선교관의 두 구조인 “교회 중심적 선교”와 “미시오 데이”는 상호 대립으로 인해 선교의 본질에 대해 논쟁의 역사를 이어왔다. Missio Dei의 관점이 교회 중심의 선교에 대하여 비판이 거세짐에 따라 전통적으로 교회가 주도하던 선교는 점점 약화되었다. 그러나 비판되었던 교회지상주의에 빠지지 않아야 하지만, 우리는 교회 설립의 본질을 찾고 대안을 제시하여 하나님의 선교에서 교회의 본질과 역할을 회복해야 한다. 이에 하나님의 선교에서 교회의 정당한 위치역할이 무엇인지를 바르게 세워야 한다. 이러한 필요에 가장 적합한 담론이 선교적 교회이다. 선교적 교회는 유행이나 트렌드가 아닌 교회의 본질이기 때문에 성서적 근거와 기초를 세우고 정체성을 확고히 해야 한다. 선교적 교회의 본질은 언약 개념의 근거위에 선다. 하나님과 사람의 깨어진 관계가 회복된 언약 공동체는 그리스도의 구속 사역을 통해 세상에 세워진 것이 교회이다. 새로운 언약 공동체인 교회는 본질적으로 선교를 위해 세워진 하나님의 대리자이다. 이 교회가 하나님의 왕국을 확장시키는 데 사용되는 최상의 선교 기관이며 역동적 선교를 수행할 것이다.

World evangelization needs to be conducted by both older churches (sending churches) and younger churches (receiving churches) because the distinction between the former and the latter has disappeared. God uses great resources from the younger churches for world evangelization.The church, defined as all Christian churches without regard to denominational distinction, needs to understand the urgency of the evangelistic task. More than two-thirds of mankind have yet to be evangelized and there is a great receptivity to the gospel in many parts of the world. The church should be ashamed that so many souls have been neglected and unreached for Christ.The church needs to understand the significance of evangelism as it relates to different world cultures. Missionaries need to be sensitive to different cultures through which the gospel can be effectively communicated to different people groups. The gospel message needs to be presented in such a way that it can be meaningful to the people.The church needs to develop indigenous leadership to enable native leaders in every country to evangelize their people, plant the indigenous churches according to their needs, and extend God's kingdom. Christian leaders are not born but made through appropriate training and education. The church needs to follow Jesus Christ in terms of making disciples of all nations.The church needs to understand the spiritual conflict involved when the church is active in world evangelization. Churches are engaged in constant spiritual warfare with the principalities and powers of evil seeking to overthrow the Lord's church and frustrate its mission of world evangelization. The church needs to equip itself with the word of God and prayer.The church needs to understand the importance of religious freedom and the seriousness of religious persecution throughout the world. The church needs to pray for world leaders and call upon them to guarantee freedom of thought, conscience, and freedom to practice and propagate religion according to God's will. The church needs to understand the power of the Holy Spirit and to believe the Holy Spirit will help the church to effectively carry out world evangelization. World evangelization calls for conviction of sin, faith in Christ, a new birth, and Christian growth. The church needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit to become the true missionary church.The church needs to believe in the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ to consummate His salvation and His judgement. The church needs to remember that God will perfect His kingdom which anticipates the new heaven and new earth where righteousness will dwell and God will rule forever.The Lausanne Movement for World Evangelization is based on the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. The Lausanne theology of missions is based upon the Lausanne Covenant, the Manila Manifesto, and the Capetown Commitment which were officially adopted as the promise, the declaration, and the devotion of the church to carry out the world evangelization until the return of Jesus Christ.

Is it possible to read the Bible in missional sense? Are there any proper method to study the Bible in Missiology? The Bible is very essential to Missiology. God of mission has sent the church, the koinonia he called, into the world. The basis of the commission is strictly based in the Bible. Hence, from the time of the early church, there were unique trends that the church treat certain verses as the premise of missions. Even without the direct citations, those verses implicitly express the missional paradigm of the age. However, ‘missional hermeneutic’ on the Bible not just provides a biblical foundation of Mission but supports the mission as a whole. Which that the Bible, from cover to cover, it is constructed into the grand narrative, the mission of God.The study describes the mission of God by focusing on the concept of ‘covenant’ which is the repeating biblical narrative. The Idea of covenant is a major subject that forms the identity and the world view of Israel. From the covenant of Noah to the New Covenant in New Testament including the covenant of Abraham, Mount Sinai, and David, the idea is integrated into the grand narrative, the mission of God. Each covenant is not discontinuous from another but related since they were given according to the context of Israel. They were reconfirmed and reapplied in a large extent. In the Bible, the idea of covenant, the mission of God forms the core like the central nervous system. This paper proves the consistent idea of mission of God in the Bible by briefing the formation and the reconfirmations of the covenant. Jesus Christ was sent to ‘Yes’ all the promises(Cor II 1:20). God in Jesus of the Nazareth gave the suffering servant who is the descendent of Abraham blessing all races, who is the prophet overwhelms the Moses in bringing the grace and the truth into the world, who is the son of David reigning with righteousness endlessly, and who is the covenant gathering his people to him. Jesus who resurrected indeed reflected his identity to the Bible and also opened the eyes of his disciples who shall go forth to all nations with the power of the spirit(Lk 24:45-47). He is the only one who has the right to open the scroll that represents the entire history for he completed the mission of God(Rev 5:9). Therefore, every hermeneutic readings on the Bible must be messiahnic and missional. The ultimate object of the grand narrative must be found in Jesus Christ who died on the cross and resurrected from the deads. Missional hermeneutic overcomes multi-cultural hermeneutic and post-modern hermeneutic. Christian missions has experienced the challenges from post modern world for decades. The Bible rejoices diversity and approves the various human cultures with praise. Post-modernism also welcomes such characteristics of the Bible(cultural, local, relational, narrative). However, it limits those contexts into local and particular and generalize those as a whole. There are no narrative that includes all of them. There are no concept of the truth that integrates all the meaning of life with wholistic consistence. Diversity in hermeneutics does not affirm to a free licence to pluralism or relativism. Missional hermeneutic is different from them for it integrate the diversities, localities, and particularities into the grand narrative. The mission of God is a enormous story that clearly shown from the creation to the new creation in the Bible. It is the universal narrative that affirms the ultimate meaning to the human race that carries the particular cultural diversities. Missional hermeneutic is also a ecumenical hermeneutic since it contributes in church unity through biblical interpretation.

This essay examines the seventeenth century New England Congregationalists’ doctrine of the “church covenant” and its relationship with the “half-way covenant.” According to Perry Miller, there is a radical discontinuity between them. Miller points out three major differences. First, the half-way covenant introduced a new internal/external distinction into the early fathers’ church covenant, while the latter had considered their church covenant as a visible form of the internal covenant of grace. Second, accordingly, the defenders of the half-way covenant “drastically separated” the church covenant from the covenant of grace. As a result, the church covenant was “no longer viewed as a direct manifestation of spiritual conversion.” Third, there was a generation gap: While the old generation opposed the principle of the half-way covenant, the young generation tended to defend it. Miller shared the early seventeenth century critics’ view of the church covenant--as shown in Samuel Rutherford's polemical works against New England Congregationalism. Rutherford, for example, tended to identify Thomas Hooker’s concept of the church covenant with the Separatists’ view of it which was deeply rooted in their “pure church” ecclesiology. Both Rutherford’s and Miller’s thesis, however, represent a one-sided view. Hooker and his brethren present enough counter-evidence to show that the principle of the half-way covenant should be compatible with the early doctrine of the church covenant: First, the internal/external distinction does not belong to a later development because it was a basic feature for Hooker’s doctrine of the church covenant. Hooker clearly sees his church covenant as an external--not internal--covenant. Second, Hooker and his brethren make a significant distinction between the invisible/inward covenant of grace and the visible/outward covenant of grace. The latter, Hooker argues, is given for the visible church--either an explicit or an implicit form of church covenant. Third, Hooker’s church covenant does not nullify the traditional distinction of the visible/invisible church. On the contrary, it must preserve it. Finally, unlike Miller’s thought, the majority of the early Congregationalists--even in the 1630s--actually favored the principle of the half-way covenant. The above facts must account for the reason why the defenders of the half-way covenant could claim that they had the fathers of Congregationalism (including Hooker) on their side. In short, the complex reality demands that we should seek a more balanced approach to the issue of continuity/discontinuity between the church covenant and the half-way covenant.