| The Gospel and Our Culture Network, with their notable publication, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America in 1998, has played a leading role in reshaping how the nature and purposes of the church ought to be understood, particularly in a post-Christendom context. Although the term "missional church" is of recent coinage, this concept gradually developed through the search for a right relationship between the church and mission within the twentieth-century ecumenical conferences. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to closely examine the implications of the missional church discussion for evangelical mission thinking. This study also attempts to contribute to laying a theological foundation for missional ecclesiology from an evangelical perspective. Historical developments of the missionary understanding of the church in both ecumenical and evangelical circles are closely surveyed. Also, foundational concepts of missional ecclesiology, such as the missio Dei concept, the gospel, and the kingdom of God, are critically examined from an evangelical perspective. Finally, in the concluding chapters, the implications of missional ecclesiology for the Japanese church are discussed. Although the missional church discussion has been largely limited to the Western context, there are significant implications for the Japanese church. Four historical ecclesiologies, coming from four prominent Japanese Christian leaders (Masahisa Uemura, Kanzo Uchimura, Juji Nakada, and Toyohiko Kagawa) are critically evaluated in light of the missional church discussion. Moreover, the implications of missional ecclesiology for Japanese evangelical mission thinking today are critically examined through a careful reading of declarations that have been issued by the Japan Congresses of Evangelism and by interviewing experts on this issue. The thesis of this study is that missional ecclesiology serves as an antidote for some problematic aspects of evangelical mission thinking. It especially facilitates the recovery of the ecclesiological dimension of mission theology, which has been largely neglected in evangelical mission thinking. |
