K. Braaten mentioned that today’s theological issue is ecclesiology, and this is true also in missiology. In the traditional view of mission, the major agent of mission and the goal of mission was the church. In other words, in the past planting self supporting church in mission fields was the goal of mission, and the missionary work was done no other than by the church itself. In this sense, the church was the beginning and end of mission, and so the church was a deep concern of missiology in the past. However, with the emergence of Missio Dei concept, the status of the church in mission was changed. Since God‘s mission was done not through the church, like in the traditional understanding of the church, but by God Himself directly in the world, the church was not considered as a major or core agent of the church any more. Also by the impact of the Missio Dei concept, the major goal of mission was not church planting in mission fields but accomplishing shalom in the world. People in ecumenical side came to think that the church centered view of mission needs to be transformed to world centered view of mission. In spite of this change in missiology, the evangelical wing still holds the traditional view of ecclesiology, and so there is a big gap between the ecumenical understanding of the church and that of the evangelical wing. In this thesis, I tried to analyze the major characteristics of the ecumenical church view to provide a theoretical basis of desirable ecclesiology for authentic mission. For this purpose, first I investigated the outcomes of major ecumenical conferences to find out the characteristics of ecumenical view of the church. Based on the former study, then I tried to build up the status of the church, goal of the church, and working area of the church. The conclusion of the study was that the ecumenical view of the church was ‘he church for the world.’ The ecumenical church view was described from a positive viewpoint of ‘world’, and for the purpose of transforming the ‘world’. This kind of church view is helpful for the church to go beyond the boundary of the church for serving the world, and for challenging the church to become a responsible church for transforming the world. However, this view has a weakness of neglecting the source, ministry of up-building the church itself, as it is absorbed too much in the goal, transforming the world. Furthermore, as it emphasizes the world excessively there might be a possibility of breaking the border line between the church and the world, and it bring the result of weakness of the church itself which should become the major source of transforming the world. Therefore, the desirable ecclesiology might be the one that considers not only the goal but also the source, and unity with the world and difference from it as well.

• 안승오(영남신대 부교수ㆍ선교신학) | Ahn Seungoh