To Believe, Teach, and Confess Missio Dei

Rationale Holy Scripture does not present God as static or withdrawn, but as living, active, and outward-moving in love. From the first chapters of Genesis to the sending of the Son, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the sending of the baptized into the world, Scripture bears witness to asingle, unifying motif: God isasending God. This sending isnot peripheral to who God is. It belongs to His very heart. The theological term Missio Dei—the mission of God—does not introduce a new theme into Scripture, nor does it impose a modern agenda upon the biblical text. Rather, it serves as a lens that reveals Scripture’s coherence, center, purpose, and direction. When read through this lens, the Bible emerges not as a collection of disconnected doctrines or moral instructions, but as the unified testimony to God’s gracious movement toward His fallen creation in Jesus Christ. Much has been written about the church’s decline in the modern world. Attendance is measured, programs are evaluated, and strategies are revised. Yet these concerns, while not insignificant, fail to name the deeper issue confronting the church today. Whenever the church relegates its mission focus and priorities to activities, duties, and performances, it is guilty of being disconnected from the Missio Dei. It will be marked by distractions, disruption, and a disassembly from Christ’s apostolic authority, priority, and promises. The crisis of the church isnot fundamentally numerical, cultural, or institutional, but theological and obediential—a resistance to God’s sending Word that shapes how Scripture itself is to be read. This crisis appears whenever mission becomes optional, the church turns inward, identity becomes based in human sentiment, and the Gospel becomes transactional. As a result, the church throughout history has frequently come to understand herself as a religious institution with its own mission, rather than as a sent body of believers—a people who exist because God sends the baptized in Christ. Therefore be it

Resolved, That we as a Synod believe, teach, and confess that the Missio Dei—the mission of God—belongs to God alone, flows from His eternal love, and finds its center, fulfillment, and authority in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the One sent by the Father for the life of the world (John 3:16–17); and be it further

Resolved, That we as a Synod believe, teach, and confess that God is a sending God, and that His sending does not begin with human need or cultural crisis, but with His own being and will, so that from the sending of the Son, to the sending of the Spirit, to the sending of the baptized, God reveals Himself as the Lord who goes out in love to seek, save, and restore who and what is lost; and be it further

Resolved, That we as a Synod believe, teach, and confess that the Missio Dei is the primary lens through which Holy Scripture is rightly read and understood; because Scripture itself is the unified testimony of God’s sending heart—revealing who He is, what He has done in Christ, and how He sends His people into the world;

and be it further

Resolved, That we believe, teach, and confess that Jesus Christ is the Sent One and the Sending One, vested with all authority to forgive sins and give life, so that all doctrine finds its center in the Gospel—that we are freely justified for Christ’s sake through faith—and all other teachings are either antecedent to this truth or flow from it; and be it further

Resolved, That we as a Synod believe, teach, and confess that according to the Gospel all the baptized in Christ are co-heirs and co-associates with Christ, not by merit or office, but by grace alone, and are enjoined in God’s mission through Christ and for His sake alone; and be it further

Resolved, That we as a Synod believe, teach, and confess that the church exists because God sends, and that the church remains the church only insofar as she lives from the Gospel and is sent into the world in love, truth, humility, and hope; and be it further

Resolved, That we as a Synod reject every understanding of mission that reduces it to programs, strategies, or institutional survival; separates the baptismal identity of God’speoplefromtheir sending; replaces the Gospel with moralism, activism, or coercion; or locates authority in human hierarchy rather than God’s Word;

and be it finally

Resolved, That we as a Synod therefore confess with confidence and joy: The Missio Dei is not one doctrine among many, but the living heart of Scripture, the interpretive key to Christian identity, and the foundation for the church’s being, purpose, and witness in the world—until that day when God’s mission is complete and all creation is restored in Christ.