Book Notice: Dean Flemming, Recovering the Full Mission of God

Dean Flemming

Recovering the Full Mission of God: A Biblical Perspective on Being, Doing and Telling
Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2013.
Available at Amazon.com

By Andrew Prince (Lecturer Ministry and Mission, Brisbane School of Theology).

Historically there has been a tension within the Church concerning how it is to carry out its God-given mission. Is the church’s primary task to proclaim the gospel or to serve others? Is its priority telling or doing?  The aim of Dean Flemming’s Recovering the Full Mission of God is to address this very issue. Flemming does this through carefully nuancing the doing/ telling debate by adding a third element- that of “being.” The book therefore traces the relationship between the verbal (telling) and non-verbal (doing, being) aspects in Christian mission as they are presented in Scripture, but the New Testament in particular.

The opening two chapters establish a solid foundation for the book by tracing the place and role of Israel in God’s mission in the Old Testament. Israel’s primary role is presented as attractional- living as a holy and distinct nation and being a channel of God’s blessing to the nations. Flemming strongly advocates that Israel did have a responsibility to go to the nations and proclaim God’s sovereign power and grace. One implication drawn from this is that the missional responsibility of the New Testament church is really a continuation of and development of that of Israel in the Old Testament rather than a sudden movement from a centripetal to a centrifugal function. The remainder of the book sees Flemming trace the relationship between telling, doing and being in the New Testament. The methodological approach Flemming employs is similar to that which he employed in his excellent monograph, Contextualization in the New Testament, examining his chosen theme in the ministry of Jesus, the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John, the book of the Acts of the Apostles, various Pauline epistles, the first epistle of Peter, and Revelation.

Flemming presents Jesus’ mission as involving acts of confrontation and acts of compassion- with doing, being and telling inextricably linked. Flemming helpfully applies this observation by asserting that while the Christian cannot mimic the unique ministry of Jesus, their ministry should be “profoundly shaped” by it, reflecting the church’s mission being a continuation of Jesus’ mission (p.82). By this reckoning the church’s mission should also be confrontational (confronting both the devil and the evil in society) and compassionate (by proclaiming the gospel and practically helping those in need).

From the book of Acts Flemming develops his thesis of the biblical relationship between doing, telling and being as it relates to the church’s mission. Flemming argues that Acts has a particular focus on the telling of the good news of the gospel. That being said, he further argues that Luke makes equally plain that the early church was equally engaged in acts of compassion and seeing the gospel exemplified in the lives of those who proclaimed it. This proclamation was a contextual one, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In his examination of the life and mission of the apostle Paul, as reflected in the Pauline epistles, these aspects of being, doing and telling are again found to be inextricably linked. Paul proclaimed the gospel- a message centred on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (Rom 1:1-5; 1 Cor 15:1-5; Phil 2:5-11). This proclamation is not simply a set of truths to be embraced by the mind, but truths that are to be comprehensively and transformationally lived out in the Christian’s daily life (p.168). Paul did not simply proclaim the gospel but simultaneously lived out the implications of it in his own life. Mixed in with Paul’s telling the gospel were works of compassion, exemplified in his collection for the poor in Jerusalem. For Paul, “[t]elling the good news and living it out are two sides of the one coin” (p.172) and something that he expected as the Christian norm. Flemming concludes, however, that while the church’s mission is to be characterised by speaking, practicing, and embodying the gospel, these elements do not always occur in equal measure. Depending on the context, at times one can take precedence over the other. Rather than argue whether one aspect of doing, telling and being have priority in mission, he uses the language of  ultimacy, captured in his quote from Chris Wright that while “[m]ission may not always begin with evangelism…mission that does not ultimately include declaring the Word and name of Christ, the call to repentance, and faith and obedience has not completed its task. It is defective mission, not holistic mission” (p.269).

There were three particular highlights for me from the book. Firstly, it moved the ‘telling versus doing’ debate forward through introducing the notion of being. Secondly, the interdisciplinary nature of the work, bringing biblical studies and missiology together, provided a matured contribution to the debate. Thirdly, the books style was clear and readable both at an academic and a popular level. This is a book I can thoroughly recommend and it has become a set text in both missiology and evangelism subjects that I teach.