Discernment as Theological Praxis
Dimensions of Discernment [2]
Series: Dimensions of Discernment
A congregation needs to proactively engage its context. Congregations need to systematically study their contexts to evaluate trends that are taking place. But more importantly, they need to look at their contexts through theological lenses to discern the work of God that is taking place. Discernment is a spiritual practice, but it is also properly theological. As the church engages in theological reflection, a few concepts are primary from a missional perspective: agency, purposes, and participation.1
Agency
Missional theology affirms that God's mission (missio Dei) is primary. Initially, this affirmation meant to emphasize that the church's mission is always, only derivative. This demands an account of God's mission that is unflinchingly theological, not least because God's mission is a Trinitarian idea. Secondarily, the missio Dei entails the confession that God is already at work before and beyond the church. We who follow Jesus are definitionally caught up in the sending of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
This means that the Holy Spirit is the primary agent of God's mission where the church's participation is concerned. The church's agency is not irrelevant; we must respond faithfully to what the Spirit is doing. But what is the Spirit doing in our place and time? Christian discernment seeks to answer this question theologically.
There is a temptation to reduce theological discernment to something like "thinking theologically." Certainly, that is one use of the term. For missional theology, however, all theological discernment responds to God's work in the world, including in Israel and through Jesus according to Scripture and in the church and the world through the Spirit's ongoing work. The church exercises its rational, affective, bodily agency in discernment, but the Spirit's agency is the criterion of this practice. Missional churches discern the purposes of the living God. This is the heart of our theology.
Purposes
Given this definition of theological discernment, it would be nonsensical to prescribe God's purposes. Categorical dimensions of God's mission arise from the biblical narrative: creation, life, blessing, redemption, reconciliation, healing, sanctification, renewal, and so on. Yet, these categories direct the church's discernment of what the Spirit is up to more specifically in its local context.
The practice of discernment, then, is about perceiving the Spirit's local work—in keeping with the biblical narrative. The church often uses the language of "calling": What is God calling us to do here and now? While this idiom is understandable, from a missional perspective the question is: How is God sending us to respond to the Spirit's work here and now? This phrasing recenters the question. For missional discernment, the primary concern is not what we are to do but how we are to respond to what the Spirit is already doing. What is God's purpose in our time and place?
Participation
The second question of missional discernment is what we have learned about God by participating in God's work in our context. In other words, missional theology depends on praxis: theological reflection on practice.
Praxis seems like one of those technical words that church people needn't concern themselves with. I doubt it. The word itself is, of course, dispensable. But the meaning of the word is vital. Missional praxis arises only from participation in God's mission. The term represents the church's reflection on its participation with God's agency and purposes. If we respond to missional participation reflectively—through contemplation, conversation, and prayer—we are engaged in praxis.
Congregational praxis is essential for two reasons that express our humility. One, we do not yet know God fully. We know in part, and our faith seeks understanding through faithful responses to the will of God revealed in Jesus. We pray that "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give [us] a spirit of wisdom and revelation as [we] come to know him, so that, with the eyes of [our] heart enlightened, [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called [us], what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power" (Eph 1:17–19). Discernment is the exercise of a spirit of wisdom and revelation about the working of God's great power, in response to which we do the good works that our way of life comprises (Eph 1:10). "The power at work within us . . . to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine" (Eph 3:20) is "the power to comprehend . . . the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Eph 3:18–19). This tight interweaving of revelation, the work of God, and the work of the church is the essence of missional discernment.
Two, we do not yet participate fully in God's purposes. Our responses are not perfectly faithful. We pray, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). We confess that the power of God is at work in the world, healing, redeeming, transforming. We affirm our responsibility to this truth. Yet, we fail in perception and action alike. We pray in breath, "Your kingdom come, your will be done. . . . And forgive us our debts" (Matt 6:10, 12). Discernment as praxis, then, is about reflecting not only on our participation in God's mission but also on how we have failed, the implications of our repentance, our growing understanding of what's next, and our renewal of commitment.
As missional discernment centers God's agency and purposes, participation becomes the crux of theological reflection. Far from a pew-bound exercise of doctrinal rumination, praxis is a cognitive-spiritual-bodily communal response to our experience of meeting God in the lives of our neighbors. It illuminates and chastens, transforms and encourages, inspires and directs. For the church of the Triune God whose Spirit is busy with new creation, discernment is the work of theology.
Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007) 59. Many missional theology books address discernment to some extent but few as thoroughly as this one.