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11

The Missio Dei as Flourishing Life

Nelus Niemandt
Emeritus Professor, Department Religion Studies, University of Pretoria, South 
Africa, and Principal, Huguenot University College, Wellington, South Africa 
nelusn@gmail.com

Abstract

The idea of flourishing life has become one of the most important 
concepts in theological discourse, understanding human flour-
ishing as at the heart of the Christian gospel. This literature and 
document-based research links the concept of flourishing life with 
the missio Dei and presents it as a contextually relevant theologi-
cal interpretation of the missio Dei. The Church’s participation in 
God’s mission includes contributing towards flourishing life, and 
it concludes that such participation is of particular importance to 
ecclesiology.

Missional ecclesiology is interested in everyday life and in 
faithful presence in everyday communities. The research follows 
an incarnational approach and argues for a Christian lifestyle fo-
cussed on the rhythms of everyday life in a way that appreciates 
the importance of the material life. It proposes attending to created 
life, sustained life and consummated life. The connection between 
flourishing life and the missio Dei underscores the important role 



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of the Church in earthkeeping and affirms the Church’s calling 
to take responsibility for creation. The Church participates in 
sustaining life through four principles: conservancy, safeguard-
ing, fruitfulness and Sabbath rest. In terms of consummation, the 
expectation of the end influences the here and now and how the 
church acts in everyday life. 

The research demonstrates that the connection between the 
missio Dei and flourishing life does have important implications for 
the Church’s public theology and the challenge to articulate a posi-
tive vision of life. It proposes a pluralistic social vision focussed on 
diversity, unconditional love, Jesus Christ as the light of the world, 
the moral equality of all human beings, and freedom of religion. 

The research concludes by attending to faithful presence as a 
way to translate the missio Dei into church praxis. Ecclesial life is 
located within the mutual concerns of the neighborhood. Faith-
ful presence includes practices such as listening to the narrative of 
your place; enacting God’s peace in neigbourhoods; serving justice 
and reconciliation, allowing truth to flourish; and faithful recipro-
cal relationships with the created world. 

Introduction

The idea of God’s mission has received much attention in recent 
theological discourse and in ecumenical debates and publications. 
Mission is understood as an attribute of God; and the focus on 
God’s movement towards the world, is described as the missio 
Dei. This is essentially a Trinitarian theology where the life of the 
church is grounded in the life and activity of the Trinity, and where 
the mission of the church is to participate in God’s mission. 

The question addressed in this research is: In what way(s) can 
the concept of flourishing life serve as a contextual and relevant 
theological interpretation of the missio Dei? A number of ques-
tions flow from this. If it is possible (or even necessary) to embrace 
the concept of flourishing life as an interpretation of the missio 
Dei, how does this interpretation enrich missional ecclesiology? In 



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what way does the missio Dei, as flourishing life, impact the public 
witness of the church?

This contribution combines current ideas on the missio Dei 
with the rapidly developing discourses on flourishing life.

Missio Dei

There is substantial theological consensus on the trinitarian theol-
ogy of missio Dei (see Niemandt 2019b, 2; Guder 2015, 25), and it 
is widely recognised as one of the most important developments 
in the theology of mission. Niemandt explains that “it introduced 
a radically new understanding of mission and theology, and mis-
sion studies are still grappling with the implications, which stretch 
far beyond the traditional cross-cultural missionary task of the 
church” (Niemandt 2019b, 2). There is indeed a growing con-
sensus on the Trinitarian theology of the missio Dei, and flowing 
from that a re-appropriation of and understanding of ecclesiology. 
Skreslet summarizes: “Missio Dei language also invites one to con-
ceive of the church itself as a sent community, dispatched by the 
Triune God for witness in the world” (Skreslet 2012, loc 798). The 
message of the Gospel is clear—the church witnesses that Jesus 
Christ brought salvation to the world. This is also clear when one 
considers discussions in ecumenical bodies, in partnerships for 
missional churches and other discourse focused on the missional 
church. The term missio Dei pops up in all of these conversations. 

But the overfamiliarity of the term poses its own challenges: 
what exactly do we mean when we say that “the church participates 
in God’s mission”? Changing context will certainly influence ideas 
in this regard. Missio Dei must be translated into church praxis.

Bevans and Schroeder (2011, 26) remind us that the Church 
participates in God’s life as communion-in-mission and is in itself 
missionary by its very nature. The missio Dei constitutes the mis-
siones ecclesia (Bosch 1991, 370) and emphasises the kenotic and 
communal character of the Church, and the fact that the essence 
of the church is to participate in the mission of God. The Church 
is essentially missionary.



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The missio Dei focuses on salvation and restoration, but also 
explains that “God is by nature a missional God, who is seeking 
not just to save ‘souls’ to take to heaven someday, but to restore 
and save the created order: individuals, communities, nations, the 
environment, the world, the cosmos” (Gorman 2018, 4). 

I appreciate Volf and Croasmun’s explanation of the arc that 
can be drawn from the creation of the world to the calling of Jesus 
Christ to make all things new, to eventually turn “the entire world 
into God’s home and our home” (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 6). This 
transformation of all creation into God’s home seems to be an ap-
propriate description of the missio Dei. Or, as Conradie concludes, 
“The mission of the Church may be understood as preparing the 
house for God’s homecoming” (Conradie 2015, 231). The Church 
is part and parcel of the preparations and is called to be involved 
in God’s restorative work. 

This raises several questions regarding the nature and calling 
of the Church. How does the Church prepare the house for the 
homecoming? What does this entail in terms of our imagination 
of what the Church might be? What does creation, sustaining and 
consummation mean for the future of ecclesial (flourishing) life?

“Life in Fullness” and “Flourishing Life”

Answering the question about the Church’s participation in pre-
paring the house for God’s homecoming, involves a description of 
God’s home. When one attempts to describe God’s home, various 
images comes to mind. One of the overarching ideas is that God’s 
home is a place where life flourishes. The idea of life in fullness, or 
flourishing life has become one of the most important concepts 
in ecumenical and theological discourse in the last three decades. 
This flows from the conviction that concern for human flourish-
ing is at the heart of the Christian gospel. Pennington labels this a 
meta-theme or meta-concept with staying power and a universal 
voice “because it addresses what is most basic and innate to all of 
humanity, despite the diversity of race, culture, and values” (Pen-
nington 2015, 1).



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Marais investigated the rise in the rhetoric of human flour-
ishing and identified the following patterns in the discourse 
(Marais 2015, ii): 

• Human flourishing as piety, joy, and comfort

• Human flourishing as a fulfilled life, healing, and dignity

• Human flourishing as grace, happiness, and blessing

She observes that the rhetoric of human flourishing is part of the 
revival in happiness studies, and that this includes theology (2, 7). 
The rhetoric shifted, however, from happiness to human flourish-
ing, particularly amongst liberation theologians, feminist theo-
logians, disability theologians, and ecological theologians (10). 
This shift can be observed in theological conferences, academic 
research into biblical texts that sketch a picture of the flourishing 
of human beings, and ecumenical meetings.

The World Council of Churches (WCC), in an important 
ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism, Together to-
wards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL) 
(Keum 2013), states that Jesus Christ’s ultimate concern and mis-
sion is to affirm life in all its fullness. Although the WCC does 
not represent all the Christian churches and traditions, it can be 
accepted as an important and influential voice reflecting ecumeni-
cal diversity. This authoritative text on mission and evangelism, a 
primary point of reference to understand Christian mission in the 
early twenty-first century (Ross 2017, 91), frequently uses terms 
such as “fullness of life” (Keum 2013, 3, 14, 17, 25, 34, 37, 39, 44), 
“abundant life” (4, 37), “wholeness” (19–20), “affirmation of life” 
(34, 37), and “flourishing life” (5). TTL explains the theme of life 
in fullness in trinitarian terms:

• “God created the whole oikoumene in God’s image and con-
stantly works in the world to affirm and safeguard life” (Keum 
2013, 4).

• Jesus Christ is the life of the world and the incarnation of 
God’s love for the world.



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• The Holy Spirit is described as the life-giver “who sustains 
and empowers life and renews the whole creation” (Keum 
2013, 4).

To prepare the house for God’s homecoming is to participate in 
God’s mission to bring life in fullness. The WCC does this when 
it connects the concept of life in fullness with God’s mission: 
“God invites us into the life-giving mission of the triune God 
and empowers us to bear witness to the vision of abundant life 
for all in the new heaven and earth” (Keum 2013, 4). It is clear 
that the idea of flourishing life is receiving a lot of attention in 
theological reflection and ecumenical debates. Life is indeed a key 
concept in TTL (see also Bevans 2015, 194). God is regarded as 
the source of life and expanding life is part of God’s being. We 
are invited to join in God’s life-giving mission. Bevans summarizes 
TTL and says that mission is about the flourishing of the whole of 
creation, respecting its integrity and working for its life (Bevans 
2015, 195). He concludes: “It is working with joy for life that gives 
glory to God” (200). To summarize—the trinitarian God is a God 
of boundless loving and endless life. Mission is participation in 
the boundless love and endless life of the triune God. Mission is 
deeply connected to the issue of flourishing life.

Volf is also involved in a far-reaching discourse on flourish-
ing life and affirms that this is at the centre of concern for the-
ology, especially due to the failure in recent decades to attend to 
this issue. “True, good, or flourishing life is the fundamental hu-
man question” (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 8) and belongs to the 
core of theology:

The flourishing of human beings and all God’s creatures 
in the presence of God is God’s foremost concern for 
creation and should therefore be the central purpose of 
theology. (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 11)

What is human flourishing? Kelsey refers to a flourishing hu-
man being, as somebody who reflects the glory of God—“the full 
richness of God’s reality” (Kelsey 2009, 310). Marais summarizes 
Kelsey’s approach as a description of human flourishing which is 



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“to blossom” and “to thrive” (Marais 2015, 15). To blossom is “to 
manifest the type of beauty of which a given life is capable by vir-
tue of God’s relating to it,” and to thrive is “to have oneself in hand” 
(Kelsey 2009, 315), thus a kind of life that considers other people 
and life. Pennington explains that human flourishing is the idea 
that encompasses all human activity and goals because “there is 
nothing so natural and inescapable as the desire to live, and to live 
in peace, security, love, health” (Pennington 2015, 1–2). Thriving 
therefore has implications for human persons themselves, for non-
human neighbors and for the broader context in which human be-
ings live (see Marais 2015, 16). Or, in terms of the images of God’s 
mission, flourishing life can paint a picture of how we can imagine 
God’s household. It expresses something of God’s home and God’s 
preferred future for our reality. 

For Volf, flourishing means “the good toward which humans 
are meant to strive” (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 13). He focuses on 
life and uses the tripartite description of life going well, life led 
well, and life feeling as it should (Volf 2015, loc 28; Volf and Croas-
mun 2019, 16). Volf mentions two images:

One is an image of the verdant garden, beautiful and 
nourishing, a habitat for humans to “till and keep” and a 
temple in which to converse with their God (Genesis 2). 
The other is of a universal city that has become a temple, 
“the new Jerusalem” on a “new earth,” rich in the glory 
and honor of nations and utterly secure (Revelation 21). 
(Volf 2015, loc 51)

Pennington identifies human flourishing as a central part of the 
Bible’s teaching on salvation and redemption. “God is not uncon-
cerned about our well-being and happiness,” says Pennington, 
“peace, happiness, blessedness, health, joy, and abundance of life 
are the consistent message of Scripture and the goal of God’s work” 
(Pennington 2015, 17).

The idea of flourishing life is not limited to the Christian or 
Jewish religious traditions. Volf argues that all major religions are 
“carriers of compelling visions of flourishing,” and that religions 
are “fundamentally accounts of human flourishing, of the self, 



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social relations, and the good” (Volf 2015, loc 64, 41). Pennington 
identifies the meta-theme of flourishing life in ancient philosophy 
(Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism), in religions (such as Bud-
dhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), and in modern trends 
(such as Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now and Positive Psychology) 
(Pennington 2015, 2). In the Christian tradition, the focus is on the 
kingdom of God—one of the dominant images of flourishing life 
in the Bible. The kingdom of God is a dynamic relation between 
God and the world, a situation “when God comes to dwell in the 
world and when the world has become and experiences itself as 
being God’s home” (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 69). 

The task of humanity is to serve flourishing life by remaking 
the world into God’s home, a space where God’s presence with his 
people and creation can be experienced. Volf and Croasmun sum-
marize God’s mission as the world “with God as a residing ‘owner’ 
rather than absentee ‘landlord,’ the world having come truly into 
its own and flourishing by having become God’s home” (Volf and 
Croasmun 2019, 70).

The concepts of flourishing life, human flourishing and the 
theological importance of God’s life-giving mission relates to 
many of the traditional theological loci, but is of particular impor-
tance to ecclesiology. God’s mission and the affirmation of life has 
cosmic meaning, and the church must affirm all life, and the whole 
oikoumene, “as being interconnected in God’s web of life” (Keum 
2013, 5). This is especially important in the case of missional eccle-
siology, as the life and existence of the church is understood as 
a life in the Trinity. The mission of the church is embedded and 
flows from God’s mission. God’s mission involves abundant life. 
The church, being called to participate in God’s mission, and em-
bedded in the inner life of the life-giving Trinity, is “commissioned 
to celebrate life, and to resist and transform all life-destroying 
forces” (Keum 2013, 4). 

This obviously has far-ranging implications for the imagina-
tion of church life and praxis. The good news is to proclaim abun-
dant life. The church points to and participates in the reign of God, 
and this involves flourishing life. The church equips and inspires 



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members to be faithfully present and to search and serve flourish-
ing everyday life. 

To summarize—the idea of life in fullness or flourishing life 
represents a compelling discourse in theology. It may not, at this 
stage, have the same spread of consensus as the idea of the missio 
Dei, but most certainly raises the question of the possible relation-
ship between the missio Dei and flourishing life. Flourishing life 
serves as an apt description of God’s home, and God’s present and 
preferred future. This has important ecclesiological implications.

Missio Dei  and Flourishing Life—Convergence

The question has been posed whether it is possible to embrace the 
concept of flourishing life as an interpretation of the missio Dei, 
and how does this interpretation enrich the theology of mission 
and missional ecclesiology? This section entertains the possibil-
ity of understanding flourishing life as a particular, powerful and 
contextually relevant explanation of the missio Dei, and explores 
the convergence between missio Dei and flourishing life. 

Recent discussions explain that missional hermeneutics is 
grounded in four theological assumptions: 

• God, who is love, is missional and therefore has a mission—
the missio Dei

• Scripture bears witness to God’s mission

• The church is called and sent to participate in that mission in 
Godlike, or God-shaped, ways (Gorman 2018, 2–3) 

• The purpose of the Bible is to equip the church for its witness 

One can say that a missional hermeneutic is to read Scriptures 
with a missio Dei-lens. It is what Mburu calls an incarnational and 
contextualized approach (Mburu 2019, 5–6). Gorman follows this 
route. He explicitly asks the missio Dei question in his book on 
Paul: “What is God up to in the world? What is the missio Dei, 



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the mission of God?” He answers: “For Paul the answer is clear: to 
bring salvation to the world” (Gorman 2015, loc 635).

Gorman also connected the idea of the missio Dei with life 
in fullness, or flourishing life. In his exploration of the Gospel ac-
cording to John, he explains that a single word summarizes the 
divine mission, and that is “salvation,” or, in the Johannine idiom, 
“life.” The missio Dei, says Gorman, is “the Son’s mission on behalf 
of the Father in doing signs and giving life” (Gorman 2018, 40). 

Gorman suggests that the most appropriate over-arching 
theme for the gospel of John is “eternal” or “abundant” life (Gor-
man 2018, 44). “Life” is central in John; he argues that Jesus 
does not merely disclose something, he delivers something, and 
that something is life. He concludes that God’s missio is giving 
life and that the Gospel of John is “the Gospel of life” (see Gor-
man 2018, 45–47). 

Gorman reminds us that God’s liberating, life-giving work is 
not only the liberation of humanity, but the liberation of the entire 
cosmos (Gorman 2015, loc 654): “Because God’s love is universal 
it is inescapably missiological” (Gorman 2018, 124). God is on a 
mission to liberate humanity and the entire cosmos from the pow-
ers of sin and death. 

It is thus not only possible, but rather compelling, to see the 
connection between flourishing life and the missio Dei, and the 
implications for any imagination of the missional church. One can 
only agree with Volf and Croasmun that “all things were created by 
God; all things continue to exist through God; and all things are 
destined to become God’s home” (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 70).

This impacts on our imagination of what the Church might 
be, and creates an agenda for the Church to prepare the house for 
God’s homecoming. Ecclesial flourishing life is about creation, 
sustaining creation and consummation.

The creation, sustenance and consummation of all cre-
ated life is part and parcel of the missio Dei. “God’s mission,” says 
Wright, “includes the whole of creation” (Wright 2010, loc 233). 
The triune God created life, sustains life and is on a mission to 
bring all life to a new place, to God’s home, where all will “live in 



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peace with God and creation, and all inhabit a space of joy” (Volf 
and Croasmun 2019, 79–80). The creation, sustenance and con-
summation of all life is to gift and bless life in such a way that life 
can flourish. This includes liberation from sin and the restoration 
of the whole cosmos to a better and complete new reality. Jesus 
explains his mission: “I have come so that they may have life, and 
may have it abundantly” (John 10:10). This is also evident when 
Jesus identifies his mission as giving life, and this is strengthened 
by his “I am” statements: “‘I am the bread of life’ ([John] 6:35, 48); 
‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (11:25); and ‘I am the way, and 
the truth, and the life’ (14:6)” (Gorman 2018, 49). The Gospel of 
John explains a convergence of the mission of Jesus, sent by the 
Father, and abundant life. Jesus’ mission is to reconcile, to redeem, 
to introduce and bring life in fullness—abundant life. 

This convergence does have important implications. Volf and 
Croasmun explain the purpose of theology: 

It is to discern, articulate, and commend visions of and 
paths to flourishing life in light of the self-revelation of 
God in the life, death, resurrection, exaltation, and com-
ing in glory of Jesus Christ, with this entire story, its lows 
and its highs, bearing witness to a truly flourishing life. 
(Volf and Croasmun 2019, 61)

In conclusion: Theology as such is interested in and focussed on 
flourishing life. This also impacts on ecclesiology and missional 
ecclesiology.

Missional ecclesiology is particularly interested in everyday 
life. A Trinitarian approach implies that the Father and Son sent the 
Spirit to guide his Church in the realities of everyday life and to be 
faithfully present in everyday communities. One of the core con-
cepts in missional ecclesiology, is the concept of incarnation—in-
carnation means following Christ in the rhythms of everyday life in 
a way that appreciates the importance of physical and material life. 

One of the ways in which missional ecclesiology might en-
gage with the idea of flourishing life, is to attend to the following 
facets of everyday life:



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• Created life

• Sustained life

• Consummated life

Created Life

God’s mission started with the creation of life—the act to create 
reality outside the reality of the Trinity, and to engage in a relation-
ship wider than the inner relationship between Father, Son and 
Holy Spirit. The Gospel, and the essence of the missio Dei, begins 
with the good earth and all of creation God made through Jesus. 

When one asks the classic missional question, “What did 
God do?” (see Niemandt 2019a, 133), the first answer must be that 
the Triune God created the world and all of creation. That is where 
the missio Dei, inaugurated in the inner discourse of the Trinity, 
became reality. 

In terms of life in fullness, or flourishing life, as an expression 
of the missio Dei, the understanding of creation as a gift of the 
Triune God puts the doctrine of creation in the orbit of mission 
studies and reflections on the missional church. When one asks 
the second classical missional question, “What does God wants 
to do?” (see Niemandt 2019a, 133), it raises the ecclesiological is-
sue of the Church’s involvement in created life, and the task of the 
Church in earth-keepings and participating in God’s continued 
creation. In a certain sense, the Church’s answer to the question is 
that God wants us to take responsibility for his creation in every-
thing we do, and the Church provides theological language and 
clarity of calling in terms of creation.

Sustained Life

What did God do? God shared the mission of taking care of cre-
ation with humanity. “Human beings are people with a mission,” 
argues Wright (2010, loc 679). God’s instruction to fill the earth, 
to subdue the earth and to rule over the rest of the creatures is an 



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invitation to participate in God’s sustenance of creation. God is 
delegating God’s own kingly authority over creation, but then as a 
benevolent king who loves and takes care of his creation: “We are 
given the mission to rule over creation, but we are to do it in ways 
that are modeled (sic) on the character and values of God’s own 
kingship” (Wright 2010, loc 708). 

It is important to remember Gorman’s perspective, namely 
that God is already active in the present, working to liberate hu-
manity from sin, through the “sin-defeating and life-giving death 
and resurrection of his Son” (Gorman 2015, loc 659).

Conradie (2015, 16) argues that earthkeeping is an integral 
dimension of the mission of the church. As Wright explains: “Rul-
ing and serving creation is humanity’s first mission on earth, and 
God never repealed the mandate” (Wright 2010, loc 729). Volf and 
Croasmun refer to the “home of God”—or the dwelling place of 
God—as the overarching metaphor for developing a theology of 
flourishing life (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 149).

Conradie (2015) also prefers to refer to creation as the home 
of God, and to describe the task of the church as participating in 
housekeeping or earthkeeping. 

What does God want the church to do? God wants the 
Church to imagine a praxis of housekeeping and earthkeeping that 
includes ministries of healing, justice and reconciliation, and most 
certainly proclaiming the good news of new life in Jesus Christ. 

DeWitt formulated four principles for the stewardship of cre-
ation that can shape and inform reflection on the “sustain” aspect 
of flourishing life (see DeWitt 2008, 89): 

• The conservancy principle: We should return the service of 
creation to us with service of our own. 

• The safeguarding principle: We should safeguard the Lord’s 
creation as the Lord safeguards us. 

• The fruitfulness principle: We should enjoy the fruit of cre-
ation, but not destroy its fruitfulness. 

• The Sabbath principle: We should provide for creation’s Sab-
bath rest. 



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For the Church to be faithfully present, the church needs to fo-
cus on and enhance the calling to be earthkeepers, to be faithfully 
present in a way that seeks the welfare of creation and promotes 
flourishing life. 

Consummated Life

The importance of an incarnational approach has already been ex-
plained in the argument for attention to flourishing life. However, 
the incarnation must be seen as the inauguration of the eschaton. 
Any discussion of life in fullness must attend to the new creation 
that breaks into the present reality: “Eschatology brings together 
the past and future into the present in a new creation” (Niemandt 
2015, 6). Conradie emphasizes the cosmic scope of God’s salvation 
and argues that it implies a loving concern for the whole of God’s 
planetary household (Conradie 2015, 263). The question “What 
does God want to do?” implies a focus on the future and consum-
mation. The future brings hope and shapes church praxis.

This leads to the question: How can a vision of hope for the 
earth be articulated?

What does God want to do with His creation. What is the 
goal of God’s mission?

This is a rather complex issue, demanding considerable re-
flection and theological debate. In terms of the flourishing life as 
part and parcel of the missio Dei, I appreciate Conradie’s advice: 
“My intuition is that the key to telling the story indeed lies in the 
end of the story. The expectation of the end influences, now al-
ready, the way in which the story is told and how the plot is struc-
tured” (Conradie 2015, 264). According to Conradie (265), the 
consummation is the presumed final chapter of the story of God’s 
house-holding, and the Church participates in the preparation of 
God’s house for God’s homecoming. The idea of flourishing life 
presupposes that the final chapter is one where all of creation en-
joys the life in fullness Jesus promised. This includes, in the words 
of Gorman, to follow Jesus the Lamb “into a new heaven and new 
earth liberated from the effects of our sin and even from sin itself, 



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alive with the perpetual presence of the living God, in whom we 
can be both lost and found in eternal wonder, awe, and praise” 
(Gorman 2011, loc 4469–71).

Missio Dei  as Flourishing Life through 
Faithful Presence 

The next section attends to the question: How does missio Dei 
translate into church praxis? The interaction between flourishing 
life and church life can be explored by attending to the idea of 
faithful presence. Sparks et al. (2014) developed the idea of faith-
ful presence to clarify missional praxis. The church is deeply con-
nected to a specific place or parish, and must be faithfully present. 
This means that ecclesial life is located within the mutual concerns 
of the neighborhood. It is an incarnational approach that takes 
bodies, location and community seriously, following the clue of 
Christ’s incarnation and God’s presence in our reality (Niemandt 
2019a, 49). I argue for an appreciation of the fundamental impor-
tance of the incarnation as a movement towards where people are 
(place). Place and location form the basis of a missional ecclesi-
ology (Niemandt 2019c, 3). To be faithfully present is to enact a 
transformational presence that makes God’s kingdom visible in 
everyday life and in everyday locations. This echoes Newbigin’s 
characteristics of a missional congregation when he describes a 
community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in 
the concerns of its neighborhood (Newbigin 1989, 238–44).

Faithful presence is to listen to the narrative of your place. 
Sparks et al. explain: “Listening to your place through the narrative 
of God’s dream awakens you to what the Spirit is already up to and 
what good news really looks like in the place you live” (Sparks et 
al. 2014, 125).

Being faithfully present implies the church is God’s gift of 
peace by bearing the kingdom in its own life, in neigbourhoods. 
The local church is itself be a new social order. It is to be a foretaste 
of the kingdom of God (Niemandt 2019a, 46). The church pro-
claims the good news of flourishing life, but also enacts the good 



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news by facilitating flourishing life. The presupposition is that 
God is already present and working, and that neighborhoods are 
transformed “by identifying and connecting the dreams and assets 
of the people, associations and institutions that are already there” 
(Sparks et al. 2014, 130).

Life flourishes where justice rules. Faithful presence includes 
a ministry of reconciliation and justice. The church brings life 
where it attends to reconciliation to assist people to deal with the 
challenges of pain, suffering, murder, and everything that dimin-
ishes flourishing life. Justice restores and reconciles, and in this 
process life can flourish again. 

Faithful presence is to be a community of truth. Life flour-
ishes where truth flourishes. Truth starts with being in Christ. 
Communities of truth reflect the internal truthful relationality 
of the Trinity, and from there also extends to include honest and 
truthful relationships with others.

Faithful presence is to promote flourishing life in communi-
ties. The congregation must have a faithful reciprocal relationship 
with the created world, a relationship where place matters and 
where congregations value a dependent relationship with their 
neighborhood. Such congregations attend to place, and ask: “What 
might God be saying to us through this neighborhood? What do 
the buildings and zoning legislation reveal? What are the streams, 
air, forests, fields, parks, and even the resident animals, birds, in-
sects, and fish saying?” (Sparks et al. 2014, 146).

Faithful presence is to be a community of hope, orientated 
in terms of the consummation, and involved in discerning God’s 
preferred and promised future church, community and creation. 

The Implications of Missio Dei  as 
Flourishing Life for Public Theology

The connection between the missio Dei and flourishing life does 
have important implications for the Church’s public theology. Mis-
sion is God’s turning to the world. The ekklesia is a theo-political 
category (Hoekendijk cited in Bosch 1991, 377). Bosch explains 



Nelus Niemandt—The Missio Dei as Flourishing Life

27

that we can think of the Church as an ellipse with two foci: the 
source of its life is recognized in worship and prayer; and the 
church engages and challenges the world (Bosch 1991, 385). The 
church is at the same time called out of the world and sent onto the 
world. This echoes Volf ’s observation, citing Alexis de Tocqueville: 
“When ordinary people, most of them religious, enter the political 
arena, they take religion with them” (Volf 2015, 65). This raises the 
question: what is the public mission of God?

The convergence of missio Dei with flourishing life, provides 
mission studies and church witness with a compelling alternative 
to what the good life might be, especially in a consumerist society.

It also challenges the missional church to articulate a posi-
tive vision of life that calls us forward: “The core of our response 
toward moral decline—where and when it exists—should be to 
articulate a positive vision of life that calls us forward” (Volf and 
Croasmun 2019, 53). 

A missional creation theology will attend to the idea of the 
consummation, approached as the telling of a hopeful story of 
what flourishing life might look like. What does the house where 
God comes home to look like? In the words of the public declara-
tion of the Accra Confession (WARC 2004, 5): “Now we proclaim 
with passion that we will commit ourselves, our time and our en-
ergy to changing, renewing and restoring the economy and the 
earth, choosing life, so that we and our descendants might live (see 
also Deut 30:19).” 

What is God’s preferred and present future? How can the 
local congregation participate in faithfully retelling the story of 
what might be at the end of the story? And how can the local con-
gregation be faithfully present so as to be a hermeneutic of the 
Gospel—a place where the last chapter is already being enacted. 
How do the congregation members participate in the remaking 
of the world into God’s home? How do we choose life, so that our 
descendants might live?

Volf and Croasmun propose a pluralistic social vision as part 
and parcel of the public witness of the Church that may contribute 
significantly to the vision of flourishing life. They attend to: 



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Key elements of a Christian account of the flourishing 
life that allow those who embrace it to live in peace and 
pursue common good in pluralistic settings, and to do so 
not only notwithstanding its claim to be true for every 
human and the entire world, but also largely because of 
it. (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 105)

They propose the following “pillars of a pluralistic social vision”: 

• Trinitarian monotheism is the source of diversity, and dif-
ference is not secondary, subsequent to unity; difference is 
equiprimordial with unity (105).

• God is the God of unconditional love. “God’s law is but a 
mode of God’s love. Even when humans fail to live according 
to the law of love, God seeks to mend the world and bring it 
to its intended fullness so it can become what God created it 
to be: our home and God’s home in one” (105).

• Jesus Christ is the light of the world. “The truth about flour-
ishing life that Christ proclaimed is for all people” (105). “All 
truth sought and found anywhere takes us, ultimately, to 
Christ as its origin” (106).

• There is a distinction between God’s rule and human rule. 
“The Christian church is (or at any rate ought to understand 
itself as) a loose international network of communities whose 
primary allegiance isn’t to the states of which they are citizens 
or to some yet-to-be-created global superstate but to the one 
God of all people” (106).

• The moral equality of all human beings. Everybody is made 
according to God’s image. “All people have equal dignity; all 
have the same rights and the same moral obligations; all have 
fallen short of those obligations” (106).

• Freedom of religion and areligion. A person is free to follow 
the Gospel, or not. One believes with the heart (106).



Nelus Niemandt—The Missio Dei as Flourishing Life

29

Conclusion

The concept of flourishing life can indeed serve as a contextual and 
relevant theological interpretation of the missio Dei, and flourish-
ing life expands and gives a particular depth to the missio Dei. 

The interpretation of missio Dei as flourishing life enriches 
the theology of mission and missional ecclesiology, and this re-
search proposed “creation, sustenance, and consummation of all 
created life” as essential elements in the discussion of the missio 
Dei. This approach may provide the missional church movement 
with new ideas, especially in terms of church praxis. Church praxis 
must attend to faithful presence as a way to make God’s kingdom 
visible in everyday life and in everyday locations.

The convergence of missio Dei with flourishing life, provides 
mission studies and theology in general with a compelling alterna-
tive to what the good life might be, especially in a consumerist so-
ciety. Croasmun and Volf formulated “pillars of a pluralistic social 
vision” that might represent a positive vision of life. 

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