Individual missionaries or families on mission?

Mike Breen says we need to move away from an individualistic understanding of mission

Mike Breen, the author and Christian leader, has shared an interesting and provocative post today about how our ‘being missional’ as Christ-followers needs to change. Using the Trinity as his basis, he suggests we need to shift our understand of mission to being something we should embark on as a families, not merely as individuals.

The Trinity isn’t simply an abstract concept to be contemplated by spiritual directors and scholars, it’s a deeply relational reality that tells us that at the very center of God’s nature is community. A family. God is family. And the God who is family is on mission. God is Family on Mission.

And if our theology ends up defining our methodology, perhaps we need to start talking about Missio Trinitatis (“the mission of the Trinity”), and as we do, we’ll find our methodology shifts from individual missionaries doing the best they can to families on mission that demonstrate and proclaim a fuller picture of who God is.

The whole article is worth a read and there’s definitely much truth in the piece. The question that remains, however, is what this looks like in practice. Mike’s article is a foundational one and I can understand why he chose to avoid specifics in this first piece, but it does leave me wanting more.

• What does this look like in the real world?
• How does he define ‘family’?
• How does ‘family mission’ work in the context of our individualistic society?

It’ll be interesting to see how Mike fleshes these thoughts out in the coming weeks and months.