선교적 교회의 패러다임에서 조망하는 교회학교 사역

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the implications for the church’s educational ministry presented by the recent understanding of the missional church paradigm. Missional church arises as a new perspective from which diagnoses and evaluates the status of the church ministry. The term ‘missional church’ was coined by cooperation with missiologists and theologians who felt the shared perception of the western churches in decline. This insight was originated from missionary Lesslie Newbigin, who returned to his homeland England from India, who was shocked to see the once Christianized England had been rapidly secularized. Newbigin began to reconsider what it meant for the Gospel to have encounter with the western society which turned a mission field. In the wake of Lesslie Newbigin, a set of scholars who majored in missiology and theology in North America convened to continue Newbigin's insights and apply them to the churches in North America, which are faced with the same crisis. The Gospel and Our Culture Network, thus, has been formed to engage in the essential nature of the church in this post-Christendom age. These scholars, though inspired by Newbigin, furthered his term the church as a hermeneutic of the gospel to develop the missional identity of the church. So they attempted to integrate ecclesiology and missiology. What they newly found was the church does not exist for itself. The church was called by God to serve the world in which God is at work for its restoration. They understood this to be God’s mission and the triune work of sending for the purpose of redeeming the whole creation. Therefore, mission is not one of activities done by the church. Church exists for mission. It is not the church of God that has a mission. It’s the God of mission that has a church. The initiative of mission belongs to the triune God who continually acts in history. Jesus Christ, who was sent by God at the culmination of the redemptive history, concretely and physically, participated in Palestine region 2000 years ago. He suffered and died on the cross to accomplish this triune missional project. In this regard, being missional means we join what God is doing in our neighborhoods and communities. The local churches are called to actively participate in their neighborhoods while being sensitive and discerning to the call of the Holy Spirit who is at work with people outside the church. This missional church paradigm calls us to change our perceptions of church ministry. First, it invites us to indwell the worship and word in a missional sense. The liturgies of the church awaken the church members to discern who God is at work in everyday life and be motivated with God to embody the Kingdom values there. Second, it leads us to take interest in public life as well as individual's soul care. Faith cultivated within the soil of missional mindset envisions that God is still at work to restore the creation. Third, missional church paradigm calls us to actively share in neighbors’ actual lives so that we can develop meaningful relationship with them. Fourth, missional paradigm helps us to distinguish between attractional model of church ministry and incarnational model. Attractional model focuses on programs and worship events to gather more people into church. However,incarnational model, which was more in line with missional paradigm, motivates the members of the church to go into the world and embrace the life issues in their neighborhood, as Jesus incarnated with the Jewish populace. Thus missional church is to join the real life of the community in pursuing God’s intentions for the neighbors rather than attracting people into the church buildings. In conclusion, this paper touches upon some implications of the missional church paradigm for church educational ministry. Both Western and Korean churches are having difficulty in transmitting faith into the next generations. This is largely due to the schooling system of the church education according to Westerhoff, since the schooling system fails in cultivating faith value in the minds of the young generation. Children and youth tend to absorb their parents' faith by participating in religious communities and rituals rather than acquiring knowledge and information. They are spiritually formed by communal life in the process. This well resonates with missional church paradigm, which emphasizes the participatory life in daily routines.Thus the educational ministry needs to stress the missional component of the church’s liturgies for the next generation. The church programs and worship do not exist only for comforting the souls of children,but for calling them to participate in God’s activity in the midst of their actual life. Also, educational ministry needs to embody the Kingdom value to redeem the whole creation in its activities and attempt to integrate the activities of the next generation with the whole congregation’s. Ministry leaders for children and youth need to take the incarnational model into serious consideration. to live missionally is to do life authentically with other people in such a way that imitates Jesus Christ.