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Seminary Holds Conference on Missional Living

December 9, 2015
Participants at Missional Living conference

Participants at Missional Living conference

What does it look like to align your ministry with God’s creative and redemptive work in your city?

This was the question at the heart of the Missional Living of Scripture Conference, a two-day event held earlier this fall at Calvin Seminary.

An initiative of the Institute of Global Church Planting and Renewal (IGCPR) at the seminary, the conference gathered ministry practitioners, scholars, students, and community members to examine the way God’s mission impacts our day-to-day life, our ministries, and our cities.

One participating pastor said there are many conferences that celebrate Reformed theology and gospel-centered piety, and there are others that talk about social justice, others which talk about worship, preaching and mission, and still others which talk about the intersection of faith and culture, said the pastor.

“But the conference at Calvin uniquely brought all of these themes together…and within the context of a rich and beautiful liturgical experience.”

The conference was hosted by IGCPR Director Cory Willson, who also serves as the Jake and Betsy Tuls professor of Missiology and Missional Ministry at Calvin Seminary.

“The term missional attempts to recover the core identity of God’s people who are called and ‘blessed to be a blessing to the nations’ (Genesis 12 and 15),” he said.

The reason why missional language was developed is that many Christians in the Western Hemisphere have become inward and forgotten this outward dimension of Christian discipleship, he said.

“Being a Christian means that there is an inherent, intentional calling of every follower of Jesus to live under the reign of God in every area of their lives: home, work, and public spaces.”

The conference featured a range of speakers examining God’s call in all these spheres. Particular emphasis was placed on the creative ways Christians in diverse contexts in Latin America, Western Europe and North America are participating in God’s mission.

Ida Kaastra-Mutoigo, director of World Renew in Canada, discussed community development; Eric Jacobsen explored practical ways of analyzing the environment of the neighborhoods around our churches; Christopher Wright looked at Old Testament models of mission for God’s people, and Ruth Padilla DeBorst, a Christian Reformed World Missions missionary and general secretary of the Latin American Theological Fellowship, called for a more careful approach to ministering across cultural divides.

"God has called his church to play an integral part in his mission in the world. Given this reality, the seminary exists to help support churches desiring to be faithful participants in God’s mission by nurturing Christian leaders to embody a deep and winsome Reformed theology and missiology in the contexts to which God calls them,” said Willson.

The IGCPR, he said. “seeks to be a critical link between academia and the church, enabling the seminary to learn from the needs of the church so that it can provide theological resources to help the church address the pressing issues in our world today."