Re-Centering Mission in the Compassion of Jesus

Ministry in the name of Jesus, but not in the way of Jesus, causes harm.

Shelly Rambo, a theologian who works in the discipline of trauma studies suggests that in our contemporary setting, PTSD is no longer only a diagnostic label for individuals in a suffering condition, rather “it has become a way of naming the conditions of life more broadly.”[1] Unresolved trauma spills out in patterns of harm and can be passed on generationally.

We live in a traumatized age.

Unfortunately, the church has been complicit in legitimating and even causing harm. People perceive the church as a place of further wounding, rather than a space of potential healing.

This is unacceptable. For it is the church alone that has one unique gift that can heal the world—communal life in Jesus.

The missional church conversation in recent decades was an attempt to divorce mission from a colonial, attractional, propositional form of Christendom concerned with expansion, hierarchical power, and “conversion of the heathen.” It locates mission in the very being of God. God is on a mission to restore humanity and creation into God’s own being. Father sends the son, son sends the Spirit, Trinity sends the church into the world.

While this missiological advancement was tremendously helpful in many ways, it seems the missional church movement, with all its profound contributions to the wider church, has been steadily losing its center.

In the US, it has lacked theological diversity, fallen into the cult of success, and been hijacked by the Church Growth movement. The “why” of the missional church seems to be more about slick strategies, an elite breed of super-Christians, and propping up institutional decline. Somewhere in the milieu it seems to have lost some of its founding convictions, and some of those core convictions we find questionable (stay tuned). This has left a trail of wounded people and burned-out leaders.

Missio Dei (Latin for “mission of God”) understands mission as an attribute and activity of God, and furthermore that the church is missionary by its very nature.

Passio Dei (Latin for “passion of God”) is grounded primarily in the incarnation, suffering, crucifixion, and death (passion) of Jesus. 

God’s nature is the self-emptying (kenotic), other-oriented, and sacrificial love fully displayed in the crucifixion. The passion of Christ expresses God’s inhabitation of human vulnerability and suffering. 

The passional church movement offers a corrective to the ways the missional church conversation has gone astray. 

We get to participate in the mission of God, but we must do so in the way of Jesus. 

We think it’s time for a theological paradigm shift. We are calling for a revolution in the practice of ministry and the formation of leaders.

The Passional Movement is about:

• Reawakening a theology of compassion.

• Rediscovering the praxis of Jesus.

• Re-forming emotionally healthy Jesus-like leaders.

• Refounding congregations in the compassion of Christ.

In the words of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, we are seeking to rekindle a “religion of the heart” in which the ultimate expression of mission is agape love. If you want to learn more and join the revolution, you can start by following the Passional Church Substack!

---

[1] Arel, S.N. S. Rambo (eds.) Post-Traumatic Public Theology, (Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2016), 9.