemporary thinking. "On the one hand it seems to be the logical outcome of our own theories, while on the other it is forced upon us by the younger churches".⁵⁷ According to him:

In his scheme, ‘Kingdom - gospel- Apostolate - world’, the world and the Kingdom are co-related. Hoekendijk explains that in the New Testament, Oikumene stands for the communion of the heathen, the humankind destined to perish, which in utter self-confidence, stands opposed to the Gospel. It is for this world in rebellion, the world in opposition to the Gospel, that the kingdom is destined. The world is conceived as a unity and it is the scene of God’s great acts. The world is the field in which the seeds of the kingdom are sown, and is the scene for the proclamation of the kingdom. Kingdom and world belong together. "The kerygma of the early Christians did not know of a redemptive act of God which was not directed towards the whole world". It is the essence of the Gospel that it be proclaimed in the world. "Thus the Gospel and the apostolate belong intrinsically together. Through the apostolate the Gospel comes to fulfillment and is brought to its destination". The realm of the apostolate is the world and the substance of the apostolate is the setting up of signs of the Kingdom - salvation.

In Hoekendijk’s scheme there is no fixed place for the church. He wrote:

In another passage he says that the church can be authenticated only as the church of this sending God when she really lets herself be used in missio Dei. This means the church will be ‘the movement’ between the kingdom and the world, related to both; it is an apostolic event first and an institution second. "We cannot think of the Church without hearing that disturbing question, ‘the Son of Man when He comes, shall He find faith on the earth’?"⁶⁰ Hoekendijk’s criticism, like that of Stanley Jones earlier, had some effect on the thinking of the Willingen Conference, though not much. These criticisms found a hearing in some of the later conferences.

The meeting at Willingen was held in July 1952. One hundred and ninety delegates from fifty countries were present, and forty of these were from the younger churches. Willingen spoke of Joint Action for Mission with the discussions at the Conference focussed on four areas: the theological imperatives of Christian mission, the indigenous church, the place and function of the missionary society, and the pattern of missionary activity.

The theological debate on the Missionary Obligation of the Church was a lively one and the church-centric view of mission became a subject of controversy. Because of theological differences, the Conference failed to accept the report of the Commission on the Missionary Obligation of the Church. Instead, the Conference accepted two statements, one on the Missionary Calling of the Church, and a second on Mission and Unity.

The argument at Willingen was between those who derived the missionary obligation from the nature of the church, that is, as inherent in its very being, and those who insisted that the missionary obligation must be derived from something anterior to the church, namely, the Gospel. At Willingen the delegates were unwilling to accept an uncritical Church-centred interpretation of the missionary obligation. At the same time they also affirmed the missionary obligation of the church. The Willingen Conference accepted a Trinitarian statement on missionary calling of the Church. The Conference made it clear:

Willingen, which was called together with a church-centric theology of mission as its pre-supposition, was forced to seek the missionary mandate not from the nature of the Church but from the Triune God. It affirmed that the locus of missionary obligation is found in the nature of the Triune God, revealed in the work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the ultimate ground for all missionary work. The Trinitarian pre-supposition does not deny or minimize the missionary obligation of the church. In fact, Willingen emphasised the ‘total’ missionary task of the church when it said, "God sends forth the Church to carry out His work to the ends of the earth, to all nations, and to every social, political and religious community of humankind. It is sent to proclaim Christ’s reign in every moment and every situation. But the calling and obligation does not arise out of the church’s self-existence, nor can it be derived self-evidently from the church’s thinking about itself. It points back to the self-revealing activity of God, who is the author of both church and mission. "That by which the Church receives its existence is that by which it is also given its world mission".

The early church did not start with a doctrine of Trinity. In fact, in the New Testament we do not find a formally developed doctrine of Trinity. As Lesslie Newbigin pointed out, it was when the early church began to take the message of salvation through Jesus Christ out into the pagan world that it was compelled to articulate a fully Trinitarian doctrine of God whom it proclaimed. "It is indeed a significant fact that the great doctrinal struggles about the nature of the Trinity, especially about the mutual relations of the Son and the Father, developed right in the midst of the struggle between the Church and the pagan world. These Trinitarian struggles were indeed an essential part of the struggle between the Church and the Pagan world"⁶² Newbigin points out that, by contrast to the early period, during the era of ‘Christendom’, the doctrine of the Trinity did not occupy a comparable place in the thought of the Christians. But, due to the missionary movement, the doctrine of the Trinity has again acquired an important place in the present century.

It is also significant that, when one goes outside the ‘Christendom’ situations to bring the Gospel to the non-Christians, one soon discovers that the doctrine of the Trinity is not something that can be kept out of sight; on the contrary, it is the necessary starting point of preaching.⁶³ According to Newbigin, the doctrine of the Trinity is the pre-supposition without which the preaching of the Gospel in a pagan world cannot begin.

In preparation for the Willingen Conference, there were study groups in North America working on the missionary obligation of the church. Their report also points out a parallel between the early church and the modern missionary movement in their understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. After referring to the adoption of the Trinitarian definition of the Christian faith in 381 at Constantinople, the report states:

Willingen’s approach to a theology of mission was Trinitarian in character. The Triune God Himself is declared to be the sole source of every missionary enterprise. Essential in the missionary purpose of God is the sending of the Holy Spirit. God has created all things and all human beings. God has sent forth one Saviour, one Redeemer who by His death, resurrection and ascension has accomplished a full and perfect atonement, and created in Himself one new humanity. On the foundation of this accomplished work God has sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, to gather us together tn one Body in Him, to guide us in to all truth, to enable us to worship the Father in spirit and truth, to empower us for the continuance of His mission as His witnesses and ambassadors, the first fruit and earnest of its completion. By the Spirit we are enabled both to press forward as ambassadors of Christ and also to wait with sure confidence for the final victory of His love.

What happened at Willingen was a recovery of the missionary theology of the early church. Since the nineteen sixties, Trinitarian theology has greatly influenced the ecumenical thinking through greater participation of the Orthodox churches in the World Council of Churches (WCC). In 1961 the Basis of the WCC was broadened to include a confession of and doxology of the Triune God.

With the great emphasis on the missionary obligation of the church since Madras, the missionary movement came to realize that the Church in a given area is the Church universal in that area. This meant that the ‘younger churches’ were no longer to be treated as younger churches; and their place in the total missionary task of the church was recognised in the Willingen report on: The Indigenous Church.

Endnotes

1. Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, Penguin Books, 1964. pp. 513-514.

2. Gerald Anderson,(ed.) The Theology of the Christian Mission, New York: McGraw-Hall Book Company, 1961 p. 5.

3. K.S. Latourette, "Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement and the International Missionary Council", in Rouse and Neill (eds.) Op. cit. p. 359.

4. Richey Hogg, Op.cit., pp 112-113.

5. World Missionary Conference 1910, Vol. IX. p. 108.

6. Ibid, Vol. II p. 5.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., Vol. IX, p.315.

9. William Paton, "The Jerusalem Meeting of the International Missionary Council", International Review of Missions, Vol. XXVII (January 1928), p. 6.

10. The Relations Between the Younger and Older Churches. Report of the Jerusalem Meeting of the International Missionary Council, Vol. III, London, Oxford University Press, 1928. p. 3.

11. Report of the Jerusalem Meeting, Vol. III. pp 3-4.

12. Basil Mathews, Road to the City of God, New York, Double day, 1929. p.53.

13. Report of the Meeting of the International Missionary Council, Vol. III, pp 12-13.

14. Ibid., p. 165.

15. Ibid., p. 209.

16. Ibid., p. 208.

16. Ibid., p. 208.

17. Ibid., pp. 51-52.

18. Ibid., pp. 171.

19. Ibid., pp. 134-135.

20. World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, Vol. VIII, p. 196.

21. Ibid., pp. 131-158.

22. Vidler, Op.cit. p. 212.

23. The Barthian Theological Movement has gone by different names: Theology of Crisis; The Dialetical Theology; Theology of the Word; The Neo-Orthodoxy.

24. The impact of social tragedy upon sensitive minds from 1914 on is well represented by Paul Tillich’s testimony concerning his experience as a German chaplain in World War I. During the Battle of Champagne in 1915, there was a night attack in which many of his personal friends were wounded or killed. "All that horrible long night", he says, "I walked along the rows of dying men, and much of my German classical philosophy broke down that night - the belief that man could master cognitively the essence of his being, the belief in the identity of essence and . -. the traditional concept of God was dead". Quoted by Marshall Horton, Stephen Neill (eds.), Twentieth Century Christianity. p. 275.

25. It is suggested that to get an idea of the liberal temper that pervaded the early twentieth century, one need only to read A. Hamack’s book, What is Christianity? (London: William’s & Northgate, 1901). In this book, it is said that the church is portrayed as a kind of cancerous growth in the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ..

26. J.H. Oldham (ed.), The Oxford Conference, Chicago, Willet, Clark & Company, 1937. pp 45-52.

27. The World Mission of the Church: Findings and Recommendations of the Meeting of the International Missionary Council, Madras, 1938. p. 7.

28. Ibid..

29. Ibid., p. 8.

30. Ibid..

31. Richey Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, New York, Harper Brothers, 1952. pp. 297-298.

32. The World Mission of the Church, Op.cit. pp. 28-29.

33. Ibid., pp. 17-18.

34. Ibid., p.19.

35. Ibid. p. 41.

36. The Christian Century, Vol. LVI, March 1939. p. 351.

37. Ibid., p. 352.

38. The Christian Century, Vol. LVI, March 29, 1939

39. Ibid.. p. 411.

40. Ibid., p. 410.

41. The Christian Century. Vol. LVI, April 19,1939- p. 517.

42. World Dominion, Vol. XVII, April 1939, p. 127.

43. R.W. Ranson, Renewal and Advance, London, Edinburgh House Press, 1948. p. 215.

44. John A. Mackay, Ecumenics: The Science of the Church Universal, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice - Hall, Inc. 1964. p. 11.

45. Edinburgh Conference, Report of the Commissions I, p. 343.

46. The World Mission of the Church, 1938, p. 33.

47. Ibid., p. 37

48. Ranson, Op.cit, p. 215.

49. Ibid..

50. Arend Th. Van Leeuwen, Christianity in World History, London, Edinburgh House Press, 1964, p. 381.

51. M.A.C. Warren, ‘The Christian Mission and the Cross’. in Norman Goodall (ed.), Missions Under the Cross, London, Edinburgh House Press, 1953, p.40.

52. Van Leeuwen, Op.cit., p. 17.

53. Hendrik Kramer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1938, p.1.

54. J.C. Hoekendijk, "The Church in the Missionary Thinking", International Review of Missions Vol. XLI, July 1952, pp. 324-336.

55. Ibid..

56. Ibid..

57. Ibid., p. 325.

58. Ibid., pp. 332-333.

59. Ibid., p. 334.

60. Ibid., p. 336.

61. Norman Goodall (ed), Op.cit., pp. 189-190.

62. Lesslie Newbigin, Trinitarian Faith and Today’s Mission, Richmond, Virginia, John Knox Press, p. 32.

63. Ibid., p. 33.

64. Why Missions ? North American Report on Aim of the Missionary Obligation of the Church, pp. 4-6.