Overflowing: Love of the Triune God as the Motive for Global Missions

By J. David Bancroft

In Overflowing: Love of the Triune God as the Motive for Global Missions, missions practitioner J. David Bancroft offers a compelling call to rediscover the impact the Trinity and God-honoring affections have on our motives for participating in global missions. This book challenges fellow evangelicals to deeply reevaluate and to transform the motives we proclaim for joining Gods mission.

Overflowing takes the reader on a profoundly transformational journey. Guided by the relational presence of the Holy Spirit, engaging the Scriptures as well as theologians throughout history, missions enthusiasts will explore the triune Gods overflowing love for the nations and will rediscover the hearts cry to participate in His work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490873046

J. David Bancroft

J. David Bancroft began overseas missions work in the Balkans in 2007. He holds a masters degree in biblical studies from seminary and a bachelors degree in engineering. He is currently engaged in development work and church planting in the Balkan region. His wife is a homeschool teacher to their three children.

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Copyright © 2015 J. David Bancroft.

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © Copyright 1960, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc™. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-7303-9 (sc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015904038

WestBow Press rev. date: 04/24/2015

Contents

Preface

Starting Point: Setting a Course for the Journey

Part I: Evaluating the Goals and Motives of Mission

Chapter 1: Missions Hotspots

Chapter 2: Behind the Scenes Reflecting on Goals and Motives

Part II: Engaging Trinitarian and Affective Theology

Chapter 3: Trinity Forest Exploring Trinitarian Theology

Chapter 4: Heartlands Exploring Affective Theology

Part III: Tracing the Tension

Chapter 5: Faraway Hearts Path Jesus’s Interaction with the Religious Leaders

Chapter 6: The Historical Trail Historical Theology

Chapter 7: Summary

Part IV: Setting a New Course

Chapter 8: Downstream God’s Mission

Chapter 9: Downstream Motives for Missions

Ending Point: The End Is Just the Beginning

Index of Biblical References

Endnotes

Preface

Why participate in global missions? What is our motivation for joining God in His work among the nations? As someone who serves cross-culturally, I have asked myself this question time and time again. And so does the evangelical movement. We write books, we hold conferences, we send short-term missions teams, and we send long-term workers. We pray, we give, and we go.

As an evangelical and a practitioner of global missions, I am concerned with how we as a movement have been answering these crucial questions. The evangelical missions movement has been criticized for abandoning deep theological reflection on this matter, particularly related to our motives for participating in global missions. In this book, I call upon fellow evangelicals to deeply reevaluate the motives we proclaim as a movement. And I offer a heartfelt appeal to rediscover the impact that the Trinity and God-honoring affections have on our motives for participating in cross-cultural missions.

This book is intended to engage missions practitioners, missions enthusiasts, and pastors, as well as Bible school and seminary students. I hope and believe that you will find the book engaging, thoughtful, challenging, and with many practical implications. When we unleash the love of the triune God as the motive for global missions, we rediscover the unending, spreading goodness of God through His people.

So I invite you to join me on this journey. Our journey is guided by four questions: What are the predominant goals and motives for missions expressed by the evangelical movement and their underlying theological principles (Part I)? What are the implications of the Trinity (trinitarian theology) and our spiritual anthropology (affective theology) on a theology of mission (Part II)? What biblical interactions and historical references assist in developing a trinitarian and affective basis for a theology of mission (Part III)? Given our discoveries throughout the book, what then is our motivation to participate with the triune God in global missions (Part IV)?

My prayer is that God would use this book to challenge us in the ways we—as part of the worldwide evangelical movement—understand and present the motives for global missions. I believe that God wants us to think deeply, biblically, and theologically about this matter. And He will impact us greatly if we devote time and effort to engaging our hearts and our minds in pursuing Him. Toward that end, I have included For Further Reflection questions and Resources for Further Study at the end of each chapter.

I would like to dedicate this book to my wife and three kids for their unfailing support, sacrifice, and encouragement. I love you very much! I want to thank my thesis advisor for lovingly pressing me to bring this manuscript to print. I also wish to thank my three readers and my editor for their dedication in helping me determine how best to craft this work. I am grateful to my mother for her hard work in editing my master’s thesis, which formed the basis for this book. I want to thank both of my parents for passing on to me a love of writing. Finally, I am grateful to our triune God who transforms hearts, fills us with His love, and actively expands His goodness throughout the world.

STARTING POINT

Setting a Course

for the Journey

The warm sunny day began well, with a drive up into the hills surrounding my hometown of San Jose, California. A friend and I ascended up the winding road through Saratoga into the forested areas near Skyline Boulevard. The warmth from the valley gave way to the cool, crisp air of forest. We found a place to park in a well-traveled area and then chose a path.

My companion was a girl—but not just any girl. She was the girl, the one I was falling in love with. Because we had recently started attending colleges separated by a long seven-hour drive and because our relationship had started only the previous summer, our future seemed quite uncertain. Yet our shared hometown and our shared love of the outdoors brought us together this particular weekend.

Guided by the path and completely engaged by our conversation, we eventually found our way to an opening in the forest. What an amazing view we found. We left behind the fully developed and crowded Silicon Valley and entered the seemingly unaltered and unadulterated forest of the Santa Cruz Mountains. We soaked in the departing warmth of the sun and slowly took in the view. Our conversation lingered even as the sun began its journey past the forest and the ocean beyond. The innocence of youth yearned for more time to soak in the sunshine and savor every last morsel of a budding relationship. Yet the time had come for our return to the car.

Funny thing about forests—they get dark fast. No sooner had we returned to the path, leaving the viewpoint behind, than the darkness fell like an unexpected landslide. We had enjoyed the path, and especially the conversation, but we remembered little of exactly where the path could be found. It seemed so obvious on the way down, lit by sunshine. Now the path was obscured by darkness. The endless hope of youth gave way to its opposite and sinister twin: fear.

God used that experience in a profound way. For several months previous, God had been revealing Himself to me. At the age of eighteen, my spiritual background was what I proudly referred to as secular humanism. My belief was that man was simply in no need of God, whether a big G God or a little g god. Similar to the growing wave of contemporary voices, such as Stephen Hawking, I believed that the modern sciences and culture had rendered God useless and unnecessary. And I affirmed a person’s own ability to live a fruitful, productive life without any organized religion or belief system, because the individual development of people was seemingly unlimited.

Yet my youthful philosophizing left me unprepared for an encounter with the living God. This same companion with whom I shared the forest experience had in the months previous been introducing me to the God of the Bible. She bought a Bible for me and encouraged me to pick a book to read. I picked Job. That still makes me laugh. Job isn’t usually the first book a Bible newbie is encouraged to read. But it was the perfect book for me. How could this man Job, who endured so much hardship and pain, continue to praise his God? I asked myself.

As time went on, I learned more about the God of the Bible, was introduced to Jesus Christ, and learned more about myself in relation to God. God stripped bare my proud proclamation of secular humanism and revealed to me its essence: self-love. I had been rejecting God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ and replacing it with an idol: me. God penetrated my heart with His selfless love as demonstrated most profoundly in Christ’s death on the cross. I came to understand the biblical story of God as our Lover. Rather than religion making imperialistic claims on my life, God in his love was wooing me, having set His attention upon winning my heart for Himself alone.¹ God wanted to transform my self-consumed heart into a heart of flesh (cf. Ezek. 36:26), sensitive and responsive to His own self-revelation, sensitive to His words and leading, and sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

However, I was in a rapidly darkening forest. God used this very event as a living picture of the darkness of my heart, which was rejecting Him and His love. I was rejecting a relational God who was pursuing me and demonstrating His transforming, triumphant, faithful love for me. I had not only been rejecting the propositions of the Christian faith; more importantly, I had also been rejecting a person—God Himself. God confronted me with my self-directed and self-consumed love. He was calling me to answer His love. What could I do but respond? What could I do but cry out, God save me!?

Colossians 1:13-14 reads, For he rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. What an amazing picture to me of what God has done in my life. He changed my life that day. He rescued me from the domain of darkness, and practically speaking, He did lead us out of that dark forest over twenty years ago. He has transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son Jesus Christ, a kingdom marked by hearts of flesh responsive to His loving leading. A kingdom marked by hearts flooded with the love of God by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). We have been redeemed; we have forgiveness of sins. Wow! Praise be to God for what He has done; there is no one like Him!

That day, when my self-love was transformed into the love of God, began the most incredible journey. I hope you are on a similar journey.

The triune God, through the work of the Holy Spirit, brought me to gaze upon the Son and to respond to His love. I was—and still am—captivated by the self-disclosure of Christ, who revealed his relationship to the Father and His purposes for coming to earth. I am captivated by the abiding and responsive love relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which overflows in loving action in the world. Yet the fulfillment of my heart’s longing for a relationship with the living God has also led to an uneasy tension as I have progressed on my journey, even as my journey has brought me to serve Him in global missions.

Call to Missions

A mere eleven months after that day in the forest, I was on an airplane to Urbana, a triennial missions conference hosted by InterVarsity. I had never been to a Christian conference before, not to mention one with almost nineteen thousand college-aged Christians in attendance. Through this conference, and through a short-term missions trip that I would take to eastern Europe in 1995, I was profoundly confronted with God’s love for all peoples of the world and increasingly sensed He wanted me to join Him in His work among the nations. In the summer of 2007, my wife, three kids, and I arrived in the Balkans to serve God cross-culturally, where we continue to serve to this day.

What happened between the day Christ saved me and the day we arrived on the mission field, and what continues even to this day, is a profound journey. As we have centered our lives and theology upon the triune God who selflessly offers Himself, we are captivated by His love and His coordinated effort to save lost people.

At the same time, during critical periods along this journey, we have been compelled to ask some challenging questions about who God is and about the central motivations and goals for missions. What is our motivation to participate with the triune God in proclaiming and demonstrating the gospel throughout the world? And does the broader evangelical movement correctly engage biblical motives for joining God in His mission? These questions, and their emerging answers, form the heart of our journey in this book. However, before we begin, let me outline our journey and provide a framework in which to place these questions and answers.

The Missions Thing

My first years as a Christ-follower were particularly transformative. Having met the God of the Bible, and having experienced new life by faith in Him, I spent a solid amount of time reading His Word, learning to pray, and practicing fellowship with other believers. I wanted to know Him more, and I thoroughly enjoyed studying the Bible. I had started a new relationship with the living God, and He was all I could think about.

Speaking of relationships, you remember my companion in the forest, the girl I was falling in love with? We finally came to realize that the seven-hour drive between our universities was worth it, and even though we didn’t know of any other high school sweethearts who could endure college, we gave it a try. After several years of a long-distance relationship, she graduated from college and moved to my college town. Our love never waned (and still hasn’t), and we were married about a fifteen-minute drive from the forest where I received Christ.

Two factors that confirmed our desire to be married were our mutual love for global missions and a mutual desire to serve our God among the nations. With a growing and God-given desire to prepare ourselves for cross-cultural missions, we paid off our college debt in rapid pace. We connected ourselves with missions courses such as Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. We read missions books. We researched seminaries, and then moved to the Pacific Northwest to attend seminary.

Those are the logistical and practical preparation steps we took—the things you are supposed to do to get ready for the mission field. But let me share some reflections about this time, which direct the core questions and message of this book. In a positive sense, the logistical steps provided us with a sense of structure, a framework for understanding what missions is, and what it looks like to serve in global missions. Additionally, this time prepared us by challenging us to ask critical questions that fall under the broad category of a theology of mission.

Regarding a framework, we learned there are multiple approaches to defining mission and missions in evangelical circles. Let me clarify what I mean. For the purposes of this book, the term mission has two primary meanings. First, mission is the redemptive activity of the triune God toward His creation as recorded in the Bible.² In contemporary missiological circles, the term mission often refers to the missio Dei, the mission of God.³ Second, mission is also defined as the church’s participation in the missio Dei. The church’s mission is bound together with God’s mission as she participates in what the triune God is doing in the world.⁴

In comparison, the term missions refers specifically to the outworking of the church’s mission rather than both God’s mission and the church’s participation in His mission. The term mission, when used to specifically refer to the church’s involvement in God’s mission, is used virtually synonymously with the term missions in evangelical circles.⁵ So, when we talk about global missions, cross-cultural missions, or missions, we are talking about the church’s and individual believers’ participation in the redemptive activity of the triune God. Discussion of each of these biblical concepts—God’s mission, the church’s mission, and global mission—fall within the broader category of a theology of mission.

During this period of our lives, we also gained a broader and yet refined understanding of evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is the particular branch of Christianity that we call home. We believe that the overall teachings and practices in the evangelical movement align best with biblical teachings. The term evangelical refers to churches and individuals that hold the following convictions: they affirm the authority of the Bible as the divinely inspired Word of God; they hold to the supremacy of Jesus Christ; they believe that salvation is by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone; they commit themselves to a life of personal spiritual piety; they affirm the vital importance of fellowship; and they engage themselves in a variety of forms of evangelism.⁶

Each of the practical steps that my wife and I took in leading to our current role in global missions positively provided a sense of framework and organization. Additionally, speakers who served overseas provided us with a realistic sense of what life would likely look like on the mission field. They also spoke frequently of different methods and approaches for evangelism, discipleship, church planting, leadership development, and a number of other important areas.

At the same time that we enjoyed these positive benefits from our training and preparation, we sensed at times we were being indoctrinated into a missions system instead of set free to explore the depth of God’s love for all peoples. It seemed as though my previous experience of first love with the triune God was being replaced by the to-do lists and duties of a responsible Christian. Missions at times seems to have the tendency to branch away from relationally responding to the living God and instead to following established missions methods.

I love evangelicals, but we have our flaws. I love missions, but as one of those who participate in missions, I know we have our flaws as well. Yet, at the same time, I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly those flaws may be and what may be some constructive ways to address them. It turns out that my experience in seminary would prove instrumental in addressing this tension.

Journey to the Heart of God

One of the shared passions my wife and I have is traveling. We love the highlights, the mountaintop experiences of seeing beautiful sights, and experiencing heart-awakening moments. We love the people we meet along the way, even the grumpy border workers who test our faith. We love having our eyes opened to different viewpoints.

Traveling gives me a glimpse of the bigger picture and reminds me that I am on a journey—a journey led by the triune God. God is leading us—as Christ-followers—on a journey to transform each of us to be more like His Son, to expand the kingdom of His beloved Son, and to lead us daily by the Holy Spirit.

God led our family through a mountaintop experience in seminary. What happened at seminary began to renew my devotion to Christ and at the same time led me to go deeper in theological research and reflection. Good theology, when practiced correctly in the context of a growing relationship with the focal point of theology—God Himself—leads to greater devotion.

We attended an evangelical seminary, and so I naturally expected that what I would learn in my coursework and studies would only expand on my previous understanding of missions. I was wrong. As any seminary program should do, it challenged me to research and to reflect upon theology, Christian life, and ministry in the context of a relationship with a living, relational, loving God. And more powerfully, it led me to more questions rather than fewer, and to a sense of humility in seeking to answer these questions. So seminary became a part of the journey.

The tension I was sensing between my own spiritual life and the missions system came to the forefront in our first semester and came to a climax by the final semester. At the beginning, I was challenged to consider whether one of the standard textbooks on evangelical missions was trinitarian enough. What? Don’t we all as evangelicals hold to the Trinity, and therefore aren’t we all trinitarian? What does it actually mean to be trinitarian?

Challenged by these questions, I began to dig deeper. I began to search the Bible to authenticate or disprove my professors’ thinking. I opened up my own views for interrogation. I asked, what do I believe—and most importantly, what does the Bible teach? What have Christians throughout history said that bears upon our understanding of the Trinity and its implication on Christian life, ministry, and missions?

Shortly thereafter, through the works of Martin Luther, Augustine, Philip Melanchthon, and Jonathan Edwards, I was challenged in my understanding of man’s spiritual anthropology—the relationship between the mind, will, and heart in a person. Again I searched the Bible. This time, I asked, how does our understanding of our mind, will, and heart affect a theology of mission? So I set off to explore in more depth the evangelical theology of mission while engaging other biblical and historical voices, and composed a master’s thesis.

As I began my research, I discovered sources critical of the evangelical theology of mission. One even dared to write his critique in the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions! Edward Rommen wrote that because evangelicals perceive consensus in missions-related theological issues, they have abandoned theological reflection.⁷ Later in the same article, he pointed out that obedience still characterizes much of evangelicalism’s recruitment of new missionaries. And the case is almost exclusively based on Christ’s authoritative command as recorded in Matthew 28:19-20.⁸

These two thoughts reflected my own experiences. Obedience to the Great Commission was typically presented as the central and perhaps exclusive motivation for missions. Global missions, when presented by the evangelical movement, was most often proclaimed as the fulfillment of a biblical command by responsible Christians. And the biblical command of the Great Commission seemed the great drumbeat of the missions enterprise. I suspect that your experience is similar. However, deeper engagement with Scripture and exploration of the works of several theologians challenges these foundational motives and concepts. Theological reflection of this nature unfolds a dynamic and relational response to the triune God’s loving self-disclosure in lieu of the responsibility to obey the Great Commission.

In this book, I propose that the motives for participating in God’s mission presented by the evangelical movement need to be reexamined and transformed. By fully engaging the doctrine of the Trinity, as well as the interaction of man’s heart, mind, and will, we come to grasp the love of the triune God as the principle motive for missions. We will discover that the motive for missions is rooted in God’s overflowing love and in our response of love for Him, rather than in fulfilling a spiritual responsibility. These concepts form the core journey of this book.

Taking a cue from the definition found in the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, while taking the liberty of a few revisions, a theology of mission is:

… a personal, corporate, committed, profoundly transformational search—guided by the relational presence and power of the Holy Spirit—for a trinitarian understanding of the ways in which the people of God may participate in the triune God’s mission in God’s world for whom Jesus Christ died.⁹

Let me invite you on a journey, one whose goal is not systematic principles or inflexible propositions. I want to journey with you on a profoundly transformational search, guided by the relational presence of the Holy Spirit, to understand and subsequently to respond more sensitively to His overflowing love for us and for the world He created. Centered on the triune God, filled with His love, we will endeavor to understand His heart for the nations and to respond by joining Him in His work.

As with many journeys, there is much to see and much to do. When our family visits a new city, there is so much to see that not everything can fit into a single trip, or perhaps even into a single lifetime. The journey is more complicated than any map can define. A transformative journey is vibrant, alive, moving, and active.

So it will be with our journey. There is so much to know about God, so much that not everything can fit into a single trip or even a single lifetime. We are seeking to know our loving God better, and He cannot be defined in one book or even in all the books in the world combined. Yet this fact should not deter us from growing in our understanding of Him and of how He works. On this journey, we can enjoy concrete experiences that give us a taste for the wonderful-ness of God and how profoundly loving is our triune God who passionately works in this world to spread the goodness of His kingdom.

Outline for the Journey

So now we set off together on a journey of discovery guided by the Holy Spirit, engaging biblical and historical sources, to understand the evangelical theology of mission in its current state, to stimulate deep thinking about the triune God and how He has formed us as people, and then to uncover the implications of our findings on missions. I have selected a number of top destinations on our journey with several goals in mind. Let me outline a few of them.

On Part I of our journey, we ask: What does the evangelical movement proclaim as the predominant goals and motives for missions? What are the underlying principles (Behind the Scenes) of the evangelical movement’s goals and motives for missions? What are some critical questions that set a course for the next parts?

In Part II, we ask: What are the implications of the Trinity and our spiritual anthropology on a theology of mission? What key principles can we investigate from both trinitarian and affective theology that impact the goals and motives