Christian Daily International interviewed Dr. Jay Mātenga, Māori theologian of missions practice and head of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission, about his recently published annual “Leader’s Forecast: Reflections on the State of Global Missions.” The interview has been edited for length and clarity, and arranged into a three-part series touching on different topics.
The following is part two that speaks about overcoming conflict in missions through a different missions paradigm that focuses on the Spirit’s leading rather than a human-centered task to accomplish.
CDI: In this year’s Leader Forecast, you mention the story in Joshua 5 where Joshua is near Jericho. Here a brief extract from verses 13-14a: Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”
As you point out, the response “neither” is surprising because you would expect the commander of the Lord’s army to be on Joshua’s side. How is this response relevant in global missions today, also in the context of the polarization, tensions and conflicts within the global Church that we touched on earlier?
Jay Mātenga: Yes, I contrast the narrative of Joshua and that striking commander of the Lord's army with Peter's encounter with Cornelius and his family in Acts 10. Once Cornelius receives the Spirit, Peter says, ‘I can now see that God is no respecter of persons.’ [other translations: that God does not show favoritism] And so that dual framing really has to start shaping some of the way that we see opposition, at least within the people of God.
One of the things that has disturbed me for some time is that for too long, we've had an anthropocentric [human-centered] perspective on what God is doing in the world. To caricature it a bit: we believe that God has given us a plan in Scripture, and it's now up to us to enact that plan and achieve the task.
I see that as a promise that God will fulfill, not a task that we need to achieve. But many times, we have focused on it as if it were merely a task.
But when reading Matthew 24:14, where Jesus said that the gospel of this kingdom will be preached in all nations, to all the earth, I see that as a promise that God will fulfill, not a task that we need to achieve. But many times, we have focused on it as if it were merely a task.
The difference there is if we focus on it as a task - this is that whole “industrialized” perspective of missions - then we are required to use our own agency to fulfill it. And as a result, if anything gets in the way or if anything is different to the strategy that we have, we consider it opposition and it becomes problematic.
CDI: So you are suggesting a whole different paradigm of looking at our responsibility of participating in God’s mission. Could you elaborate on what that would mean when we look at Jesus’ instruction that we should proclaim the gospel to the whole world?
Jay Mātenga: Well, if we move from anthropocentric [human-centered] perspective to a pneumocentric [Spirit-centered] perspective – which means to trust the Holy Spirit to be working out God's purposes in the world to the fulfillment of God's promise in the world and for the world - then we are simply aligning ourselves to God and moving according to where we see the Spirit moving. And that's quite a hard thing for humans to do because as humans, we like to have some semblance of control.
We are simply aligning ourselves to God and moving according to where we see the Spirit moving. And that's quite a hard thing for humans to do because as humans, we like to have some semblance of control.
I think my Pentecostal brothers and sisters would be a little more comfortable with the concept of listening and discerning, hearing the voice of God and moving where the Spirit leads. And that can go to an excess as well if anyone then says, ‘I’m doing this because God has told me this or that or the other thing.’ But scripturally, we can see an arc, a narrative arc. We can see what God is doing and how God is doing it.
If we have eyes to see, we can perceive the new thing that is happening in the world, rather than just resist everything that's different from our tradition and then retreat into our little safe spaces and attack everybody that would encourage us to think differently.
And this is the space that we've got when we start to realize that it's not us or them that we need to be concerned about, but God and what God is doing. This means having this really high sovereignty theology that God is actually not a deist God who has just left us on our own. God is intimately and integrally involved in world affairs.
CDI: This is obviously a touchy issue because of all the related questions that then arise when you emphasize the sovereignty of God in world affairs. How do you respond to that?
Jay Mātenga: Yes, it becomes problematic for some when they consider some of the current issues like the war in the Holy Land saying, “well, does that mean that God allowed Hamas to attack Israel?” All we can say legitimately from Scripture is that God's purposes are being worked out through the interaction of sinful humanity - and the opposition to God in the spiritual realm that we call Satan, or the enemy, is involved in this as well - but ultimately, God's purposes will prevail.
Ultimately, God's purposes will prevail.
So that's the hope that we have and that we need to hold onto and look forward to, rather than being drawn into these human conflicts that pit one section of the people of God against the other section of the people of God. We are right to lament and grieve with those who are suffering. But ultimately, on both sides of the fence, we've got believers. We must be careful not to simply say unequivocally about a specific ethnicity that this is patently evil or someone’s differing perspective that this is patently heretical, and so on. There are some of our brothers and sisters on both sides.
We can learn some of that from our forebears of such tragedies, for example Germany after World War II. After the war as people have come out who were part of the axis nations, not the allied nations, the world has enveloped them again as reconciliation works its way. It's certainly not easy, but it's inevitable for the sake of our coexistence.
Also read part 1 of the interview: “Harmony isn’t the absence of tension,” says global mission leader commenting on major trends today
Dr Jay Matenga is a Maori theologian of missions practice. He leads Missions Interlink NZ, the missionary alliance of Aotearoa New Zealand, from which he is seconded for half his time to lead the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission. Prior to his 2015 appointment with Missions Interlink, Jay served for 15 years as the Director of Pioneers and 5 years before that with WEC International, sending and caring for missionaries from New Zealand. His MA studies (All Nations Christian College) investigated relationships of power within missions structures and his doctoral research (Fuller Seminary) led to his development of an Industrial and Indigenous values spectrum as a way of understanding intercultural interactions, which can provide a pathway to maturity through transformative tensions.
