Irish Bible Institue

IBI Newsletter Spring 2010

Download the whole newsletter plus an exclusive interview with Chris Wright during his visit to IBI.

The Mission of God Conference was, I think, a really encouraging event. St Mark’s church was full. It was a first time for IMap, Tearfund and IBI to co-organise an event like this and partnership is always encouraging. Chris Wright was the keynote speaker and he unpacked themes from his book The Mission of God in great style. He talked about the necessity of seeing the entire story of the Bible as being God’s mission in which we are invited to participate – it starts and finishes with God, not with us. The skeleton of his talk was:

• i. GOD WITH A MISSION: The whole mission of God is framed by the bad news of the Genesis 1-11 narrative and the vision of the Revelation 21-22 narrative.
• ii. HUMANITY WITH A MISSION: Mankind is given ecological, economic and social responsibility. God’s agenda is to move from judgement to blessing which begins with Abraham.
• iii. ISRAEL WITH A MISSION: The uniqueness of Israel’s God Yahweh leads to their election to be a blessing to the nations and to reflect the character of the one true God.
• iv. JESUS WITH A MISSION: Jesus is not only Israel’s Messiah but is the saviour of the whole world. In him is the promise to the nations fulfilled.
• v. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH:It is only here in the narrative that ‘we’ come into the picture. The commission for Christians is to fulfil God’s mission to the nations by being witnesses and servants.One comment Chris made to think about:The call for the Christian is to ‘fit our tiny slice of life on earth’ into this grand, redeeming, healing, mission of God. And this is a radically different way of seeing not only mission but the whole purpose of both church and our lives.