CONCEPTS OF MISSION - Orbis Books

Mission in Contemporary Missiology 5
sent by the church and go forth into the whole world to carry out the task
of preaching and planting the church among peoples or groups who do not
yet believe in Christ. . . . The special purpose of this missionary activity is
evangelization and the planting of the church among those peoples and
groups where she has not yet taken root” (AG 6). The conciliar decree adds
that “all over the world indigenous particular churches ought to grow from
seed of the word of God, churches which would be adequately organized
and would possess their own proper strength and maturity. With their own
hierarchy and faithful, and sufficiently endowed with means adapted to the
full Christian life, they should contribute to the good of the whole church”
(AG 6). It is within this definition and purpose of mission that the council
presents a broader meaning of the term “evangelization”: “Evangelization is
that activity through which, in obedience to Christ’s command and moved
by the grace and love of the Holy Spirit, the church makes itself fully present
to all persons and peoples in order to lead them to the faith, freedom and
peace of Christ by example of its life and teaching, and also by the sacraments
and other means of grace” (AG 5).
Though the council defines mission in simple terms of evangelization and
church implantation, it is all embracing. Theologically, its foundation is
divine. The emphasis is always on the mandate from Christ. Pastorally, it
includes all the paths of mission itself and evangelization (in the strict sense
of the word, that is, the kerygma or rather the initial proclamation to non-
Christians or neophytes), and the implanting of the church as a sign of its visible
presence among any people and place. Furthermore, it embraces the issue
of integral development of humanity as it relates to the church’s evangelizing
mission. Through her life and teaching the church brings the freedom and
peace of Christ to people. Again, by means of the sacraments and other
means of grace, the church makes available to people those means established
by Christ for the sanctification and the eschatological salvation of
humanity (see Oborji 1998, 58).
In this theology of mission, the council also speaks of the nature and foundation
of the church in relation to missionary activity: “The Church is missionary
by nature” (AG 2). The basis of the church’s missionary nature is the
divine mandate that it has been “sent to the nations to be the universal sacrament
of salvation” (AG 1). The two distinctive characteristics of the church’s
mission are preserved here. First, both the church and its mission are defined
in distinctive instrumental terms, “in the service of and in the function of the
divine intervention in favor of all humanity of all times and of the whole
world.” Second, the mission of the church is given its ultimate theological
foundation, “the Trinitarian mystery itself, thus coming as a historical extension,
from God’s eternal saving plan which was expressed in sending the
Word made flesh in Jesus Christ and in sending the Holy Spirit, with the
Father as the original supreme source” (Nunnenmacher 1993, 118).